Poll Shows Few Kentuctuckians Support the New Optometric Law

The first bill to be signed into law in the 2011 General Assembly didn’t go over well with a majority of Kentuckians surveyed in the cn|2 Poll.

And it wasn’t by an eyelash.

Just 15% of the 804 respondents in this week’s cn|2 Poll said they agreed with the proposal that now allows optometrists to perform certain eye surgeries. Up to the passage of Senate Bill 110, optometrists were licensed to perform eye exams, diagnose problems and prescribe corrective lenses.

S.B. 110, which Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law last week, allows optometrists to perform certain surgeries including several using lasers. That had been the domain of ophthalmologists — eye doctors who have medical degrees.

In the cn|2 Poll, 79% of respondents said any surgery should be performed by ophthalmologists.

But the cn|2 Poll results showed the most opposition to optometrists performing surgeries came in the most rural areas. In the 1st Congressional District covering western and southern Kentucky, nearly 87% said surgeries should be performed by an ophthalmologist and nearly 84% said that in the 5th Congressional District in eastern Kentucky.

Via cn|2 Poll: Few in Ky. support optometrist bill that was first to pass legislature in '11

It is time for physicians to be united to put the patient's safety first in order to thwart the special interest groups to advance their agenda and dictate how to practice medicine. Collective bargaining right of union workers have been on all over the news, where is the physicians' collective bargaining right? We are facing the impending medicare and medicaid reimbursement cuts at the mercy of the politicians.

Time for MDs and DOs to Stop The Infightings Among Each Other: We Are All Physicians After All!

Dr. Niall McLaren, a psychiatrist practicing in Australia, embraces the holistic approach of osteopathic medicine. Holistic approach to mental disorders or diseases should be emphasized instead of the reductionist approach which places priority of bio-chemical imbalances.

"In a thoughtful commentary, Delengocky offered three reasons why osteopathic medicine should remain parallel to but distinct from allopathic medicine.

First, there is the widespread and growing interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the United States. For a number of reasons, osteopathic medicine is an alternative to the reductionist biological tradition of allopathic medicine. Osteopathic medicine places great emphasis on the fact that the body is a self-regulating unit in which structure and function are reciprocally interrelated, providing a basis for a rational, holistic therapy.

Second, he argued that because of the prevalence, the morbidity, and the huge cost of musculoskeletal disorders, there is a place for a form of medicine that sees a need to manage these debilitating conditions as more than “simply pains.”

Third, he saw a political advantage in medicine having two “separate but equal” traditions to counter the aggressive push by nonmedical professions for equal rights (eg, laboratory investigation, prescribing, procedures) with physicians within their narrowly defined areas. Medicine must see the patient as a whole, must advance by rational scientific research and must be distinct from the paramedical professions, which seek to advance themselves by legislative advantage. Medicine is strengthened, not weakened, by having the two traditions of allopathic reductionist biology and osteopathic holism."

Open Letter to Dr. Ransom About His Testimony that MD Faculty Members Do Not Want to Teach His DO Students

Dr Ransom presented in his testimony that ‘culture’ is the primary reason why MDs want to teach MD students and DOs want to teach DOs students.

We respectfully and fundamentally disagree with this statement. We believe that MDs and DOs at all levels are true professionals and are passionate about teaching and passing on their medical arts to ALL medical students regardless of race, sex, national origin, or osteopathic/allopathic degree/heritage/philosophy. We further believe that Dr Ransom’s statement regarding such alleged ‘culture’ only reflects a miniscule minority within the MDs and DOs community.

Moreover, is Dr Ransom implying in his testimony that a majority of his clinical faculty members ‘CULTURALLY’ DO NOT WANT to teach his TCOM DO medical students? (Note: 2/3 of clinical faculty members at UNTHSC are MDs). If Dr Ransom truly believes that, we respectfully ask that he undertake immediate and appropriate measures to ensure that his TCOM DO medical students are not ‘short-changed’ by the  ‘culture’ of  MD faculty members at his state-funded institution. We believe that those hard working and dedicated DO medical students deserve it. Indeed, we believe that the state of Texas deserves and expects this, at the very least, as well.

