Month: October 2011

For most of their lives, Tom and JoAnn Schulz considered themselves comfortably middle class. But now, Tom says, "We're the new poor." His wife, JoAnn, made about $80,000 a year as a nurse until being diagnosed in July 2010 with an advanced stage of ovarian cancer. She stopped working. He stayed home from his job at a hardware store to take care of her. Their bills kept rising. They worry costs will continue to climb — or the state-funded medical plan he's on, BadgerCare Basic, will collapse or be cut altogether. (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 10/24)

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality was founded on a simple premise: To improve the quality of health care, you must be able to measure it. The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality, started by a group of large physician practices and health care systems in 2003, now can be cited as an example that it does. A study led by Geoffrey Lamb, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, compared the care given to diabetic patients by physician practices that belong to the collaborative with the care given by physicians in Iowa and South Dakota as well as national performance measures. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 10/24)

Concern, frustration and, at times, anger characterized the overall mood at a town-hall meeting Friday on the state's plan to trim an estimated $554 million over two years from the BadgerCare Plus and Medicaid budget. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 10/24)

With the promise of "a place for healing," federal officials broke ground Thursday on a $60 million veterans health clinic on Green Bay's east side. (GREEN BAY PRESS GAZETTE, 10/21)

The Wisconsin state Senate has passed a Republican-backed bill that would limit abortions paid for under the new federal health care reform law. The bill passed on a party line 17-16 vote Thursday would forbid insurance plans offered in Wisconsin under the law from covering abortions unless certain criteria are met. (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 10/21)

Democrats blasted a Republican proposal Wednesday to dismantle a state law that requires schools that offer sex education to include contraceptives in their lessons, branding the measure hypocritical and irresponsible during a testy public hearing… The committee's chairman, Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said the panel wouldn't vote on the bill Wednesday, but debate over the measure continued for several hours. (AP, 10/20)

When Jim Prekop joined TeraMedica Healthcare Technology as president and CEO in 2005, the Wauwatosa company's investors asked him first to determine whether closing the start-up would be the best course. The company opted to push ahead, and its investors now may be rewarded for their patience as the market recognizes the need for TeraMedica's software. TeraMedica sells software for managing the millions of diagnostic images stored throughout health care systems. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 10/19)

Magda Peck, a national expert in maternal and child health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, has been appointed founding dean of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Public Health. Peck, a professor of pediatrics and public health, has been consulting with several urban communities attempting to reduce infant mortality. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 10/19)

Rats and cockroaches are roaming the corridors of the Milwaukee County medical examiner’s office, Medical Examiner Brian Peterson said Monday…Shifting the medical examiner’s office to new quarters has been a […]