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Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing > Events and Courses > An eyesore no more
An eyesore no more
Sad, weedy space morphs into fab fitness park
There are many, many popular spots along the River Murray – but until recently a patch of land next to the Caurnamont boat ramp wasn't one of them.
Neglected, tired, unkempt – the land, east of Mannum, was unloved, and unvisited.
The Purnong and Districts Progress Association, however, saw potential in the site: it believed it would be the perfect spot for an outside exercise area!
$14,000 and a lot of work later, the dream has been realised – as these pics on the association's Facebook page clearly demonstrate (see the post from Sept 11th 2019):
https://www.facebook.com/1722138237810650/photos/pcb.2821684501189346/2821683907856072/?type=3&theater
As the association says:
"The Adult Fitness Area project has taken a space which was unused, with weeds and debris, and transformed it into a landscaped, outdoor fitness area.
"The area is already being well utilised by the community."
The Progress Association isn't finished with the site though. To fully realise its potential, plans are afoot to also use the exercise area for fundraising ventures, boot camps and other activities, to make sure as many mid-Murray residents as possible benefit from it.
*The Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing was the major contributor to the project, allocating it $12,000 through Round 45 of the Active Club Program.


I'm using 3.0 now. I assume these examples work in 2.0 as well, but I'm too lazy to test.
This was a bit of an interesting exercise for me since I've mostly only ever used cmdlets. I'm still using cmdlets, but calling SOAP based web services to gather information.
#Credentials are needed when working w/ a secure web service.
#I was able to find the correct API address by clicking the help link on the login page. They seem to have a different web service per API instruction type. In this case, I just want to 'get' address information thusly demonstrated below.
#This is where it gets interesting, from here I can essentially browse what properties and methods are available to me by calling the $IPControlGetService variable.
#This provides me a list of properties and methods I can call against this SOAP service.
Exception calling "getDeviceByHostname" with "1" argument(s): "There is an error in XML document (1, 2947)."
Long story short, it appears to be related to the xml return 'style' being 'RPC' rather than 'Document', but I cannot say for certain. I only noticed this while using SOAPUI to see the returned xml and noticing the 'style' property compared to that of Dell's web service.


We have significant experience representing sponsors of athletes and teams at virtually all levels. We also have worked on projects involving online, new media, mobile and other emerging digital distribution platforms. Such projects include negotiating online, digital and mobile rights agreements, as well as content distribution agreements.


MCM Birmingham Comic Con – Calling all Steven Universe fans! We're thrilled to announce that Grace Rolek, the voice of Connie Maheswaran on the cult favourite Cartoon Network show, is to be one of the special guests at this month's MCM Birmingham Comic Con.
If you've yet to check out Steven Universe, the critically-acclaimed cartoon follows the eponymous Steven's adventures as the youngest of the Crystal Gems, a team of magical heroes dedicated to defending humanity. Grace's character Connie is Steven's kind-hearted best friend, who eventually becomes a member of the Crystal Gems herself.
A voice actor since the age of seven, Grace Rolek's other credits include Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown; Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children; Whisper of the Heart and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
Meeting fans on the Saturday of the NEC event, Grace Rolek joins a special guest roster that already includes fellow voice actors Nolan North, Troy Baker, Anjali Bhimani, Jonny Cruz, Carolina Ravassa and Fred Tatisciore.


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Carl Louis Doughtie – Lieutenant (jg), United States Navy
From a contemporary press report
On Lieutenant Carl Doughtie's 10th mission as a Navy carrier pilot flying missions over North Vietnam in June 1965, his jet was hit by a surface-to-air missile and plunged into a mountainside.
For more than 32 years, Doughtie was officially an MIA. Then in late 1997, the crash site was found. DNA testing was done on the remains.
Then, November 10, 1998 Doughtie's parents, Marjorie and Carl Doughtie formally were notified the remains were their son's.
Lieutenant Doughtie was buried February 26, 1999 with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Doughtie, 24, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1963 and got his Navy wings in December 1964. He was shot down just two weeks after reporting to the carrier Midway.
He was posthumously awarded the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross.
CARL DOUGHTIE was born on November 18, 1940. He became a member of the Navy while in Tarboro, North Carolina and attained the rank of LTJG (O2).
From a contemporary press report:
YOUNG PILOT SYMBOLIZED DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY
Today I buried a good friend, a classmate and a patriot in Arlington National Cemetery. The band played, the horse-drawn caisson carried his remains to the graveside, the rifles fired and all flights at National Airport were suspended as fourF-14 Tomcat fighter jets passed overhead in a final salute to a fallen comrade. Yes, he was finally home.
Lieutenant Carl L. Doughtie, United States Navy, Annapolis class of 1963, was shot down in his A-1 Skyraider in 1965 in Vietnam. He was the first of too many Naval Academy graduates to be killed in that war. He laid in his shallow secret jungle grave until being found in November 1998. For 33 years, his parents and family mourned, his saddened classmates remembered him and everyone pondered his fate.
Now, through misty eyes on this brilliant sunny afternoon, I watched as the folded flag was presented to Carl's mom. Her shoulders were shaking as Carl's dad drew her close to him.
My classmates, aging warrior veterans of Vietnam, the Cold War and Desert Storm, stood at rigid attention; most doing their best to cover my tears with their own.
From the east they came, roaring in at 400 knots. Dots on the horizon at first; then bigger, bigger. When they were overhead, one sleek F-14 broke from the other three and roared heavenward, rolling 360 degrees in a sign of victory.
Duty, honor, country. A forever-young 24-year-old fighter pilot spent the final moments of his life providing close air support to protect his fellow Americans. He didn't have to go. But from his family and others, Carl learned and embraced values of commitment, hard work and follow-through that are the foundation of duty, honor, country.
In spite of his youth, Carl Doughtie made a difference. He gave his life to protect other young Americans who were in great danger. These are the values that I want to pass on to my children. These are the values that I want America's leaders to have. Today, and for the past 33 years, Carl has reminded us — duty, honor, country.
CRAIG L. THRASHER East Aurora
DOUGHTIE, CARL LOUIS
LTJG US NAVY
BURIED AT: SECTION 66 SITE 4739
Martin E. Gormley, Jr. – Captain, United States Army Air Corps
Frank Leonidas Henry – Colonel,United States Army

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Great Scott! A DeLorean for rent!
All posts › Community, Gearheads › Great Scott! A DeLorean for rent!
by Steven Perez
posted on October 21st, 2017
Go ahead, make Doc proud
"If you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" Doc's reasoning is sound, and it applies also for rental cars. If you're going to rent a car, why not do it with some style? There are a lot of stylish rides on Turo, but Anthony D.'s original DeLorean fits the bill perfectly.
Now you too can travel back to the future, er, '80s, and drive this iconic 1981 DeLorean DMC-12. The legendary American-made exotic turns heads on the street like a movie star because it is the most famous movie car of all time (sorry James Bond). It's low, it's angular, it's sexy — it's a DeLorean!
Though this particular car has been in Anthony's care for around 15 years, it's never left the family. His grandfather bought the DeLorean brand new from the factory. Anthony has vivid memories of going to play with "the spaceship in the garage" when he was young, and his grandfather would take him on rides all the time. "I have very fond memories with it, which is why when my grandfather passed away, everyone was okay with me taking it," he said. "My grandpa and the car are one and the same."
Anthony drives it often, but the DeLorean is not known for its refinement or air-tight build quality. It was built in a time when new car technology was being introduced, but wasn't quite perfected yet. Its mechanical fuel injection and small-company construction means that Anthony has to put a lot of love and sacrifice into the car to keep it maintained. Still, this DeLorean only has around 26,000 miles on the odometer and hasn't needed any crazy restoration work done, so it's almost completely original.
Of the 9,000 DeLoreans made between 1981 and 1983, about 6,500 examples are believed to be still puttering around. Servicing such a rare automobile can be a nightmare, but luckily for Anthony, an Orange County company specializing in DeLoreans bought all the spare parts from the factory and now services most of the southwestern United States.
This DeLorean is a real driver and has all the character of a car from its time. A couple bumper stickers, an appropriate license plate frame, and 35 years of love on the interior give the car its own personality. Aside from an upgraded exhaust and cassette player, this baby is all authentic DeLorean.
Famously, the DeLorean DMC-12 is not a fast car as the movie would have you believe. Its 2.85L V6 was developed as a collaboration between Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo under a special contract with DMC at the height of the '80s oil glut. The PRV V6 doesn't make 1.21 gigawatts, but actually about 130 horsepower, giving the DeLorean closer to 100 horses at the wheels. So it's not powerful, but it's also not heavy, and Anthony reckons it's a rather fun drive.
The DeLorean was built on a Lotus chassis and "handles like a banshee out of hell," even without power steering. Its wedge-shaped fiberglass body perfectly captures its era, while the signature unpainted stainless steel panels help with flux dispersal… or something. Add the awesome gullwing doors, rear buttresses with windows, and you've got a perfectly ludicrous and fabulous 1980s supercar.