Dr. Ransom testifies before the Senate that MD faculty members do not want to teach his DO medical students

Commentary and Fact Check

When asked about the plan for the MD school, for which no funding request was submitted to the Legislature, Dr. Ransom replied that he had all the funding necessary for the new school and would not ask the state for a dime for the first 5 years. Dr. Ransom estimated that the start-up cost and operational cost of the new MD school would be only $21.5 million and he had garnered $25 million in pledges from the community to sustain the school free of charge to the state for the first 5 years (2011-16).

Fact check:

§  The UNTMD plan calls for admitting the charter class in 2013; therefore, from 2013-16, MD students enrolled during those years would normally receive the appropriation funding from the state, which would amount to a total of $30 million. Is it the intention of Dr. Ransom to ask or not ask the state for that funding? If he waived the $30 million from the state, how would he cover the operational cost of the new school unless he had the intention of raising more money or diverting resources from TCOM?

• The Foster School of Medicine in El Paso cost $100 million to the state in addition to a donation of $50 million.
• UT South Texas Medical School, approved by the legislature in 2009, won’t receive funding from the legislature until 2015.  The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) estimates the cost to be $98 million.
• THECB estimated in 2008 that the start-up cost (e.g., administrative and faculty costs) for a new medical school of 60 students per class is $92.6 million, without including the cost of a 160,000 square-foot building.
• Across the nation, the average cost of a new medical school is $100-150 million.[1]

AMA Foundation Award Recipient Terrie E. Taylor, DO

As part of a continued effort to eliminate the scourge of malaria in the southern African nation of Malawi, a Michigan State University-led research team will use a $9.1 million federal grant to create new prevention and control strategies in the small, landlocked country.

Terrie Taylor, an MSU University Distinguished Professor of internal medicine and an osteopathic physician, is leading the project, which aims to establish a self-sustained research entity capable of implementing and evaluating anti-malaria strategies. The research project is funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"Successful malaria prevention and elimination activities require sustained, effective and well-targeted interventions," said Taylor, who spends six months each year working at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. There she treats malaria patients - predominantly children - and conducts research on the disease that kills as many as one million children in sub-Saharan Africa every year.

Using new molecular and genomic tools in conjunction with established approaches, Taylor and her team will study patients, malaria parasites, the mosquitoes that infect people with the parasite, and the individuals who carry the parasite and infect mosquitoes but manifest no symptoms themselves. The work will be carried out in three ecologically varied locations in Malawi, representative of geographic regions across southern Africa.

Michigan State University News: Research team awarded $9.1 million to battle malaria in Malawi

MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM) and College of Human Medicine (CHM): The Tale of the 2 Medical Schools on the Same Campus.

As UNTHSC leadership has been pushing for a new MD school (UNTMD) on its campus, which has already housed Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM), UNTHSC leadership usually refers to the model of Michigan State University (MSU), which houses both allopathic and osteopathic medical schools. UNTHSC administration believes the creation of UNTMD would enhance the stature of UNTHSC and TCOM.

Neither UNTHSC president Ransom nor UNT system leadership knows the reality of the   MSU model that they are about to embrace for their campus. Even though Dr. Ransom was working  in Michigan prior to his arrival to UNTHSC, Dr. Ransom was never involved in anyway with MSU.

Let’s take a look if MSU-COM’s stature is enhanced by its association with its sister allopathic medical school (CHM).

The College of Human Medicine was founded in 1964 as the first community-integrated medical school, which holds pre-clinical instructions (first and second year) on the main campus in Lansing and clinical education at seven distinct campuses: Lansing, Kalamazoo, Flint, Saginaw, Marquette, Traverse City, and Grand Rapids. The class size has been increasing from 100 students toward 200 students per class with the expansion of a new full-fledged medical school in Grand Rapids. The new medical school was just opened in August 2010 with the local community contributions of $90 million. Grand Rapids is among a few cities investing billions in healthcare industry that the New York Times titled its article: "Grand Rapids Lays Foundations for a Health Mecca."

Dr. Ransom Touted the Achievements of UNTHSC, the only osteopathic institution in the state

Commentary and Fact Check

UNTHSC is composed of four colleges: the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM),   the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the School of Public Health and the School of Health Professions, which includes the departments of Physician Assistant Studies and Physical Therapy.   As TCOM is the founding college and in order to preserve the osteopathic identity of the institution and honor the original agreement of transferring TCOM to the UNT system in 1974, the Texas Legislature passed a law (Education Code, Title 3. Higher Education, Subchapter H. Sec. 105.402), which prohibits the UNT Regents from awarding an M.D. degree.

