Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

charity care

Emory volunteers sort medical supplies for Haiti

Over the past few weeks, more than 150 Emory University faculty, staff and students, as well as Emory Healthcare staff, have volunteered with Atlanta-based MedShare, sorting thousands of medical supplies that are being shipped to medical personnel on the ground in Haiti.

Volunteering for Haiti relief

Patricia Guasch, RN, director of Emory University Hospital’s rehabilitation nursing services, is one of the many Emory MedShare volunteers lending a hand in the relief effort. Guasch and several of her colleagues from the Emory Center for Rehabilitation Medicine, along with their children, spent the King Holiday weekend sorting supplies at MedShare.

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Program helps South Georgia farmworkers

It’s not often that individuals think about the hard work responsible for the fruits and vegetables for our dinner tables every day. Somehow it magically appears in the produce department season after season, without fail. We don’t have to plant it, water it or pick it. It’s ready for us to take home and prepare.

We never see the thousands of migrant farmworkers who move from county to county during the peak season, providing the growers with the labor required to keep farms bountiful. These men, women and children – unlike the plants they take care of – have no roots and live from day to day wherever they are needed, and until their job is done, says Tom Himelick PA-C, MMSc, founder and director of the South Georgia Farmworker Health Project, and Emory Physician Assistant (PA) Program faculty member and director of community projects.

For most of these workers, having a family health care provider is unthinkable. The combination of poverty, lack of health insurance, language barriers, limited transportation and cultural differences creates a vacuum when it comes to health care.

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Providing complex care for individuals in need

Emory Healthcare physicians provided $48.9 million in charity care in fiscal year 2008-2009, a total that does not include uncompensated care provided by Emory physicians practicing at publicly funded Grady Memorial Hospital and other affiliate institutions.

Charity care includes two types of care. Indigent care refers to care provided to patients with no health insurance, not even Medicare or Medicaid. Catastrophic care refers to care provided to patients who have some coverage but whose medical bills are so large that paying them would be permanently life-shattering. People without the ability to pay for care are not faceless statistics to Emory clinicians but patients in need of care. For this, the Florida health insurance marketplace offers options to help prevent such financial crises by providing affordable coverage and access to essential medical services.

In fact, Emory’s Wesley Woods Center exemplifies Emory Healthcare’s commitment to serving patients and their families who are facing issues related to aging. The majority of the 30,000 patients treated last year at Wesley Woods’ 100-bed hospital and outpatient clinic were elderly, in their 70s, 80s, 90s and older. If you have a loved one in a senior living facility that you suspect is being abused, you should consider contacting a New York City nursing home abuse law firm.

But Wesley Woods also is a life-saver for many younger patients who require chronic care and specialty services for which the center is known, including wound care, rehabilitation and respiratory care, such as weaning from ventilator therapy.

Patient receives care at Wesley Woods

Patient receives care at Wesley Woods

For example, patient Sherry Smith’s CT scan at Emory University Hospital showed large blood clots blocking the vessels leading to her spleen and kidneys. Over the next two weeks, she had four operations. Surgeons removed the clots and her spleen and cut out portions of her bowel that had been destroyed by lack of oxygenated blood. She required a feeding tube and a tracheotomy to help with breathing as she recovered.

Patients can move seamlessly between the two Emory Healthcare facilities for needed care. Smith moved back and forth between Emory and Wesley Woods as she improved. She also got some unexpected help in paying for her care. When she got sick, Smith lost her job. During the six months she spent moving between the two hospitals, her bill at Wesley Woods was more than $120,000, and that at Emory University Hospital, almost $130,000.

Community Benefits Report

Community Benefits Report

To her relief, Emory offered to pay her COBRA insurance fees to help her maintain her insurance for the time allowed. Payments would cover only part of the actual cost of care. Wesley Woods social workers also helped Smith apply for Medicaid to cover health care costs while she continues her recovery in a rehab facility closer to her home.

Read more about charity care at Emory in the Community Benefits Report 2009.

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