In 1981, US regulations only allowed for speedometers to read up to 85 mph. Which means, yes, the 88 mph required for time travel in "Back to the Future" is a bit of a lie. According to Anthony, while the DeLorean will go faster than 85 mph, the gauge cluster in the in the movie had to be repainted to display the magic speed of 88.
As long as Anthony can remember, he's known about and loved the movie. People approach him about the DeLorean far more than they would if he was driving an exotic Italian supercar. "I have to know everything about the movie because people always ask me questions," he said. He has dressed up as Marty McFly for Halloween multiple times at the request of friends, and it brings him a lot of joy. Strangers constantly offer to buy the car or leave notes and business cards on the windshield.
If you're in Southern California and happen to have an eccentric physicist friend who needs a vehicle for any reason, take Anthony's DeLorean for a spin. Hop through the gullwing doors and see if it doesn't transport you back in time. Just watch out for the Libyans.
Steven Perez
Steven is an avid car guy and content specialist at Turo. Between Golden State Warriors games he can be found getting lost somewhere in California.
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Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by which one of the following?
1. In which story did Conan Doyle introduce Sherlock Holmes?
2. The Sherlock Holmes stories are credited with influencing which field of work?
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most recognizable characters in English literature, and this quiz/worksheet combo will help you test your understanding of his stories. You'll be assessed on your understanding of the stories, characters and cultural influence of Sherlock Holmes.


In some cases, the 1970 Convention does not apply formally: either the States involved have not ratified this instrument or one condition if application is not fulfilled (as non-retroactivity). Other solutions are therefore sought so that Parties concerned can find a mutually acceptable agreement. Even if they do not reflect a strict application of the dispositions of the Convention, these solutions are often adopted in accordance with the spirit and the principles contained in this treaty.
The Republic of Korea returned 11 dinosaur fossils that were smuggled into the country from Mongolia.
A stolen Etruscan vessel will be returned to Italy thanks in part to the efforts of a hunter of looted antiquities.
Last month, Christos Tsirogiannis, a Greek-born researcher who has spent more than a decade poring over auction and antiquities catalogs trying to identify stolen Greek and Roman artifacts, spotted an Etruscan amphora for sale at a Midtown Manhattan gallery.
Two valuable paintings of former Dutch masters, despoiled by the Nazis in the late 1930s, were returned to the beneficiaries of a German Jewish art dealer exiled to Canada.
The paintings, "Ships in Distress on a Stormy Sea," by the marine artist Jan Porcellis (1584-1632), and "Landscape with Goats" by the animal painter Willem Buytewech the Younger (1625-1670), were recovered from an auction in Germany, which facilitated their restitution.
The President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz) handed over a 2,600 years old clay brick, with an inscription of the Babylonian King Nebukadnezar, to his Excellency the ambassador of the Republic of Iraq in Berlin. This object had been illegally removed from Iraq in 1975 by an individual, who had recently donated it to the Foundation.
The Swiss Federal Office of Culture returned to the Egyptian Embassy in Bern, a batch of 32 ancient cultural objects, dating from the Pharaonic and Roman periods. Four of the returned items are extremely rare and of remarkable aesthetic quality: the bust of a king wearing a crown, a fragmented stele in honour of King Siptah depicting the patron goddess of Thebes from the era of the New Kingdom (approx. 1500-1000 B.C.), and two architectural fragments depicting scenes of worship dating back to the Roman period (approx. 753 B.C. to 476 A.D.).
The Archaeology Museum in Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second biggest town, recovered in April 2015 a Roman Thracian silver mask and helmet, stolen in 1995 following an armed robbery. Following a successful investigation led by the Specialized Prosecutor's Office in Bulgaria, the precious artifact was returned to the museum. The mask and helmet date back to 1st century AD, and belonged to a Thracian aristocrat from ancient Philipopolis (nowadays Plovdiv) in whose burial mound it was discovered in the early 20th century.
During the visit of German State President Joachim Gauck to Peru an ancient ritual knife ("Tumi") was handed over to the Government of Peru on 20 March 2015. The knife is around 800 years old and forms part of the rich cultural heritage of Peru. Probably it had been excavated illegally in the Lambayeque region. German authorities seized it in Berlin in 2013, where it had been offered for sale by an auction house.
On 22 January, the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz (RGZM) handed over to Italy a collection of grave goods, dating back to the 5th millennium BC. The outstanding complex with a precious jadeite axe head sheds light on an early European elite, maintaining long distance relations between societies in Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, France and the British Isles. The seven artifacts were looted from a tomb near Laterza in Puglia, acquired by the RGZM on the art market in 1986 and now returned to the Soprintendenza per I Beni Archeologici della Puglia, which already has plans for an exhibition.
On 6 June, the state of Baden-Württemberg handed over two objects from the Cycladic culture – a marble figurine dating from 2700-2300 BC and a pan dating from 2700-2400 BC – to Greece. Both objects had been acquired by the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe in the 1970s and were returned in the spirit of the 1970 UNESCO Convention.
An expertise conducted under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the National Museum of Natural History of France made possible to determine that this statue seized in 2012 is a cultural object of the Nok civilization. This civilization appears in Nigeria in 1500 BC. and extinct at the end of the first millennium BC. J.-C., at the confluence of the Niger river and the Benue (center of Nigeria). This is a very advanced civilization, both in terms of its social organization and its refinement, at a time when the rest of Southern Africa entered the Neolithic era. Nok culture is considered to be the oldest terracotta producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
The statue was stored at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, which took care of it gracefully. It was handed over by the President of the French Republic to Nigeria on the occasion of his travel on 27 February 2014.
Thirteen ancient artifacts have been returned to Iraq, among them at least one object stolen from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in 2003.
Among the objects seized by German law enforcement authorities were eight cylinder seals of up to 5000 years of age as well as several sculptures.
Respecting the instructions left in the will of a private individual, a group of heirs has conveyed a tablet of cuneiform script, that presumably originated from the Nimrod palace, to the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq, in Berlin.
These 6 objects were seized in 2010 and 2011. An expertise conducted under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the National Museum of Natural History of France, made possible to determine precisely the origins of these six statues dated from the Neolithic and the 11th-14th centuries. They come partly from the collection of the Esi Museum (State of Kwara) and are inscribed on the ICOM Red List.
These works were handed on 14 July 2013 by Mr. Jacques de Labriolle, French Ambassador to Nigeria, to Mr. Yusuf Abdallah Usman, Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments.
In 2010, the Swiss customs discovered an exceptional Roman sarcophagus in carved marble, in a warehouse of the Ports Francs of Geneva. Following a thorough investigation by the Geneva Public Prosecutor's Office, in collaboration with the Swiss and Turkish federal authorities, this magnificent object was found to have originated from an illegal search near Antalya, Turkey.
Carved in the 2nd century AD, the sarcophagus represents the 12 works of Hercules on its flanks and weighs nearly three tons. It was found in the ancient site of Perga (near Antalya) , known today for its ancient theater, its long path lined with columns, its monumental fountain and its necropolis.
Ordered in 2015, the restitution of the sarcophagus to Turkey was the subject of various appeals. After two years of mutual legal assistance, the Herculean sarcophagus will finally return to its country of origin. Before its departure for Antalya, the University of Geneva and the Geneva Public Ministry, with the agreement of the Turkish authorities, agreed to exhibit the sarcophagus in Geneva, during the summer, in order to invite visitors to reflect on the problem of illicit trafficking of cultural property.
The ceremony of restitution, took place on June 19 2017 at the University of Geneva ; in the presence of the Director of the Geneva Museum of Art & History , the Rector of the University of Geneva, and the Minister of Culture of Turkey, H.E. Professor Nabi Avci and UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova.
The event highlighted the importance and effectiveness of UNESCO's 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
"Illicit trafficking is a cultural and social scandal that deprives people of their history, their past, and therefore their future.The example of international cooperation between Turkey and Switzerland in this restitution shows also the great power of cultural diplomacy in building bridges," stated the Director-General.
This exhibition offers an insight into the life art of the ancient city of Perga.
" data-medium-file="https://chasingaphrodite.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/council5feb08-352×224.jpg?w=500?w=300″ data-large-file="https://chasingaphrodite.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/council5feb08-352×224.jpg?w=500?w=352″ class=" size-full wp-image-6085 alignleft" src="https://chasingaphrodite.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/council5feb08-352×224.jpg?w=500″ alt="council5feb08-352×224″ srcset="https://chasingaphrodite.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/council5feb08-352×224.jpg 352w, https://chasingaphrodite.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/council5feb08-352×224.jpg?w=150 150w, https://chasingaphrodite.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/council5feb08-352×224.jpg?w=300 300w" sizes="(max-width: 352px) 100vw, 352px" style="display: inline; float: left; margin-right: 11px; margin-bottom: 2px; max-width: 100%; width: auto; height: auto;">November 27, 1996: Symes sells the Bull's Head for $1.2 million to Lynda and William Beierwaltes of Colorado, who display it in their dining room. While Symes assures them the object is authentic, as Bogdanos notes, "there was not a whisper-not even the faintest hint of a whisper about whether it was a lawful antiquity. Indeed, the lawfulness of the Bull's Head (C-17) does not appear to have been part of any documented conversation between the Beierwaltes and Symes." The Bull's Head appears on the market "like Athena full-grown from the brow of Zeus," Bogdanos writes, one of several flourishes in his filing.
