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Robot prepares chemotherapy drugs for eastern Iowa hospital

January 31, 2013 By
This robot dispenses chemotherapy drugs.

This robot dispenses chemotherapy drugs at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids.

An eastern Iowa hospital is the first in the nation to install a high-tech robot that will mix and administer chemotherapy drugs.

The machine is called the I-V Station Onco and it’s being set up at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids. Desmond Waters, Mercy’s pharmacy director, says when the robot goes online, it will help to reduce errors and waste while bringing more cost-effective care for patients.

“The medication is bar-coded for the robot to recognize the medication to be loaded,” Waters says.

“The robot then actually takes a picture of the vial and compares it to the database to ensure the right med was put into the robot. It then weighs the vial so each medication has essentially its own weight.”

The hospital provides some 11,000 I-V chemotherapy preparations every year so Waters says the benefits of having this precise, state-of-the-art equipment for patients will be far-reaching. Waters says, “Throughout the whole process, it’s taking pictures and weighing the product, ensuring not only that we have the right med but the right drug, the right concentration, all of that so that every medication that comes out of that robot is as close to 100% accurate as possible.”

According to Health Robotics, the maker of the robot, the technology has no recorded medical errors within the organizations across Europe and elsewhere that already use it. While the use of the robot aims to add layers of safety for the patient, Waters says there’s another advantage for the hospital staff, as the meds used in chemotherapy are often quite toxic.

“People who mix chemotherapies do have higher risks of adverse events because they’re exposed to this medication so by removing them, it’s actually a safety mechanism for them,” Waters says. “It’s a two-fold advantage.”

The machine is in the process of being set up and staff members are still being trained in its use. Waters says it should be operational by mid-February. He couldn’t specify the price of the robot but said it cost several hundred-thousand dollars.

See the robot in action Here: youtu.be/r2GGBUHe32Q“

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Groups unite to lobby Branstad to expand Medicaid (AUDIO)

January 29, 2013 By
Kirk Norris.

Iowa Hospital Association C.E.O. Kirk Norris.

Forty-eight groups, including the Iowa Hospital Association, are calling on Republican legislators and Governor Terry Branstad to expand goverment-paid Medicaid health care coverage to 90-thousand more Iowans.

Iowa Hospital Association president and CEO Kirk Norris said it will help reduce costs, because those uninsured Iowans will get regular check-ups and won’t wait ’til they’re really ill and show up in the emergency room for care.

“It will lead to improved health of those 90,000 Iowans,” Norris said.

Expanding Medicaid to cover more people is part of the federal health care reform law — a means of getting uninsured Americans health care coverage. Governor Branstad has repeatedly said he is opposed to expanding the number of Iowans who qualify for Medicaid.

“When I left office in 1999 we had 250,000 on Medicaid. We now have 400,000 on Medicaid, but we’ve not become healthier,” Branstad said Monday during his weekly news conference. “We’ve become less healthy.”

And Branstad has said he doesn’t trust the federal government to keep its promise to send states the money to provide that coverage.

“We think we need to look at better choices that can give us a healthier state than just buying into something that we think is unafforable and unsustainable,” Branstad said Monday.

Norris said he is “confident” the federal government will send states like Iowa the money as long as Barack Obama is president.

“Every year in a democracy, people have to fight for their priorities,” Norris said.

Norris was joined today at a statehouse news conference by representatives of the 48 groups who’re publicly signally their support of expanding Medicaid coverage to 90,000 more Iowans.

“One of the reasons why you have all the groups represented here is Medicaid does not historically have a constituency that can come to the statehouse. These are low income folks with limited resources and they don’t hang around rotundas,” Norris said. “…I’m 100 percent confident those organizations will be there, speaking on thei behalf, just as they have been for the last 50 years.”

Iowa Catholic Conference executive director Tom Chapman said it’s a moral issue for the church.

“Just two months ago Pope Benedict told a meeting of health care workers that good health is a benefit that needs to be defended and guaranteed for all people, not just those who can afford it,” Chapman said.