Degrees Awarded[1]:

• Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine
• Master of Physician Assistant Studies
• Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Sciences
• Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences
• Master of Health Administration
• Master of Public Health
• Doctor of Public Health
• Master of Public Health/Master of Science in nursing (dual degree offered in partnership with University of Texas at Arlington)
• Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health (pending)

Three areas of excellence:

We are 4 month-old and growing strong

March marks the 4^th month of the existence of http://www.EyeDrD.org/. It has been an interesting journey so far because it is a new uncharted territory for me as I am somewhat technology challenged. Blogging has been very time consuming, especially during the initial buid-up stage. It is like another full-time job without pay. Again, I am deeply grateful to a few friends for their selfless efforts in helping me to realize my goals of getting messages out.

I would like to thank your readership and contributions of a few authors. http://www.EyeDrD.org/ is still growing and strongly everyday. The site has generated more than 25,600 page-views. Alexa tracks the traffic that goes to the websites on the internet and ranks them according to the amount of visitors.  The following is the report of Alexa:

• "Eyedrd.org is ranked #839,386 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Approximately 2% of visits to this site are referred by search engines. Almost all the site's visitors are in the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 121,828. Visitors to this site spend about 30 minutes per visit to the site and 46 seconds per pageview. Roughly 21% of visits to Eyedrd.org are bounces (one pageview only)."

·         “

Gaddafi's Speech Remixed with Zenga Zenga Song by Noy Alooshe Goes Viral

A YouTube clip mocking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s megalomania is fast becoming a popular token of the Libya uprising across the Middle East. And in an added affront to Colonel Qaddafi, it was created by an Israeli living in Tel Aviv.

Noy Alooshe, 31, an Israeli journalist, musician and Internet buff, said he saw Colonel Qaddafi’s televised speech last Tuesday in which the Libyan leader vowed to hunt down protesters “inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway,” and immediately identified it as a “classic.”

“He was dressed strangely, and he raised his arms” like at a trance party, Mr. Alooshe said Sunday in a telephone interview, referring to the gatherings that feature electronic dance music. Then there were Colonel Qaddafi’s words with their natural beat.

Dr. Ransom got nervous and sweaty when grilled by the Senators

Commentary and Fact Checks

As other medical school presidents urged the Senate to keep adequate funding for their medical schools because of patient safety concerns and the accreditation maintenance of their schools, Dr. Ransom was asked about the LCME accreditation process of his UNTMD plan and whether it would be approved. He implied there had been frequent communications between him and the secretariat of LCME during the preliminary development of UNTMD business plan and that he believed the accreditation process would be about 1.5 years long.

Comment: Dr. Ransom’s body language betrayed his testimony as he touched his hair and his neck; he also drank a glass of water while answering the accreditation process.

          

Democracy in action: D.O. Medical Excellence (DOME) Day in Austin

I joined the DO day in Austin on February 23^rd. It was my very first (somewhat) political event I attended in my life. There were 95 TCOM students, 39 DOs, and 13 others coming from across the state and outside of the state to attend the event. I admire the participation and the spirits of the students because I didn’t make the time to participate in those events as I was trying to survive in medical school.

Texas capitol is a beautiful building and most of the legislators’ offices are located underground. The capitol was crowded with a few dozen groups of different interests. It is very hard to meet the legislators because they are either in committees or meetings unless you have connections to have personal meetings. Appointments are needed to be made way in advance or made by political consultants on short notice, and the appointments are also subjected to changes.

It was a marathon day for me to have meetings with the legislative aides of 4 representatives and 2 senators. Some meetings were taken place even in the hallways outside of the legislators’ offices because there were several groups meeting already inside the offices. I was able to talk to a few TCOM students and get the pulse of the TCOM students on the issue of the UNTMD plan forward.

Meet the first Emergency Physician, Joe Heck, DO, elected to Congress

Joe Heck, DO is the only DO physician among a few other MD physicians to serve in the U.S. Congress. He represents Nevada’s 3rd congressional district and is a member of the Republican Party. He was a State Senator of Nevada.