A Colorado couple has dropped a federal lawsuit that sought to stop the Manhattan district attorney's office from returning to the Republic of Lebanon an ancient marble bull's head that prosecutors said had been looted during that country's civil war.
The 2,300-year-old sculpture had been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art until July when the museum turned it over to authorities after a curator raised concerns about its provenance to Lebanese officials, who requested its return.
In an unusual twist, though, prosecutors said they are now pursuing the return to Lebanon of a second work that they discovered while recently reviewing a profile of the Beierwalteses in an old issue of House & Garden magazine. In a June 1998 special issue, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos spotted an antiquity, "an archaic marble torso of a calf bearer," in a photograph of the Beierwalteses' home. Mr. Bogdanos said in a court filing that it too had been stolen from Lebanon.
The antiquity, which depicts a person carrying a calf, was later sold by the Beierwalteses to a New York collector, Michael H. Steinhardt, in 2015. Mr. Bogdanos said in a letter that he sent to a state Supreme Court judge earlier this week that the district attorney's office had obtained a warrant to seize the work. Mr. Steinhardt could not be reached for comment.
The Beierwalteses had also sold the bull's head sculpture to Mr. Steinhardt, who lent it to the Met museum. But, after learning about the provenance dispute, Mr. Steinhardt asked the Beierwalteses to take back the work and return his money.
This summer the Beierwalteses sued the district attorney's office and the Lebanese government, saying they had clear title to the bull's head artifact and demanding its return. But Mr. Bogdanos produced evidence that the bull's head had been discovered during a state-sponsored excavation in 1967 at the ancient Temple of Eshmun in Sidon, Lebanon. The item had been put in storage after its discovery and then was stolen in the summer of 1981 during the Lebanese civil war. It later turned up in the possession of Robin Symes, an antiquities dealer, who sold it to the Beierwalteses, Mr. Bogdanos said in his letter to the court.
The calf bearer sculpture passed though some of the same hands as the bull's head, according to the letter. It too had been excavated at Eshmun and was stolen from the Lebanese Republic, prosecutors said. It was then sold in 1996 by Mr. Symes for $4.5 million to the Beierwalteses, who later sold it to Mr. Steinhardt, Mr. Bogdanos wrote.
In further identifications connected to the recent seizure and pending repatriation of a Lebanese marble bull's head, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos through the New York authorities has issued another warrant on October 10, 2017 requesting the seizure of a second antiquity also believed to have been plundered from Lebanon during its civil war.
Steinhardt's collecting has come under scrutiny in the past.
The warrant document further authorises law enforcement personnel to videotape and photograph the interior of Michael H. Steinhardt's 5th avenue apartment as well as grants them permission to review stored electronic communications, data, information, and images contained in computer disks, CD Roms, and hard drives.
The target group comprises of Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi cultural heritage professionals with responsibility for, or experience, or expertise in acting against trafficking. The professionals will include archaeologists, archaeology professors and students, as well as law professors and students, and employees working for government authorities, universities, or in the private sector. The applicants will undergo a more rigorous interview process before selection based on merit.
During January and February 2017, a similar training course was given to 23 individuals from Lebanon and Syria, from law and archaeological backgrounds. The participants were introduced to the issues, the market, international conventions and national laws, how to properly document and artifact and the role of public awareness. The Lecturers shared their expertise in different fields. Each lecture was followed by a 30 minute session for discussions, encouraging all members to participate. Group works were also assigned daily to encourage teamwork respect for the individual capacity of each participant. The overall objective was to help both nations by encouraging individuals to help their communities and local authorities protect their heritage.
The final ceremony was attended by the Norwegian ambassador, the General Director of Antiquities of Lebanon, and the president of the International Committee of the Blue Shield.
After identifying a stolen artifact, what measures should be taken to build a case for repatriation?
The course will comprise two separate five-day "weeks" of intensive training by international experts on the matter.
Simultaneous translation will be made available. Each invited expert will provide supporting written material. Participants are welcomed to present the situation of the trafficking of cultural property in their countries.
At its successful conclusion, course participants will be awarded their certificate of attendance at a ceremony. At the end of the course, participants will be encouraged and supported to follow the market and try to repatriate or at least stop the sale of some objects identified in sales galleries or on websites through the preparation of clear and comprehensive dossiers that can be supplied to relevant law enforcement or juridical authorities.


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Annual Report Financial Statement
Children, Youth and Families
Similkameen Seasonal Workers Program
Income Tax Clinic
Community Outreach Medical Advocacy
Volunteer Drivers
Women's Counselling
Child and Youth Mental Health
Telephone Reassurance and Friendly Visitors Program
Art With Elders
Housing Needs & Demands Assessment
Legal Services Society (LSS) – Community Partners
The Lower Similkameen Community Services Society has partnered with The Legal Services Society as one of 24 new Community Partners around BC to improve access to their services in rural, remote, and Aboriginal communities, where people often face barriers to accessing legal aid.
Our role is to provide access to public legal education and information materials, to act as a link between LSS and people who need to apply for legal aid services, and to raise awareness in the community of legal aid and other resources that can help resolve legal issues.
If you have any questions about our community partnership or need any information, please call The Lower Similkameen Community Services Office at 250-499-2352.
© Lower Similkameen Community Services Society


text:
module Rpush
  module Client
    module ActiveModel
      module Wpns
        module App
          def service_name
            'wpns'
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Many people struggling with addiction turn to holistic addiction treatment programs. But why do they do this? Is it because they are just desperate for a solution, or because holistic addiction treatment is becoming more fashionable? Or is it because it really works?
The great news is that thousands of people testify to the fact that it works wonders. There is also ongoing research into the techniques included within holistic addiction treatment programs, and the benefits they can bring.
One of the key parts of the growing success people discover in a holistic treatment program is that a person's emotional satisfaction with the treatment can give them the motivation to stick with it and fully embrace everything involved. So a holistic addiction treatment program can provide the emotional drive needed to succeed.
What Can You Expect From A Holistic Addiction Treatment Program?
A holistic addiction treatment program will usually contain a blend of therapies including acupuncture, meditation, massage and yoga. It may also contain energy work such as Reiki, as well as nutritional therapy, and maybe even herbal medicine.
At its heart, it's used to complement the more traditional addiction treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), counseling and detox.
The goal of a holistic addiction treatment program is to enhance traditional addiction treatments through relaxation and focusing techniques that embrace the physical, mental and spiritual parts of the person struggling with addiction.
What Are The Benefits of a Holistic Approach to Addiction Treatment?
At its heart, the goal of holistic drug addiction treatment is to complement and enhance more traditional addiction treatment methods.
Sometimes holistic addiction treatment can be undertaken on its own, without traditional addiction treatments alongside it. This can be beneficial for both the reasons stated above, and because it can get the individual to look at treatment from a different angle, which is especially useful if they have rejected traditional drug treatments, or have tried them and failed time and again.
If you are struggling with addiction, then it's important you get treatment as soon as possible to stand the best chance of making a recovery and starting to enjoy a rich quality of life.
Restore Health and Wellness Center is a Joint Commission accredited and licensed drug and alcohol treatment facility. We provide a range of recovery services that blend together to create an inspiring and individualized addiction treatment program.
We offer an exceptional level of expertise and support to anyone who is struggling with addiction. Through years of experience we have created the Restore Center to be not only a rehabilitation service that can be truly personal and successful, but also to provide this great chance of success in a location that is relaxing and inspiring.
To talk to us about holistic addiction treatment and to begin your journey to recovery today, call us for a friendly and supportive discussion about the options open to you on (888) 979-4570.


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Students call for border exemptions
by biancahrovat
Bianca Hrovat Journalist
Students as young as 12 are suffering the consequences of the Queensland border closure, stuck in Brisbane boarding houses unable to see their parents for months on end.
Dozens travel from across Australia to attend St Joseph's Nudgee College, spending time apart from family.
Dean of boarding Christian Oneto said it was a major concern for more than 20 students from NSW and Victoria after the latest announcement from the Queensland Government that the closures could last until Christmas.
"It was an absolute shock," Mr Oneto said.
"It's been really stressful for everybody and there's definitely concern that grades might suffer."
For now, the school is focusing on the September holidays, hopeful Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young will grant exemptions.
