In the News

“Thousands of open positions in hospital and post-acute settings are currently unfilled in Minnesota, and the situation does not show signs of improvement,” Tom Klemond writes. While health care teams are indeed grateful for the decline in numbers of influenza patients recently reported in this paper, our challenges with “limited bed space and overcrowded emergency departments” nevertheless persist and continue to severely hamper our ability to provide needed care. (“Decline in flu cases frees up hospital beds,” Dec. 30.)

“Kids just put things in their mouths,” said Dr. Jon Cole, medical director of the Minnesota Poison Control System and a father of four. “They put things in their mouth to explore the world.”

“We are getting to the point, for example with measles, where the vaccination rate needs to be 95% or higher to have herd immunity that will protect the community and we have dropped below 90% in the state of Minnesota,” Hennepin Healthcare pediatrician Dr. Leslie King-Schultz says.

Dr. Jon Cole is the medical director of the Minnesota Poison Control Center.  It was one of 55 poison centers that contributed to the national study. “We have a new public health problem,” he said.

“We’re seeing a lot of head injuries from slip and falls, some neck injuries where people have broken their neck, injured their spine. And then most commonly what we’re seeing is a lot of ankle injuries,” said Hennepin Healthcare Emergency Physician Dr. Ashley Strobel.

La’neria Wilson, 11, waited to be taken into surgery at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. La’neria was struck by gunfire beneath her right eye inside her bedroom minutes into the New Year.

“Cardiac arrest in general is referred to when the heart suddenly stops, usually due to an electrical abnormality of the heart,” said Dr. Rehan Karim, a cardiac electrophysiologist with Hennepin County Medical Center.

Hennepin Healthcare in the News
View recent medical stories from local and national media featuring experts from Hennepin Healthcare.

Hennepin Healthcare workers continued to serve patients at clinics and the hospital. Since Sunday, the emergency department had treated 45 patients with “cold weather exposure concerns, including frostbite and hypothermia,” spokeswoman Christine Hill said.

The Hennepin County Medical Center campus in downtown Minneapolis is getting a makeover that will take about eight years and renovate about three of its 10 blocks, county officials announced this week.

“The wind chill right now is horrible. So, you can get frostbite within five minutes,” said Hennepin Healthcare emergency room physician Dr. Thomas Masters. Dr. Masters says several people were admitted over the last couple weeks because of frostbite.

Dr. Brandi Gorden Klukas and nurse Tykia Hess overcame tremendous obstacles to become medical professionals. And the medical community needs more people like them.

“Patients are more likely to have a trusted relationship with a provider when they deal with someone who looks like them,” said Tonya Jackman Hampton, human resources chief at Hennepin Healthcare. “We try to build everyone’s cultural competency. To relate to individuals, provider or patient, and to be open and respectful. And remain humble in the journey.”

There was a very special delivery Thursday at Hennepin HealthCare’s burn center. Firefighters stopped by the spread some holiday cheer to patients spending their Christmas there.

Dr. Tom Masters says frostbite can settle in quickly during extreme cold. “Our bodies are really good about telling us if something’s going wrong, so when it starts to hurt that’s when you should start to raise your antenna,” Masters said.

“It’s not unprecedented to have two separate increases,” said Peter Bodurtha, a data scientist at Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute, a partner in the consortium. “It really depends on what happens the rest of the year. But being this far ahead of the curve this early, with this much of the season left, that’s not a good position to be in.”

“When we build the new inpatient tower, [we will have] the ability to take down some of those (old) buildings, repurpose (them) and really re-energize that side of Minneapolis,” said Hennepin Healthcare CEO Jennifer DeCubellis.

“Windchill impacts our ability to withstand frostbite. So the more severe the wind chill, the more likely you are to get frostbite. And then, if your clothes get damp, your socks or your gloves get damp, that also lowers your ability to avoid frostbite,” Dr. Thomas Masters said. “It can happen in a matter of minutes, depending on the conditions and the amount of exposed skin that one has.”

Hennepin Healthcare officials are expecting to see more frostbite cases this week — they have had 13 already — as temperatures sink below zero and windchill values, or what air feels like to exposed skin, drop dangerously low. Dr. Jim Miner, chair of emergency medicine at the downtown hospital, said to wear lots of layers and cover the head, ears, fingers and toes — the parts of the body that can freeze quickly.

“On a typical day, a counselor will interact with a nurse, a supervisor, a doctor, they’ll collect urine toxicology multiple times and send it to the lab.  [If] their patient needs to go to the primary care clinic … they’re coordinating primary care follow up,” said Dr. Charles Reznikoff, addiction medicine physician at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis. “It’s very interdisciplinary.”

“We at Hennepin do not charge for messages that are direct communications between the patients and the providers,” Hennepin Healthcare physician and chief health information officer Dr. Deepti Pandita said. “What we do charge for is certain visit types that could be sort of administered through the patient portal called E-visits.”