According to AARP state president Tony Vola, more than 17,000 Iowans between the ages of 50 and 64 who have no health insurance today would be able to get coverage through Medicaid if Branstad were to change his mind.

“That, if you look at it in perspective, is equivalent to a city the size of Coralville or Johnston,” Vola said.

A recent poll conducted for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network found 57 percent of Iowans support expanding Medicaid to cover more uninsured Iowans, most of whom have a job, but don’t have health insurance as a benefit.

AUDIO of news conference (mp3 runs 21 minutes)

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Advocates for cancer victims call for increase in state cigarette tax

January 16, 2013 By

The American Cancer Society’s “Cancer Action Network” is urging Iowa’s political leaders to increase the state tax on cigarettes. Dr. Richard Deming — a Des Moines oncologist  — founded “Above + Beyond Cancer” and has led cancer survivors on mountain climbing trips. He is at the statehouse today, talking with legislators.

“There’s really, unbelievably, nothing more important to decrease the smoking rate like the cost of a pack of cigarettes,” Deming says.

In 1921, Iowa was the first state in the country to tax cigarettes, at two-cents per package. In 2007, the tax was raised a dollar and now stands at $1.36 per pack.

“We’re about in the middle of the road in terms of the rest of the country,” Deming says. “At the point that the cigarette tax was increased before, that put us at a high level. Smoking rates actually went down considerably when that happened. Now that we do not have that high of a tax compared to other states, the cigarette smoking rate has started to go up again in the state of Iowa.”

Raising the cigarette tax will be a hard sell for most Republican legislators. Representative Dave Heaton, a Republican from Mount Pleasant, is skeptical.

“I’m under the understanding that our smoking rates are going down,” Heaton says.

And Heaton hears of “bootlegging” in southern Iowa, as smokers cross the border to buy cigarettes in Missouri, where the state tax on cigarettes is the lowest in the nation.

The Cancer Society is also urging legislators to vote to ban smoking at the state’s casinos. In 2008, the casinos won an exemption when Iowa lawmakers banned smoking in public places. House Republican Leader Linda Upmeyer of Clear Lake doesn’t expect action on that.

“I’ve not heard anything about anybody wanting to bring that up,” Upmeyer says, “at least not in the House.”

The Iowa Senate has endorsed a ban on smoking on the casino gaming floors before, but the ban has never passed the House.

About 16 percent of adults in Iowa were smokers in 2010 according to the Centers for Disease — and that’s the most recent year CDC has data available. The Cancer Society’s “Action Network” also supports expanding state programs that help smokers quit, as well as efforts to reduce radon levels in homes and schools.

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Braley touts “End Radon in Schools Act”

January 14, 2013 By

Congressman Bruce Braley is introducing legislation in the U.S. House that would provide federal grants to test for the presence of dangerous levels of radon gas in schools, as well as grants to cover steps schools might take to reduce radon levels. The money would be reserved for high-risk areas — and Iowa is the state where the highest levels of radon exist.

“The thing that I think we, as adults, need to focus on is our kids shouldn’t be worried about the level of radon gas in their schools,” Braley says. “They should trust us to do the right thing and pass public policies that are going to protect them so they don’t have to worry about those issues.”

Radon is an odorless, colorless gas — and it’s the second-leading cause of lung cancer. Gail Orcutt, a lung cancer survivor, is a retired teacher who never smoked and discovered dangerous levels of radon in her home in Pleasant Hill.

“As I think back on my teaching career that included eight different school buildings throughout the state, I’ve often wondered if I was exposed to radon while I was at school,” Orcutt says. “There is no way to know this since our schools are not required to test.”

Thirty-three-year-old Stephanie Langstraad, the principal at Prairie City Middle School, is undergoing treatment for lung cancer.

“How in the world did I get this diagnosis and why? And the first thing that came out of the doctors mouths were possible radon exposure and I thought from the very beginning: ‘What can I do to make a positive impact,’” Langstraad says, “‘so that people wouldn’t have to experience what I’m going through now?’”

Tests in her school building found radon and, while the radon wasn’t at high levels, officials in the district installed a mitigation system.