A failure to obtain an exemption would force students to stay with host families in Brisbane or visit their homes and face an extended period of quarantine upon their return.
"Throughout the year we've had boys return from Victoria and other hot spots and they've had to do the two week quarantine," Mr Oneto said.
"That's a challenge for any adult, but it's a really big challenge for a young man.
"It places enormous hardship on the boys, it's a difficult ask."
The school is particularly concerned for their Year 12 students who will sit their QCE exam next term.
"They can't go home so it's going to be tough on them," Mr Oneto said.
"We're putting together further academic support for them, and we have counsellors working around the clock."
Meet the students hopeful they can go home next month.
Year 12 student Elton Schibble from Hunter Valley. Picture: Renae Droop
Elton Shibble, Year 12
It has been three months since Year 12 student Elton Shibble last saw his family on their cattle farm in the Hunter Valley, NSW.
"Usually I'd go home every four weeks, so this has been quite a bit longer," Elton said.
"It's been tough on my mental health."
With his final exams looming, remote learning is out of the question.
"I had to do schoolwork online during the first lot of the coronavirus restrictions and it was hard to maintain contact with teachers, it lacked that face-to-face aspect and it felt like it put me at a disadvantage," he said.
"I've gotten back on track but with the situation worsening again I'm anxious about what the future holds."
Elton has applied for an exemption, but feels an approval is unlikely. In that case, he wouldn't return home until after the end of the school year.
"I struggle with that, not being able to go home for six months is hard when you're just 18-years-old.
"There needs to be some consideration for students like us that are struggling, especially for our own wellbeing and our own mental health, especially if we want to continue on with our study."
Year 11 student Frank Bundock from Warialda comes from a long line of boarders, but no one from his family has ever experienced anything like this. Picture: Renae Droop
Frank Burdock, Year 11
Nudgee is a home away from home for Frank Burdock, but he still yearns for his hometown of Warialda in Northern NSW.
"Not being able to go home is a big thing for me, I have a strong connection with my family and with the land," Frank said.
"It pays to be at Nudgee, but this isn't where my family is, and it isn't where I'll be forever, so it's a bit hard."
The college has provided significant support to Frank and his fellow boarders, and he said there's always people checking on him, which makes a big difference.
"But I am concerned about when and if I can go home," he said.
"It changes how I see boarding, but the stance in my family is obviously that education comes first.
"I hope with the pressure the premier is receiving the Queensland Government might come to a conclusion soon to improve things for the people who need it."
Year 7 student Hunter Warby started boarding this year, and just wants to see his parents face-to-face. Picture: Renae Droop
Hunter Warby, Year 7
As a new boarder to Nudgee College, Hunter Warby is trying to keep busy and push the border closures to the back of his mind.
"I can't think about it too much otherwise it does become a big deal," Hunter said.
"My first term was difficult because I was missing home, but I got over it and quickly found my mates and I've had a great year.
"But even though I've got mates, I'm still close with my family, and I still want to see them."
It's been three weeks since Hunter last saw his parents, and unless exemptions are granted, he likely won't see them again until after term 4.
"It's going to be tough, I talk to mum and dad every night but I just want to see them face-to-face," he said.
"I hope coronavirus dies down so everyone can see their family, and everything can go back to normal.
"We just have to stick to the rules, like washing your hands."
Originally published as Students call for border exemptions
10 countries Aussies will travel to first
Restrictions could stay for 12 more months
Premium Content How I became a COVID-19 contact tracer
Premium Content How much border closure till Xmas will cost
Premium Content Thousands in hotel quarantine as 156 turned back from border
How failed system led to dad's deadly attack on son
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text:
How to Get Bitcoin
One of the most interesting aspects of Bitcoin is digital scarcity. By being a deflationary currency, Bitcoin becomes more and more scarce as people adopt. With this idea in mind, once you own a certain percent of the 21 million coins, your ownership percentage never decreases unless you decide to spend it. Jokingly, users started naming "clubs" that people joined by owning a certain number of Bitcoin. Nowadays, these levels of exclusivity can bring us to some interesting conclusions:
Additional Facts:
Evenly divided among all people on Earth, all 21 million Bitcoin evenly distributed would give each person less than 0.003 BTC.
Evenly divided among all Americans, all 21 million Bitcoin would give each person less than 0.07 BTC.
It is estimated that almost 3 million Bitcoin have been lost, which changes the distribution rate in the above stats.
There are roughly 5,820,203,717 ounces of gold in the world. One ounce of gold is roughly as rare as 0.0036 BTC.
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Disclaimer: The information presented on this website is based on the understanding of Brian Fediuk. It is very possible that information presented in this site may be outdated, incorrect, or worded in an odd way. The site was created with the intention of informing others about this new and upcoming technology. Please be sure to fact-check and do independent research before making any significant investment of time, resources, or computing equipment.
© 2022 Tip Me In Bitcoin


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Jeff is a professor of management in the College of Business at California State University, Chico. He has served on the faculty since 2001 teaching strategic management and project management. He is a senior partner with Castle-Side Partners and has had an active consulting practice for 25 years involving a range of industries, including banking, farming, consumer packaged goods, transportation systems, plastic injection molding, steel works, restaurants, breweries, and wineries. His consulting projects focus on strategic planning and managing complex systems.
Jeff has served on the board of directors of Lundberg Family Farms for the last 10 years and currently serves as treasurer and chair of the audit committee.He is co-author of the following books: "'Economics of Strategy' Instructor's Manual" (Wiley and Sons), 2006; "Essentials of Project Control" (PMI: Project Management Institute), 1999; "Project Leadership: From Theory to Practice" (PMI), 1998; and "Leadership Skills for Project Managers" (PMI), 1998. His published academic journal articles have been cited in more than 200 different business research journals.
Jeff received his bachelor of science degrees in naval science and business administration from Oregon State University, attended the U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officers' School in Coronado (serving active duty USN in the 1980s), obtained an MBA from Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo, and a PhD in strategic management from the University of Houston. At M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, he received a certificate in applying the system dynamics method for managing complexity, and at Stanford University he completed the Advanced Project Management Program and received the certification S.C.P.M. (Stanford Certified Project Manager).
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This bibliography of 20 items is drawn from MCHLine®, the MCH Digital Library online catalog. This bibliography includes selected materials published in the last ten years on proper nutrition during pregnancy for professionals, pregnant women, and pregnant adolescents.
Lorenzo SB, Wilhite BC. 2017. Nutrition during preconception and pregnancy: Resource brief (upd. ed.). Washington, DC: National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health, 1 p.
Annotation: This resource provides information about special nutritional needs and healthy weight gain during pregnancy and breastfeeeding. Contents include a daily checklist for estimating what and how much to eat. Information about dietary supplements; medical conditions, allergies, and food intolerances; food safety; and other topics is included.
Contact: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC 20250, Telephone: (202) 720-2791 Fax: E-mail: Web Site: http://www.usda.gov Available from the website.
Bellows, Moore R. 2013. Nutrition and oral health (rev.). Fort Collins, CO: Colorado State University Extension, 1 v.
Annotation: This fact sheet provides information on nutrition and oral health, including facts about bacteria and foods that may act to increase or decrease risk for tooth decay. Additional topics include the tooth decay process; fluoridated water and sources of fluoride; oral health during pregnancy, infancy, and childhood; early childhood caries; and oral health and older adults. Tips to reduce tooth decay risk are included.
Contact: Colorado State University, Extension, Campus Delivery 4040, Fort Collins, CO 80523-4040, Telephone: (970) 491-7334 Fax: (970) 491-7252 E-mail: Web Site: http://www.ext.colostate.edu Available from the website.
Institute of Medicine, Food and Nutrition Board and National Research Council. 2013. Implementing guidelines on weight gain and pregnancy. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 20 pp.
Annotation: This booklet for health professionals highlights key points from the new guidelines on weight gain and pregnancy published in 2009 by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. Based on evidence that a woman's health and weight before pregnancy and after delivery are just as important as her health and weight during pregnancy, the booklet explains that beginning pregnancy at a healthy weight is key; that some weight gain during pregnancy (but not too much) is important; and that returning to a healthy weight after pregnancy will help set the stage for a healthy future pregnancy. A list of things that health professionals can do to help their patients achieve a healthy pregnancy is included.
Contact: National Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Keck 360, Washington, DC 20001, Telephone: (202) 334-3313 Secondary Telephone: (888) 624-8373 Fax: (202) 334-2451 E-mail: customer_service@nap.edu Web Site: http://www.nap.edu Available from the website. Document Number: ISBN 978-0-309-27239-1.
National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness. 2012–. Brush up on oral health. Elk Grove Village, IL: National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness, monthly.
