Author Archives: Justine88

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The future of Tampa Bay hospital care looks a lot like Apple and Amazon

Renderings show the improvements coming to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa. The hospital, part of the BayCare system, is planning a $126 million, six-story tower that will add 30 private rooms on each level. It's just a slice of the massive investments currently in the works as local hospitals work to keep up with demands from growing population, advances in technology and changing patient preferences. [Courtesy of BayCare]

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

Tampa Bay residents have more say than ever in how they go to the doctor.

Patients can chat with a physician from their phones, or from a computer screen at a grocery or drug store kiosk. Urgent care clinics and freestanding emergency rooms are proliferating across the region. And many hospitals are undergoing multi-million dollar upgrades, with amenities like private rooms, to accommodate a rising tide of patients.

The future will bring even more convenience, according to CEOs of the Tampa Bay area’s largest health care organizations.

In recent interviews, they described a health care landscape that is changing rapidly to keep up with population growth, new technology, changing patient preferences and government rules designed to keep people out of the hospital. More than one likened their new, evolving approach to the way companies like Apple and Amazon have changed the retailing world.

Hospitals and their offshoots will be more “consumer centric,” they said.

“Retail ready” is how Tampa General Hospital CEO John Couris described it, using Apple as the model.

“Their stores are cool, we like going online through their products,” he said. “There might be phones out there that can do more stuff than the iPhone, but we pay Apple because their network is reliable. It’s a real relationship, and that’s something we’re trying to create in health care now.”

The key will be adjusting as customer expectations change, said Tommy Inzina, CEO of BayCare, which operates 15 hospitals in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas.

An example: “Years ago, it was very common for a patient to have a roommate,” he said. “With patients paying more money out of their own pockets for health care now, they don’t want a roommate anymore.”

What makes Tampa Bay and Florida unique in some ways is that the population is still growing. That’s the main driver of new construction and renovations, which nearly all of the major hospital systems in Tampa Bay are investing in right now, said Jay Wolfson, a professor with USF Health.

A particular focus will be on “the Medicare, commercially insured and cash-paying parts of that market,” he said. “For patients, it should mean more access and choice. And while the physical brick-and-mortar acquisitions and expansions under brand names continues, each of the corporate health care powerhouses in our community are very busy developing virtual care systems and will expand dramatically in the years ahead to include home-based care management and marketing so that ‘visits’ to the doctor or hospital will be less necessary.”

Like retailers, they’re learning that convenience is key.

Read more here.

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A transgender man in search of hormone therapy, he turned to Planned Parenthood

After leaving Pasco County to attend Florida Gulf Coast University, Kasey Fraize received hormone therapy through Planned Parenthood. The resulting changes made him more comfortable as a transgender man and inspired him to become active on campus, teaching fellow students about transgender issues. "I struggled to find my place here at first," he says. "There's a huge gap between the students. So I wanted to fill it." [OCTAVIO JONES | Times]

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

Kasey Fraize wasn’t afraid any more.

One day early in his freshman year at Florida Gulf Coast University, he entered the campus wellness center intent on finding ways to fit in.

“I walked right up to the desk and asked what kind of resources they had for the transgender community,” Fraize, now 20, recalls. “She handed me a dusty old pamphlet that was so bad.”

It used the scientific but sometimes negatively charged term “hermaphrodite” to describe transgender people.

The moment propelled Fraize to get involved, and to prod his new school toward a better understanding of students like him. But he says it never would have been possible without help from an unexpected source.

Planned Parenthood, best known for reproductive health services including abortions, had just started a program to offer hormone therapy at many of its Florida health centers. Fraize discovered the program, and got a prescription for testosterone from a Planned Parenthood doctor not far from campus.

After struggling to find acceptance back home in Pasco County, where some still call him “Cassandra,” the therapy brought welcome changes to his body and helped him feel more like himself.

He got a job at FGCU’s wellness center and began to host forums about the transgender community and other issues. This year, he ran for a seat in student government.

“Maybe it was the hormones,” Fraize says, “but I was on a mission.”

Read more here.

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Justine Griffin Selected As A 2018 SABEW Health Care Fellow

[Press release from SABEW:]

Sixteen journalists have been selected as fellows for SABEW’s sixth annual Health Care Symposium made possible by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund.

The group will gather in Washington, D.C., June 28-30 at the National Press Club and at the Bloomberg, Washington, D.C. bureau. The symposium will help the fellows better understand health-care economics and will provide an update on the Affordable Care Act. Fellows will be able to share and test out story ideas.