“I go to work every day, when I’m able to, knowing that my students are breathing safe air and that’s what they deserve, more than anything, when they’re in my care,” she says. “They spend eight hours a day in the same building, for years, and that’s a scary thought to wonder what they’re breathing.”

Braley, a Democrat from Waterloo, says he hopes to work with Republicans from other states where radon levels are high to advance his proposal in the U.S. House. This is the second straight year Braley has held a news conference at the statehouse in Des Moines on the opening day of the Iowa legislature. Reporters asked Braley if it’s because he’s planning a run for governor.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Braley replied. “…People are tired of politics in this state. It’s the beginning of a new day in the legislature. A lot of people are focused on the future and they’ll be plenty of time for talking about that later.”

Braley’s “End Radon in Schools Act” will be the first bill he introduces in the new congress. Braley introduced identical legislation this past September, but it died when the last congress ended the first week of January.

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U-of-I researchers make “surprising” cancer discovery

December 6, 2012 By

A team of University of Iowa researchers has made a “surprising” discovery about cancer cells: they are likely to be tougher than the other cells moving through the blood stream. Michael Henry, a professor in the university’s College of Medicine, is the lead author of the study.

“For many years people have more or less assumed that these (cancer) cells would be very fragile and not able to withstand very high levels of fluid shear stress,” Henry says. “We found that, in fact, although normal cells are fragile and susceptible, the cancer cells exhibit a resistance.”

Just like “wind shear” on a plane or a vehicle speeding down the highway, cells in the human body are exposed to “fluid shear” in the blood stream. Henry says exposure to that kind of “shear stress” seemed to induce a “hardiness” in cancer cells.

“What we’ve done so far is work with laboratory-based models. We still need to move our discovery into the clinic and look at real, circulating cancer cells in patients to see if our findings hold,” Henry says. “But what we’ve found so far would suggest that is going to be the case.”

This discovery eventually could lead to a blood test that would measure dangerous the cancer might be.

“In addition to knowing whether the cancer is going to be dangerous or not, we might be able to take cells out of a patient and very rapidly measure whether they are sensitive or resistant to potential drug therapies without having to look at all of the genes in the cancer,” Henry says.

The research findings were just published in a medical journal and Henry has applied for another grant, specifically to measure cancer cells in melanoma patients.

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GOP picks nominee for state senate seat

November 9, 2012 By

Republicans have chosen a new candidate to run in the district where a state senator seeking reelection died of breast cancer last month.

When a candidate dies before the General Election and their name will still be on the ballot, state law stipulates that a special election is to be held later. The district Republican Senator Pat Ward had hoped to represent includes parts of Clive, Waukee, West Des Moines and Windsor Heights.

Republican precinct leaders in the district met last night and selected West Des Moines City Councilman Charles Schneider as the GOP nominee. He was first elected to the city council in 2007 and reelected in 2011. The special election for the senate seat is December 11th.

The Democratic candidate in the district is Desmund Adams, who began his campaign in April. Both candidates are lawyers. 

John Ward, the late senator’s husband, had said he was interested in running in the district. John Ward is a former member of the West Des Moines School Board.

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Komen Race organizers see things getting back to normal

October 29, 2012 By

Organizers of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Des Moines held this weekend say they’re hopeful things are getting back to normal following a controversy over funding for Planned Parenthood. Komen’s decision early this year to stop funding breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood prompted a public outcry.

The group quickly reversed its position. Roger Dahl, executive director of the organization’s Iowa affiliate, expected a drop in race participants. Honestly, we’re down a little bit,” Dahl said. “I would say what we’re seeing is not unusual, in terms of national average, in Komen affiliates.”

Komen chapters around the country have seen a drop in race registration, some by as much as 30-percent. Dahl said fundraising for the Des Moines event was off about 20-percent. “But, I know there’s also a tendency for people to wait to the last minute to register or pony up,” Dahl said.

“I’m not discouraged about where we stand right now.” While he’s still crunching the numbers, Dahl said he’s hopeful this year’s Race for the Cure will equal the 20,000 or so participants in a typical year. A national spokeswoman for the Komen Foundation says she believes supporters are slowly coming back to the event.

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