Annotation: This tip sheet series provides Head Start staff with information on current practice, practical tips for promoting oral health to share with parents, and recipes for healthy snacks that children can make with Head Start staff or at home with their parents. Topics include children with special health care needs, community water fluoridation, dental caries, dental home, fluoride varnish, health literacy, home visiting, injury, nutrition, pregnancy, school readiness, and tobacco.
Oral Health During Pregnancy Expert Workgroup. 2012–. Tips for good oral health during pregnancy. Washington, DC: National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center, 2 pp.
Contact: National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center, Georgetown University, Box 571272, Washington, DC 20057-1272, Telephone: (202) 784-9771 E-mail: OHRCinfo@georgetown.edu Web Site: https://www.mchoralhealth.org Available from the website.
Gardner DB. 2012. Vitamin D supplementation among women of childbearing age: Prevalence and disparities. [Seattle, WA]: University of Washington, 20 pp.
Contact: University of Washington Libraries, ResearchWorks, Box 352900, Seattle, WA 98195-2900, E-mail: rworks@uw.edu Web Site: https://digital.lib.washington.edu/dspace Available from the website.
Annotation: This webinar reviews the importance of major nutrients in pregnancy outcomes and infant cognitive and neurological development. Focusing on three of the major nutrients -- folic acid, vitamin D and omega-3 DHA -- the presenter provides evidence-based guidelines on appropriate levels of intake and identifies the health benefits during pregnancy and lactation and upon infant visual, social, cognitive, and psychomotor development. The presenter discusses the best sources for major nutrients and offers guidelines on food safety for pregnant women.
Contact: National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, 4401 Ford Avenue, Suite 300***OPERATIONS MOVED TO ZERO TO THREE*** 5/5/2015, Alexandria, VA 22302, Telephone: (703) 837-4792 Fax: (703) 664-0485 E-mail: info@hmhb.org Web Site: http://www.hmhb.org Available from the website.
Perinatal Nutrition Working Group. 2012. Benefits of seafood consumption and Omega-3 DHA during pregnancy and early post-natal development: White paper. Alexandria, VA: National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, 12 pp.
Annotation: This paper provides information about seafood consumption and omega-3 DHA during pregnancy and breastfeeding to promote optimal fetal and neonatal congnitive development. Topics include benefits of seafood consumption during pregnancy, concerns about mercury consumption, and the trend toward consuming insufficient quantities of seafood.
Annotation: This website provides information on food safety and preventing foodborne illness for pregnant women. Advice is provided for women before they get pregnant, during pregnancy, in addition to over a whole life cycle. More contents include a food-by-food guide, revised food handling guidelines, educator tools, resources for professionals, and brochures.
Contact: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20993, Telephone: (888) 463-6332 Fax: (301) 443-3100 Web Site: http://www.fda.gov Available from the website.
Annotation: This curriculum on safe food handling for pregnant women includes four lesson plans, handouts, a teachers0' guide, evaluation forms, and slides that can be projected or used as flip charts. Lesson one explains why pregnant women are at increased risk for foodborne illness; lesson two provides information about Toxoplasma gondii and how to prevent infection by this parasite; lesson three is about the foods that can be contaminated with Salmonella; and lesson four talks about using thermometers to take the temperatures of cooked foods to prevent Camplyobacter. Also included are marketing materials to promote the course and a certificate of completion.
Contact: Ohio State University Extension, 2120 Fyffe Rd., Room 3 Ag Admin, Columbus, OH 43210, Telephone: 614-292-6181 Fax: 618-688-3807 Web Site: http://extension.osu.edu Available from the website.
Annotation: This curriculum on safe food handling for pregnant women includes four lesson plans, handouts, a teachers guide, evaluation forms, and slides that can be projected or used as flip charts. Lesson one explains why pregnant women are at increased risk for foodborne illness; lesson two provides information about Toxoplasma gondii and how to prevent infection by this parasite; lesson three is about the foods that can be contaminated with salmonella; and lesson four talks about using thermometers to take the temperatures of cooked foods to prevent Camplyobacter. Also included are marketing materials to promote the course and a certificate of completion for the course.
U.S. Food and Nutrition Information Center. 2010. Nutrition during pregnancy resource list. Beltsville, MD: U.S. Food and Nutrition Information Center, 11 pp.
Annotation: This publication is a collection of resources on nutrition during pregnancy. Topics covered include general nutrition during pregnancy, folic acid, food safety, and gestational or preexisting diabetes. Pamphlets, booklets, Web sites, audiovisual materials, and books published in 2008 or later are included in the resource list. Resource descriptions, ordering information, and electronic links (where available) are provided.
Annotation: This working paper evaluates how the introduction of WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) across U.S. counties has impacted the health of infants. Since a major goal of the WIC program is to improve the nutritional well-being and health of low income families, the study focused largely on changes in the birth weight of infants in counties that have implemented WIC. Significant findings are summarized in the study.
Annotation: This report presents background information on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), including how it works, its history, program trends, and the characteristics of the population it serves. It also examines issues related to program outcomes and administration.
Annotation: This Web site, which is geared toward pregnant women, offers information about how to have a healthier pregnancy by eating healthy foods and engaging in physical activity. The information is divided into three main sections: healthy eating, physical activity, and after the baby is born. Each section includes answers to common questions. A list of resources is included, as well.
Contact: Weight-Control Information Network, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, One Win Way, Bethesda, MD 20892-3665, Telephone: (877) 946-4627 Fax: (202) 828-1028 E-mail: WIN@info.niddk.nih.gov Web Site: http://win.niddk.nih.gov/index.htm Available at no charge; also available from the website. Document Number: NIH Pub no. 06-5130.
Annotation: This report looks at how the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (which provides supplemental food packages to about half a million low-income pregnant and postpartum women) operates, who participates in it, how it fits into the overall food assistance landscape, and what are states' expectations for its future use, in relation to other food assistance programs and target populations. Program eligibility and participation are also addressed.
Minnesota Department of Health, Environmental Impacts Analysis Unit - Birth Defects. 2008. Minnesota's folic acid guidelines for the prevention of neural tube defects (NTDs). St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Department of Health, 2 pp.
Annotation: This fact sheet recommends that all women of childbearing age maintain a proper level of folic acid since statistics indicate that folic acid can prevent 50 to 70 percent of neural tube defects (NTD's) and that 50 percent of pregnancies are unplanned. The fact sheet offers general recommendations on the amount of folic acid women need based on their health history and provides answers to commonly asked questions about folic acid supplementation.
Annotation: This fact sheet presents messages designed to help women maintain or improve their oral health before and during pregnancy. Oral health problems that women may experience during pregnancy are discussed, including problems that may result from hormonal changes, poor diet and nutrition, or lack of oral health care. Guidance on establishing and maintaining oral hygiene practices (toothbrushing and flossing) and oral health care (routine and emergency visits, oral x-rays, and prescriptions) is given.
Contact: Illinois Department of Public Health, Division of Oral Health, 535 West Jefferson Street, Third Floor, Springfield, IL 62761, Telephone: (217) 785-4899 Secondary Telephone: (800) 547-0466 Fax: (217) 524-4201 Web Site: http://www.dph.illinois.gov/topics-services/prevention-wellness/oral-health Available from the website.
Annotation: This study described in this paper tested whether great exposure to the WIC program is associated with less smoking, improved weight gain during pregnancy, better birth outcomes, and greater likelihood of breastfeeding. The paper discusses the background and issues, empirical implementation, results, and conclusions. References are included. Statistical information is presented in figures and tables throughout the report.


(Tchula, MS) On its Wednesday edition, ABC's "Good Morning America" broadcast co-anchor Robin Roberts' long-awaited interview with embattled Tchula, Miss. physician Dr. Ron Myers. The interview was broadcast during the 8:30 a.m. segment of the popular morning show.
Myers GMA appearance had previously been scheduled to air several times, but was overshadowed by news of the Asian tsunamis, California mudslides, violence in Iraq and presidential inauguration. The Mississippi Delta, where Myers practices, is one of the nation's most economically depressed and medically neglected regions.
The Mississippi Delta is often called America's Third World, Roberts, a Mississippi native, acknowledged.
Myers, 48, was forced to close health clinics in Tchula, Greenville, Belzoni and Indianola on Jan. 1 after the Mississippi Medical Assurance Company refused to continue his malpractice insurance coverage. MMAC is responsible for providing medical malpractice insurance to about 90 percent of the state's doctors and holds a virtual monopoly on coverage.
Myers said the insurer took issue with his refusal to allow its risk management team access to patients' records without written permission from the patients. "They can't force me to violate doctor-patient confidentiality privileges" he said recently.
MMAC officials declined to appear on camera but issued a statement implying that Myers was an uninsurable risk. However, Myers contends no malpractice claims have been filed against him in his 17 years of practicing medicine in the Mississippi Delta. The closure of the four clinics leaves 3,000 poor and shut-in patients without medical care and the lack of malpractice coverage essentially renders Myers unable to practice medicine.