The 2018 health care fellows are:

  • Emily Baumgaertner, news assistant at The New York Times
  • Jenny Deam, senior health care reporter at the Houston Chronicle
  • Amanda Eisenberg, New York health care reporter at POLITICO
  • Justine Griffin, health and medicine reporter at the Tampa Bay Times
  • Chris Larson, health care and higher education reporter at Louisville Business First
  • Jacquie Lee, reporter at Bloomberg Law
  • Rory Linnane, reporter at USA Today Network, Wisconsin
  • Kathryn Mayer, editor-in-chief at Employee Benefit News
  • Elizabeth O’Brien, senior writer at MONEY Magazine
  • Elle Perry, digital producer at Memphis Business Journal
  • Yiqin Shen, senior reporter at Mergermarket
  • Greg Slabodkin, managing editor at Health Data Management
  • Joel Stinnett, health care and technology reporter at Nashville Business Journal
  • Kayla Webster, reporter at Sacramento Business Journal
  • Russ Wiles, business writer/columnist at Arizona Republic/AZCentral.com
  • Liz Young, reporter at Albany Business Review

“Journalists need support to cover an unclear and rapidly changing health care landscape,” said Kathleen Graham, executive director, SABEW. “The symposium will help reporters better understand the future of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, single payer health care models and prescription drug pricing.”

Speakers include Sara Collins, vice president for the Health Care Coverage and Access program at The Commonwealth Fund; Sabrina Corlette, J.D., research professor at Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute; Robin Rudowitz, associate director, program on Medicaid and the uninured at Kaiser Family Foundation and Zachary Tracer, reporter at Bloomberg News. Additional speakers will be added to the agenda. Ridgely Ochs, former health care reporter at Newsday, is producing the symposium.

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Tampa Bay Times: Could Tampa’s own Joe Redner shake up the medical marijuana industry?

In a lawsuit against the Florida Department of Health, Tampa strip club owner Joe Redner says he has a right to own marijuana plants for medicinal uses. Redner, 77, is a lung cancer patient. [OCTAVIO JONES | Times]

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times 

Joe Redner wants to juice his own marijuana, harvested from his back yard.

The 77-year-old strip club owner with stage 4 lung cancer already has a recommendation from his state-certified physician to do it. But the Florida Department of Health won’t let him.

In an unprecedented lawsuit challenging the state’s interpretation of Amendment 2 and asserting what he says is his own constitutional right, Redner is fighting to grow medical marijuana from his home in Tampa. After months of litigation against the health department, ending in a short trial last month, the judge is expected to rule any day.

But whatever the outcome, Redner’s case could pave the way for other advocates. His is just the first of several lawsuits aimed at giving patients greater access to the alternative medicine that more than 70 percent of Floridians voted for in 2016.

“Hopefully some of this litigation will give more patients the access they want and deserve,” said Ben Pollara, executive director of marijuana advocacy organization Florida for Care and one of the authors of the medical marijuana amendment. “That was the whole point of passing the law.”

The outspoken Redner and other critics across the state say the health department continues to create barriers for more than 95,000 registered patients in Florida that could benefit from marijuana.

“The amendment doesn’t distinguish between the types of medical marijuana,” says Luke Lirot, the Clearwater attorney representing Redner. “It’s been six months and the department of health still hasn’t adopted very basic regulations. It’s difficult right now because doctors don’t know what they’re dealing with yet in terms of regulation.”

Redner’s suit claims the state is not following the public’s will, and says the state Constitution, as amended by voters, defines marijuana as “all parts of the plant.”

More lawsuits are already underway. Orlando attorney and marijuana advocate John Morgan will go to trial in Tallahassee next month to challenge the state’s ban on smoking cannabis.

“A single snowflake causes the avalanche. … People like Joe are the snowflakes,” Morgan said, referring to Redner. “One day cannabis will be legal recreationally, and people will grow it in their back yard. When that will happen, I don’t know. But Joe is on the right track and I hope he’s successful.”

Read more here.

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A new way to attack cancer lives inside the shark. But where?

 

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times 

SARASOTA — Scientist Carl Luer has spent most of his life studying an animal humans inherently fear: sharks.

The predators of the sea have been the villains of thriller tales since the 1974 novel, JawsThey’ve invaded the streets of Los Angeles in the cult classic Sharknado movies.

But Luer, a senior researcher at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, discovered they have more to offer than farfetched story lines. Sharks, it turns out, could hold the key to a promising new cancer treatment in humans.

A potential cure lies somewhere in the shark’s immune system. And after 39 years of working with sharks and their close relatives, skates and sting rays, Luer believes researchers finally may be close to finding it.

They have tried for decades to link the shark’s incredible ability to heal wounds and its fast-acting immune system to human healing. But for Luer, who is also the lab’s founding director of biomedical research, it has been the work of his life.

From a small off-shore laboratory on picturesque Lido Key, he’s one of a few researchers across the globe who have studied the cancer treatment link, and likely for the longest. At almost 70, he hopes he can push his research to the next level — potentially in clinical trials — before he retires or hands it over to the next generation of scientists.

It won’t be easy.

For the past 15 years, Luer and his research partner, Catherine Walsh, have struggled to find the grant funding needed to keep the research alive, and progress has stalled.

“I thought it would have happened by now,” Luer says. “But no one has gotten any further than we have.”

Read more here.