New Wentworth-Douglass program to focus on hernia rehab: Seacoast health news

New Wentworth-Douglass program to focus on hernia rehab

DOVER  Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Rehab Services is now offering a Hernia Rehab Program, a comprehensive evidence-based program that captures and cares for patients that are diagnosed with a hernia.

"A hernia is a common but frequently misunderstood condition. At Wentworth-Douglass we are pleased to offer our community the latest techniques as well as evidence based post-surgery rehab program,” said Dr. Hany Takla, FACS, FASMBS, general and bariatric surgeon at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital. “Our expert surgeons and physical therapists form a comprehensive team to tailor treatment to your particular clinical findings. We incorporate minimally invasive surgical techniques and patient centered hernia care to minimize discomfort and achieve faster recovery times.”

A hernia occurs when an organ or piece of fatty tissue protrudes through a weak spot in the abdominal wall or connective tissue. Because of the potentially serious complications associated with a hernia, some patients may benefit from surgery to correct the hernia.

The program requires a physician referral to Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Rehabilitation Services.

Components of this program include physical therapy for patients with hernia diagnosis, providing pre-op and post-op care to improve core and pelvic stability and function, reduce pain, improve tolerance for daily activities and return to exercises such as lifting safely to prevent the recurrence of hernia injuries.

Hernia rehab will be offered at all Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Rehabilitation Services locations.

“Physical therapy is a key aspect to regaining control and comfort following a hernia repair. Wentworth-Douglass Rehab Services is a regional leader in the delivery of outpatient and inpatient rehabilitation” said Kendra Langus, PT, DPT, MS, senior director of the Wentworth-Douglass Department of Rehabilitation Services and Integrative Therapies. “We offer an expanded scope of comprehensive specialty services and I am very excited to be working directly with Dr. Takla on bringing the Hernia Rehab Program to patients in our community.”

York Hospital Hospice earns 2021 SHPBestTM ‘Superior Performer’ Caregiver Satisfaction Award

YORK, Maine – York Hospital Hospice has been recognized by Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP) as a “Superior Performer” for achieving an overall caregiver and family satisfaction score that ranked in the top 20 percent of all eligible SHP clients for the 2021 calendar year.

The annual SHPBest™ award program was created to acknowledge hospice providers that consistently provide high-quality service to families and caregivers of patients receiving hospice care. The 2021 award recipients were determined by reviewing and ranking the overall CAHPS Hospice survey satisfaction score for more than 1,000 hospice providers. With one of the largest CAHPS Hospice benchmarks in the nation, SHP is in a unique position to identify and recognize organizations that have made family and caregiver satisfaction a priority and have been rewarded for their efforts with high marks on the CAHPS Hospice survey.

“SHP is proud to present the SHPBest awards to our top-performing customers. We commend these organizations for their continuous focus on delivering the highest quality of care to their patients,” said Rob Paulsson, president of SHP.

“We are honored by this prestigious award from Strategic Healthcare Programs, which validates the essential role of providing for an individual’s dignified and comfortable journey to end of life,” said Donna Beaudin, OTR/L, CBIST, NHA, CHC, vice president of quality, risk management, and regulatory compliance at Tufts Medicine Care at Home, of which York Hospital Hospice is a member agency. “While each patient’s experience is unique, they share the collective devotion of our caregiving team to providing expert physical, spiritual, and emotional care with the utmost compassion.”

Read more about the SHPBest awards program, including methodology and award recipient lists, at www.shpdata.com/hospice/shpbest-cahps-hospice.

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center named New Hampshire's Best Hospital for 2022 by U.S. News & World Report

LEBANON – Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), the flagship academic medical center of Dartmouth Health, has once again been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as New Hampshire’s Best Hospital in the U.S. News Best Hospitals 2022 rankings, which were released this week.

DHMC was also recognized as “high performing” in two adult specialties, Cancer and Neurology/Neurosurgery, as well as in 12 common adult procedures and conditions, including: Aortic valve surgery; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Colon cancer surgery; Heart attack; Heart bypass surgery; Heart failure; Hip replacement; Kidney failure; Lung cancer surgery; Ovarian cancer surgery; Stroke; and Uterine cancer surgery.

In addition to DHMC, Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, a Dartmouth Health member, was recognized as “high performing” for back surgery (spinal fusion).

New Hampshire’s high childhood cancer rates re-examined to include the role of race, ethnicity and region reveal a Northeast regional problem

LEBANON – In 2018, a paper by David A. Siegel, MD, MPH, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made headlines in New Hampshire. The paper reported that the state of New Hampshire and the Northeast region of the U.S. have some of the highest incidence rates of pediatric cancer (age 0-19) in the country. But the report was a descriptive study, and the claims about New Hampshire cancer rates did not take important factors such as race or ethnicity into account.

“Pediatric cancer rates are known to be highest in white children than other racial/ethnic subgroups, so we would expect populations with more minorities to have lower rates, which, in part, led us to re-examine the previous report,” says Judy R. Rees, BM, BCh, MPH, PhD, a cancer population scientist at Dartmouth Cancer Center who specializes in studying cancer data.

Using the Cancer in North America (CiNA) analytical file – the same data used by Siegel – Rees’ team examined rates overall, as well as by race and ethnicity, and statistically tested whether New Hampshire really is an outlier, or whether the broader Northeast region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania Rhode Island, and Vermont) has a higher incidence of pediatric cancer than the rest of the country.

The study reveals that the Northeast does have a statistically significantly higher incidence of cancer compared to all other U.S. regions (i.e., Midwest, South, West), but within the Northeastern states, no single state is an outlier.

“New Hampshire was previously cited as the state with the highest pediatric cancer incidence rate, but in fact New Hampshire is not statistically distinguishable from other states within the Northeast, both overall and when stratified by race,” confirms Rees.

These findings, “Pediatric Cancer by Race, Ethnicity and Region in the United States” are newly published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Variations in the incidence of pediatric cancer and cancer subtypes in children of different races were also examined in the study. The age-standardized incidence rates vary by more than 38% across racial groups, with lowest rates in non-Hispanic Black children (144.8 per million per year) and highest in non-Hispanic White children (201.8 per million per year). This means consideration of race and ethnicity is critical when comparing different states and regions.

“We see big differences in cancer types by race/ethnicity and region. In particular, the higher incidence of certain cancer types in the Northeast compared to the U.S. were not mirrored in the Hispanic population,” says Rees, who notes the importance of trying to understand the risk factors at play in the Northeast, and the reasons why some subgroups, such as Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native children, may have different patterns of risk.

“Based on our work, I think the most important questions now are, why does the Northeast have the highest childhood cancer rates in the country, and is there something we as a region can do about it?”

Underlying reasons, even after stratifying by race, are likely multifactorial. In 2019, New Hampshire invested legislative funds to explore childhood cancer issues in the Granite State, led by the NH State Cancer Registry team. This funding allowed a group of cross-disciplinary childhood cancer and environmental health experts to review the evidence on childhood cancer risk factors, including maternal age at delivery, socioeconomic factors, and a host of other possible explanations such as environmental chemical and radiation exposure, parental smoking and use of recreational drugs and alcohol, and more.

As regional differences in pediatric cancer incidence are explored, Rees emphasizes the value of ongoing collaborations between Northeastern states’ health departments and epidemiologists as experts seek to understand the causes and possible solutions.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Wentworth-Douglass program focuses on hernia rehab: Seacoast health news