"I can't see my patients" an annoyed Myers exclaimed during a recent Jackson Advocate interview. "I feel terrible that there are sick people out there that I can't treat."
Talking about the clinic closures reduced Myers' wife Sylvia to tears during the emotional GMA interview. Roberts pointed out that Dr. Myers' classmates chose to practice in more lucrative areas of the country and acknowledged the sacrifices Myers and his family must make to maintain existence in the Mississippi Delta.
She also praised Myers as "a dying breed" a doctor who makes house calls. During her visit in late December, Roberts rode along with Myers on house calls where he treated and prayed with ailing patients.
GREENVILLE, MISSISSIPPI 1/4/05 - Before Mississippi lawmakers agreed to limit jury awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, the cost of liability insurance or its lack of availability led some physicians to flee the state or retire, leaving their patients without convenient access to health care.
Now that tort reform is law, the picture for some hasn't changed.
"I know I will never be pain-free. I know that," Virginia Brooks, 45, said on Monday. Among her ailments are arthritis, spina bifida and bulging discs. "If they can reduce the pain to a level I can work with, I'd rather be working than looking at four walls."
Robert Armstrong is also an arthritis sufferer. Both are from Greenville. Both are or were patients of Dr. Ronald Myers, who closed all four of his Delta clinics on Saturday, when his malpractice insurance expired.
Armstrong said he began seeing Myers seven or eight years ago after his son showed him an ad that said Myers was giving free treatment to people 55 and older who had high blood pressure. "I could not really afford it, so I went to him as long as that program lasted," Armstrong said. "He is a good doctor. He will come to your house. If you don't have money, he will still take care of you."
It's that bedside manner that has brought Myers much media attention in his 17 years of serving the Delta. Local and national news stories have told of his efforts to provide health care to people who can least afford it and, in some cases, cannot travel.
And on Wednesday, Myers' insurance trouble will be the subject of a segment on ABC Television's "Good Morning America," which airs locally from 7 to 9 a.m.
Mississippi native Robin Roberts, a former ESPN anchor who is part of the "Good Morning America's" team, was in Greenville last week to interview the doctor. The interview took place at the Ramada Inn, where Myers, who is also a jazz musician, performs on Sunday afternoons.
The segment was originally scheduled to air on Monday, but ABC's coverage of tsunami relief efforts in Asia bumped the story.
Calling it the downside of tort reform, Myers said he was forced to close clinics in Greenville, Indianola, Belzoni and the small Holmes County community of Tchula. Holmes County is one of five Mississippi counties that were identified by the Washington, D.C.-based American Tort Reform Association as "judicial hellholes," calling them havens for high jury verdicts.
The organization has dropped Mississippi from its list. In its annual survey, released last month, the association touted Mississippi as a model for the rest of the nation in civil justice reform.
In June, Gov. Haley Barbour signed a new lawsuit limitations bill, which became law on Sept. 1.
Among other things, the new law caps pain-and-suffering damage awards at $1 million in most lawsuits. It keeps the $500,000 pain-and-suffering cap adopted in 2002 for medical malpractice cases � but it erases a cost-of-living provision that would have increased the $500,000 cap over the years.
The legislation was designed to prevent the flight of medical malpractice insurers from Mississippi and keep doctors in business. However, the company that covered Myers considered him a high risk and refused to renew his policy, the doctor said.
He has filed a lawsuit to get reinstated. Myers filed his complaint in Holmes County Chancery Court, alleging that the board of the not-for-profit Medical Assurance Co. in Ridgeland "has made it clear that they do not want me to treat poor chronic-care patients" and has wrongly denied coverage to other black physicians practicing in poor, primarily black communities.
Myers, a minister and missionary, said he has never had any malpractice claims filed against him.
Michael Houpt, chief executive officer at Medical Assurance, said race is never used as a basis for coverage decisions and was not in Myers' case. "We don't ask (race) on our applications because it isn't relevant," he said.
Interestingly, the "Good Morning America" segment is to air shortly before President Bush addresses national tort reform.
According to a story in Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bush will visit Collinsville, Ill., to deliver a speech on medical malpractice reform. A few miles across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Collinsville is in Madison County, Ill., which, for the second year in a row was named the Tort Reform Association's No. 1 "judicial hellhole."
Bush made his support for caps on jury awards a major theme of his campaign for re-election, saying lawsuit abuse threatened to put many good doctors out of business.
The irony and timing were not lost on Jamie Court, president of the California-based Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights. "Dr. Myers will go head to head with President Bush, whether he meant to or not," Court said. "They'll present two very different versions of tort reform."
Court said Bush has gotten so much in campaign contributions from the insurance industry that he doesn't want to reform insurance companies. "The key ingredients: He (Myers) is taking on an insurance company, being denied coverage in this bogus myth of judicial hellholes, while Bush is gonna argue that tort reform is what will keep clinics open.
"He should spend a day in the life of Dr. Myers," Court said, [explaining that] tort reform is a two-edged scalpel that will cut patients both ways. "It limits access to court, and it makes it easier for insurance companies to deny health care coverage," he said.
Meanwhile, Armstrong and Brooks are at a loss. "Without him, I'd be in trouble," Armstrong said of Myers. "I don't know what I'm going to do." In addition to treatment, Myers made sure Armstrong got the medicine he needed. Now, Armstrong said he will take Tylenol. "But Tylenol won't do much for arthritis pain. And it's bad.
"Mine is real bad." Brooks said her pain goes beyond the physical. Because of it, she cannot play with her 20-month-old granddaughter or take the child for a walk in the park. "This hurts my heart, to say: 'Grandma don't feel good today, baby,'" Brooks said. "That hurts me real bad."
December 10, 2004 A black physician in Mississippi filed a breach-of-contract suit against the state's only medical malpractice carrier, Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi, Ridgeland, for allegedly unfairly refusing to renew his policy, which expires Jan. 1, and failing in its obligation to cover state physicians.
Dr. Ron Myers, of Tchula, filed his complaint in Chancery Court of Holmes County, alleging that the board of the not-for-profit insurer "has made it clear that they do not want me to treat poor chronic-care patients" and has wrongly denied coverage to other black physicians practicing in poor, primarily black communities. Myers, a Baptist minister and missionary, said he has never had any malpractice claims filed against him.
Michael Houpt, chief executive officer at Medical Assurance, said race is never used as a basis for coverage decisions and was not in Myers' case. "We don't ask (race) on our applications because it isn't relevant," Houpt said.
Houpt declined to discuss Myers' case in detail but said the insurer's problems with the physician began when he took over a pain clinic in Tupelo, Miss., 200 miles from Tchula. Medical Assurance, owned by its physician-members, was chartered by the state in 1976 during a medical malpractice insurance crisis. The company provides liability coverage to 75% of Mississippi's 3,300 physicians; other physicians obtain coverage through a state insurance pool, which Myers said has much higher rates.
(Tchula, Mississippi) - For over 16 years Baptist Medical Missionary and Family Practitioner, Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., M.D., has been faithfully and sacrificially serving the medical needs of families in the poorest region in America, the Mississippi Delta. Now, Rev., Dr. Myers must began closing his Christian Family Health Centers because the state's only malpractice insurance company, the Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi (MACM), refuses to renew his medical malpractice insurance policy.
According to a recent article in the Jackson, Mississippi based newspaper, the Jackson Advocate, "As a result of Mississippi's new controversial tort reform legislation, MACM has been given sole discretion in providing malpractice insurance to doctors, establishing what some characterize as 'a virtual monopoly on malpractice coverage.'"
Myers, an African-American physician, who has never been sued for malpractice in his family practice health centers, feels that insurance company greed, racism and discrimination against chronic pain patients are the motives behind MACM's actions. "MACM's all white physician Board of Directors, including Dr. J. Edward Hill, President-Elect of the American Medical Association (AMA), has made it clear that they do not want me to treat poor chronic pain patients," states Rev., Dr. Myers. "I am a victim of a 'medical malpractice lynching' for being a compassionate and caring physician throughout the state of Mississippi."
State Representative Willie J. Perkins (D-Greenwood), a member of the Select Committee on Malpractice Insurance, in a recent letter to both Co-Chairs of the committee, Rep. Edward Blackmon, Jr. (D-Canton) and Rep. Steve Holland (D-Plantersville), hopes that Myers critical testimony concerning tort reform before the committee earlier this year did not play a role in MACM's decision and has requested an investigation: "According to Dr. Myers, he has practiced medicine for 16 years in the Mississippi Delta without any incident of a medical malpractice judgment, that he has a clean and clear medical record. Unless I am somewhat confused, it appears this he would be the "poster boy" for the type of doctors MACM or any insurance company would desire to extend insurance coverage. I trust Dr. Myers testimony at our hearing played no role in MACM's decision. Also, I trust that our committee will explore and investigate this and other similar matters."
