The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 40 COVID patients today, up from 38 yesterday. Other significant numbers:
- 22 with the active virus today, 20 yesterday
- 3 in ICU, 4 yesterday
- 0 on a ventilator, 0 yesterday
Key points from today’s guests:
Morning Roundup – Spotlight on Current News
Dr. Stephen Thornton, Emergency Medicine, Medical Director Poison Control
- An area carbon monoxide leak brought 16 patients to the Health System yesterday and six of them needed hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
- This involves is using a highly pressurized chamber that pushes a higher concentration of oxygen into your lungs to force bad gases like carbon monoxide out of your lungs.
- Carbon dioxide is really the perfect poison, which makes it extremely dangerous because you can't taste it, you can’t smell it, you can’t see it.
- The only the only way you know you're being poisoned is when you start having symptoms. And those symptoms affect the brain primarily and can cause delayed symptoms.
- All patients have been treated and are doing fine.
Focus Topic
Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System
- CDC data shows the overall maternal mortality from 2018 to 2021 and it's getting worse every year.
- It was getting worse even before the pandemic.
- When you break down the data by race, infant mortality is two to three times more common among Black women compared to white women. That is not acceptable.
Sharla Smith, Ph. D., director of birth equity for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The University of Kansas Medical Center, founder and director of the Kansas Birth Equity Network, co-founder of Kansas Sisters and Brothers for Healthy Infants
- Health care disparities are not about just individualized racism, it’s also about systemic racism, and the things that happen and when we look at racism, such as not being heard when they go to the doctor, problems at the front desk, how HMOs and insurance works.
- Stress is a major factor. Black women, regardless of their education, regardless of their incomes, regardless of where they live, regardless of the fact that they go to seek prenatal care in the first trimester, they still have worse outcomes than white, Asian and Hispanic women. We see that most of this maternal mortality is directly linked to postpartum depression.
- Socioeconomic status is definitely a part of healthcare disparities. Where you live determines a lot about your health.
- We want to start affirming our Black communities, identifying the strengths and working with those strengths, and helping them to enhance that.
Dr. Carrie Wieneke, chair, obstetrics & gynecology, The University of Kansas Medical Center
- We have started a program in our department called BEST -- Birth Equity Scholar Tracks -- where we take a group of really committed residents across different departments and look at our community and racism and bias and working to form those partnerships and relationships.
- When we look at our outcome data, we look at race disparities here at our own Health System, as we are working through ways to try to address it.
- Our residency program really started as the first in the nation, so we are championing an opportunity for our trainees really to take time out of their busy training schedule to focus on these issues and its impact of healthcare and how they can make a difference in their community.
Dr. Angela Martin, medical director, labor & delivery, The University of Kansas Health System
- We provide implicit bias training for all faculty and staff that are involved in labor and delivery, anti-racism training.
- We also hired a director of birth equity to help us through this, which is really unique and really important.
- In addition, we created an OB quality committee that meets once a month to review various benchmarks and outcomes to see if there's certain patterns or trends so we can incorporate appropriate policies and procedures to keep patients safe.
- There are several research projects going on to review any racial disparities during pregnancy, delivery and the postpartum period to hopefully help minimize those.
Hannah Boyd, mother
- She knows a few women who have had a difficulty pregnancy and an unpleasant experience with their healthcare providers.
- This was a concern to Hannah during her pregnancy, so it was really important that she found a good provider for her and her son.
- She was thrilled to find The University of Kansas Health System and fell in love with the staff – especially with the aftercare she received.
- Hannah is grateful that today’s Morning Medical Update addressed this touchy topic that needs to be addressed so more Black women can find the right care they need.
COVID Updates
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control, The University of Kansas Health System
- New research from scientists in China showed was that there was a significant number of other animals in genetic sequences that were also aligned or maybe associated with the COVID virus.
- This is more data and information to help support the explanation that the pandemic started with a natural, a natural spillover event, probably multiple spillover events, although that is not necessarily the conclusion that the Chinese authors came to.
- However, this explanation is continued to be supported by most of the other research community around the world.
Thursday, April 13 is the next Morning Medical Update. With Parkinson's disease, shaking, spasms, and tremors can rob you of a normal life and new research finds it's more common than we realize. Meet one patient who went years without proper treatment until she sought a second opinion.
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