Licensing’s “ADVICE Collaborative”
Our Licensing team routinely analyzes the most frequent and important deficiencies that we observe and posts the data on our website. We use the data to help educate the folks that we license… and to identify good topics for provider training and technical assistance (public health interventions). For example, our medical facilities licensing team has found that infection control is becoming increasingly troublesome among [...]
Safe Prescribing Medical Education
The number of prescriptions filled for opioid pain relievers has increased dramatically along with deaths from overdoses from painkillers (more than 1000 in AZ last year), leading the CDC to identify prescription drug abuse a problem of "epidemic" proportions. To better equip physicians against this crisis, the National Institute on Drug Abuse offers two free online continuing medical education courses: [...]
Autism & Folic Acid
A new study published in February by the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that taking folic acid may help reduce the number of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The study followed more than 85,000 children nationwide born between 2002 and 2008 and followed up with them in 2012. According to the study, the number of children born [...]
Maricopa County Behavioral Health Services Contract Awarded Today
The mind and body aren’t separated- and neither should the health-care delivery system- especially for folks with a serious mental illness. People with a serious mental illness die more than 25 years earlier than the general population… an unacceptable health disparity in anybody’s book. The increased mortality is largely from treatable medical conditions caused by modifiable risk factors like smoking, [...]
Infant Mortality: A Call to Action
A new program is coming to help address infant mortality rates in Arizona thanks to the leadership of Dr. Maria Manriquez and the Maricopa Integrated Health System- who was awarded a Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns grant from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They’ll be developing enhanced prenatal care at maternity care homes, including psychosocial support, education and [...]
April Midwifery Scope of Practice Meeting
The next meeting of the Midwifery Scope of Practice Advisory Committee will be from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday April 3, 2013 at the State Laboratory Conference Room located at 250 N. 17th Avenue in Phoenix. Here’s the agenda for the meeting. Our Rules team is still working on the set of draft rules that we’ll be discussing [...]