Myers feels that insurance company greed is the real motivation behind tort reform. "The bottom line is that Mississippi's tort reform legislation and other special legislation afforded MACM by the state legislature gave MACM license to abuse and discriminate against the poor and disenfranchised," states Rev., Dr. Myers. "MACM is practicing 'medical malpractice social engineering', 'medical malpractice redlining' and 'medical malpractice racism' by not renewing the malpractice insurance policies of physicians who practice in communities with large African-American, poor and chronic pain patient populations. This is morally reprehensible and unconscionable. I will be forced to close my health centers in some of America's poorest counties because of MACM's action."
Rev., Dr. Myers has committed himself to battle this injustice and is praying for a moral outcry from across America. "Please do not let greed win over need," states Rev., Dr. Myers. "We need to reform tort reform in America because the poor, chronic pain patients and the disenfranchised need healthcare too."
Web Sites; www.AmericanPainInstitute.org or www.MyersFoundation.net.
(Tchula, Mississippi) - For over 16 years Baptist Medical Missionary and Family Practitioner, Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., M.D., has been faithfully and sacrificially serving the medical needs of families in the poorest region in America, the Mississippi Delta. Now Rev. Dr. Myers must began closing his Christian Family Health Centers because the state's only malpractice insurance company, the Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi (MACM), refuses to renew his medical malpractice insurance policy.
Myers, an African-American physician, who has never been sued for malpractice in his family practice health centers, feels that insurance company greed, racism and discrimination against chronic pain patients are the motives behind MACM's actions.
"MACM's all white physician Board of Directors, including Dr. J. Edward Hill, President-Elect of the American Medical Association (AMA), has made it clear that they do not want me to treat poor chronic pain patients," states Rev., Dr. Myers. "I am a victim of a 'medical malpractice lynching' for being a compassionate and caring physician throughout the state of Mississippi."
"According to Dr. Myers, he has practiced medicine for 16 years in the Mississippi Delta without any incident of a medical malpractice judgment, that he has a clean and clear medical record. Unless I am somewhat confused, it appears this he would be the "poster boy" for the type of doctors MACM or any insurance company would desire to extend insurance coverage. I trust Dr. Myers testimony at our hearing played no role in MACM's decision. Also, I trust that our committee will explore and investigate this and other similar matters."
To offer support and assistance, contact Dr. Myers at 662-247-1471 or 662-247-3364; e-mail: [email protected]; web sites www.AmericanPainInstitute.org or www.MyersFoundation.net.
Many of you have asked me, "What can I do to help?"
- Please write, call, fax, e-mail the Governor of Mississippi and the following key members of the Mississippi Legislature. The Select Committee on Medical Malpractice Insurance will be investigating the Medical Assurance Company of Mississippi (MACM) and their non-renewal of my malpractice insurance policy.
- Please speak out publicly and let the American Medical Association (AMA) know of your concerns about the actions of Dr. J. Edward Hill, President-Elect of the AMA and Board Member of MACM, to shut down our medical ministry to the poor. WE NEED A STRONG PUBLIC OUTCRY ACROSS AMERICA! HOW CAN MEMBERS OF THE AMA CONDONE THE UNJUST ACTIONS OF THEIR OWN LEADERSHIP!
- Please voice your concern to your members of congress and state legislators about how the insurance industry, that is advocating for tort reform because the high cost of medical malpractice insurance is forcing doctors out of business, is now forcing physicians who treat the poor and disenfranchised out of business because of greed. AGAIN, A STRONG PUBLIC OUTCRY IN DEFENSE OF PHYSICIANS, LIKE DR. MYERS, WHO TREAT PAIN PATIENTS AND THE POOREST PEOPLE IN AMERICA IS NEEDED!
PLEASE DON'T LET GREED WIN OVER NEED! POOR PEOPLE AND PAIN PATIENTS NEED HEALTHCARE TOO!
What has been called by some physicians a crisis in medical care has been working its way across the state, and is inching its way into Northeast Arkansas.
Over the past two years, dozens of doctors practicing an accepted medical discipline called chronic pain management have lost their practices and their licenses to practice a medical discipline that is legally allowed in Arkansas.
Pain Management utilizes a combination of intervention or injection treatments, prescription narcotics, diet and other measures to form an overall treatment for patients who experience chronic pain from a variety of conditions. These conditions include cancer and cancer treatment, continuing complications from surgery, endometriosis and other obstetric disorders, and certain autoimmune and connective tissue disorders.
Hardest hit so far has been Northwest Arkansas. In Fort Smith alone, two medical clinics have been shut down and three doctors, including on nationally know pain management specialist and instructor, have lost their licenses to practice. A fourth physician closed his practice when he was notified to appear before the Arkansas State Medical Board, and is currently awaiting that hearing. All of these physicians say they are victims of an effort by the Medical Board to stop the practice of chronic pain management in Arkansas.
One of the doctors to lose both his practice and his license to practice medicine was Dr. Robert Kale, a double board-certified physician in pain management and anesthesiology. Kale's license was suspended Aug. 8, forcing him to close his Medical Pain Management Clinic in Fort Smith. Kale is a member of five different speakers bureaus across the country, and lectures nationwide on proper procedures for prescribing narcotics for chronic pain patients and properly documenting that treatment.
Following the suspending of his license, Kale said he sent copies of the patient records used by the Medical Board to suspend his license to Dr. Barry Cole, director of the American Academy of Pain Management. Cole reviewed the patient records, and informed Kale his practices meet the requirements for standards set in the area of pain management, and recognized nationwide.
"He said I am only guilty of practicing good medicine," Kale said.
Both Cole and representatives of the National Pain Foundation have expressed concerns to Kale about what they call the "lack of education and understanding and the punitive action of the state medical board, and the chilling effect those actions are having on pain management in the State of Arkansas," Kale added. Kale said the Medical Board chairman, Dr. W. Ray Jouett, has publicly stated most chronic pain patients are, in essence, drug abusers who are using chronic pain physicians and clinics to feed their habits.
Kale, however, said this is not the case. Recent studies have shown, he said, that abuse "is not the rule, it is the rarity". Dr. Terry Brackman, also of Fort Smith, has also had his license to prescribe controlled substances, or DEA license, suspended. In addition to eliminating his ability to prescribe pain, diet and anti-depressant medication to his patients, the loss of his DEA license has resulted in the loss of his hospital privileges.
Brackman said the problem has taken two years to surface as a state-wide problem because the board picks a handful of physicians from broad areas of the state each time it holds a hearing for the purpose of disciplining doctors who practice pain management. When only one doctor is affected over a period of several months, it does not generate much media attention, and the general public is not aware of the problem.
"The next thing you know, you have four or more doctors in your area affected, so physicians never get organized against something like this. It just keeps going on and on and on." Brackman said currently, fifty percent of the doctors in the Fort Smith area who practice pain management in some way have been disciplined by the Medical Board for those practices. Brackman said like most of his colleagues, when he was called before the Medical Board over one year ago, he was not worried about the outcome of that first hearing because he know he was following the national standard of pain treatment with his patients.
However, he said he came to realize during that hearing the medical board is not following the standard of care for chronic pain in making their decisions.
"The Arkansas board is forcing us to malpractice with our chronic pain patients," he said. "They are getting away with this only because they are dealing with chronic pain patients. Our patients are the ones that are paying for this."
The Rev. Dr. Ronald V. Myers Sr., of Fort Smith, who has also lost his DEA license and had his practicing license suspended, said Arkansas is in a medical state of crisis because patients who are struggling with chronic pain can't get appropriate medication. He said many are forced to drive great distances to seek medical treatment in surrounding states.
Myers has combined forces with other physicians and state legislators in an attempt to solve the current problem through the state legislature, a step that has been taken by at least 14 other states to protect physicians practicing pain management from punitive actions by their state medical boards.
The practice of pain management is recognized and legal in the state of Arkansas according to state medical practice policy. Arkansas is one of 44 states that have accepted pain management and allow it to be practiced, according to Dr. Aaron M. Gilson, Ph.D. Gilson is chief policy researcher and assistant director of the University of Wisconsin, Pain and Policy Studies Group in Madison, and articles and talks on pain management have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to Gilson, of those 44 states, only 24 have based their operating practice on the Model Guidelines accepted by the American Medical Association, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federation of State Medical Boards. Arkansas, he said, is not one of these states.
These Model Guidelines encourage the use of controlled substances for pain therapy and provide physicians guidance for controlled substance use. The Model Guidelines also recognize that pain is being under treated, he said, partially because physicians are concerned about investigations by state regulatory agencies and medical boards.
In order to solve this problem, state legislatures in 14 of the 44 states having pain management policies have passed Intractable Pain Acts. These acts give immunity from punitive action by medical boards to physicians who practice pain management under the Model Guidelines.
In order to address the situation in Arkansas, Myers and his group have been working with State Sen-elect Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, to develop a proposed Intractable Pain Act for this state.
"In Arkansas, the Medical Board has first suspended a physician's license, and then said 'come in and talk to us'. By then the physician is out of business, and their patients have been referred to someone else," Altes said. "It's a bad situation � its like a band of Gestapo trying to rule the world. It's not a nice way to do things."
In addition to working with physicians, Altes said the proposed Intractable Pain legislation is receiving strong support from a surprising sector, the extreme right and Right-to-Life groups.
Altes explained the rate of suicide, including physician assisted suicide, is many time higher among chronic pain sufferers than among all other groups combined. Groups such as James Dodson and his Focus On Family Coalition, the National Right to Life Coalition and the Arkansas Right to Life Coalition have recognized that treating chronic pain sufferers with medication to ease their pain eliminates patient's thoughts of suicide. Because of this, all of these groups have told Altes they will be working with him to help pass the Intractable Pain Act in Arkansas during the upcoming legislative session.
A number of physicians in several areas of Northeast Arkansas have been affected or even censored by the Medical Board for either attempting to relieve the pain of their chronic pain patients, or for planning programs or clinics that might have resembled chronic pain clinics. These interviews, however, were conducted off the record and could not be included in this article because of the physicians' fear of retribution by the medical board.
State Sen. Steve Bryles, D-Blytheville, has been in contact with many of these physicians or their attorneys, as well as Altes, and is currently gathering information on the situation with chronic pain treatment in Arkansas.
"We need to do everything that we can to keep our doctors in rural areas," Bryles said. "We don't need them to be overly encumbered with confusing guidelines as to what is acceptable and what is not."
While most doctors are taking great pains to escape the attention of the state medical board, however, Hale has vowed to pursue every avenue possible to change the current situation for all physicians, from specialists to general practitioners, who want to provide adequate treatment for their chronic pain patients.
"I told them (the Medical Board) they could keep my license," Hale said. "I'm coming after them."
The Medical Board was contacted, but declined comment on the situation.
An unidentified patient who has been suffering from excruciating arthritis pain for years lies face down on a table under a fluoroscope. Dr. Calin Savu, a pain management specialist, inserts needles into her neck, about 1 millimeter from specific nerve endings. He is aided by an X-ray image on screens mounted directly in front of the patient.
A die is ejected from the needles to ensure proper placement of the needles. The needles are then heated to about 80 degrees for several seconds cauterizing the nerve endings and eliminating the pain.
Savu, who operates the Pain Center pain management clinic as an outpatient clinic of St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro, said the majority of his patients come to him after years of suffering without receiving any explanation of the cause of that suffering.
"It is probably the most challenging field in medicine," he said. "You deal with patients who have been suffering for a long time, have been seen by numerous physicians, have been given different or no explanation for their pain and are frustrated by the failure of the medical system to find the solution to the problem."
The discipline of pain management has only recently come into its own, and Savu said many physicians are not familiar enough with the causes of pain to diagnose or treat patients suffering from chronic pain.
"Many people think they are kooks or drug seekers," he said.
While some forms of chronic pain, such as some types of headaches, cannot be treated with anything except drug therapy, Savu said recent advances in the field have resulted in high-tech solutions to some of the most common causes of chronic pain, such as the cauterization of nerve endings in arthritis patients.
"We can't do anything about arthritis, but we can prevent the pain signals from reaching the brain. It's an unpleasant procedure, but there is no other way we can treat this problem."
Another solution is pulsating radio-frequency treatment, which can create an electromagnetic field to prevent nerve signals from being transmitted to the brain. Savu said about 85 percent of the patients coming to his clinic for the first time have no diagnosis to explain their chronic pain. After the testing procedures are completed, only about 15 percent have not been diagnosed. These patients, he said, usually do not have nerve, joint or bone damage and can usually be assisted by using physical therapy to retrain muscles.
Savu, who is from Bucharest, Rumania, graduated from the Institute of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest. He received his internal medicine training in Morristown, N.J., at an affiliate of Columbia University in New York, and completed his anesthesiology requirements at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. His specialty is anesthesiology, with a sub- specialty in pain management.
Savu said he went into pain management at the request of fellow physicians because of the large number of patients suffering from relentless and under-treated pain.
Pain management, he explained, is a multi-disciplinary approach that touches on internal medicine, neurology, anesthesiology and rehabilitation medicine and deals with identifying pain sources and providing long-term treatment solutions.
Solutions involve a combination of medication, injections, physical rehabilitations methods and, if necessary, surgery.
Some of the most common sources of chronic pain Savu treats are back pain; pain resulting from the affects of traumatic injury; degenerative conditions and those caused by advancing age, wear and tear; shingles-related pain; headaches; and cancer-related pain.
Patients must be referred to the Pain Center by their family physician or specialist.
"Their primary care provider can provide us with valuable information about their condition, so we don't have to repeat examinations which have been done in the past," he explained.
On their first visit, patients can expect a discussion with the nursing staff and physician, which basically involves developing a patient history and brief psychological assessment.
The psychological assessment is important, he explained, because more than 80 percent of chronic pain suffers suffer from some form of anxiety and depression. These disorders can actually prevent pain management treatments from being successful.
Once these steps are taken, a treatment plan will be developed and explained in simple language to the patient. This will include a possible explanation for the pain, any need for further study or investigation, and the initial treatment plan which may be changed as test results are received On the second visit, treatment officially begins. That treatment will be adjusted according to the results of frequent reassessments depending upon the patient's response to therapy.
The Pain Center is offering the most state-of-the-art treatments currently available for chronic pain sufferers, Savu said, including nerve blocks, cauterization and radio-frequency treatment, and implantable devises such as intra-spinal pumps to deliver continuous medication and spinal stimulators.
"Sometimes complete pain relief is impossible," he said. "Even in those cases, a significant decrease in the pain level, along with an improved ability to function, will make a big difference in the quality of life. The bottom line is, no matter how severe or prolonged the suffering, there is hope for a better life."
Any physician wishing more information about the Pain Center may call the clinic at (870) 972-4360.
A bill that would protect physicians who prescribe pain medicine for patients experiencing chronic pain has survived two readings in the state senate and has been sent to the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee.
However, it's author says he might pull the bill if the Arkansas Medical Board rewrites current medical regulations to include proper pain management practices.
The bill, which is subtitled "An Act to Improve The Treatment of Chronic Intractable Pain," reinforces the existing state medical practice code, which allows for the practice of pain management in Arkansas.
The bill also does several other things. It states that physicians should view pain management as a regular part of their medical practice for all patients with chronic intractable pain, and they should do so by prescribing doses of controlled pain medications in large enough, regular doses to properly manage that pain. The bill states a physician shall not be subject to disciplinary actions by the Arkansas State Medical Board solely for prescribing controlled drugs for the relief of chronic intractable pain.
And, the bill requires the establishment of a Pain Management Review Committee to made up of five members who are board certified pain management specialists, appointed from a list provided by the Arkansas Pain Society.
The Review Committee will work with the Arkansas pain Society to develop guidelines for investigations of complaints regarding conduct in violation of the law, and all investigations by the Medical Board into the practice of pain management will be conducted by the Review Committee.
Further, the bill prohibits hospitals and health care facilities from forbidding or restricting the use of controlled drugs for persons diagnosed and treated by a physician for chronic intractable pain if the drugs are prescribed or administered by a physician having staff privileges at that hospital or health care facility.
The bill was written and is being sponsored by Sen. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, in response to requests for his help from both physicians in his district who have had their prescribing license or their license to practice suspended or revoked by the Arkansas Medical Board for practicing pain management, and from patients who cannot now receive treatment for their chronic pain conditions because of actions by the Arkansas Medical Board.
In an earlier interview, Altes explained why he was submitting the Intractable Pain Bill.
Altes said he was approached soon after his bill, was sent to committee on February 11 by Bill Trice, attorney for the Medical Board, and asked if he would consider pulling the bill if the Medical Board rewrote state medical law to mirror his bill.
"They want to regulate themselves," Altes said. "I put a little pressure on them. They are trying to figure a way out of this."
Altes said the regulations suggested by the Medical Board would have to be acceptable to him before he would pull SB 265. One thing he will insist upon he said, is a committee of pain management specialists to oversee regulation of pain management in the state, and decide what procedures must be followed by physicians practicing pain management in Arkansas.
However, Altes said he has not been given any regulations yet, and he only plans to wait about two more weeks before presenting the bill in committee. Altes said his bill has the support of the Governors office, Arkansas Right to Live and the American Medical Association, as well as physicians statewide.
"I've got the support," Altes said. "I think I can pass this bill."
Pain Management utilizes a combination of intervention or injection treatments, prescription narcotics, diet and other measures to form an overall treatment for patients who experience chronic pain from a variety of conditions. These conditions include cancer and cancer treatment, continuing complications from surgery, endometriosis and other gynecological disorders, and certain auto immune and connective tissue disorders.
The practice of pain management is recognized and legal in the state of Arkansas according to state medical practice policy. Arkansas is one of 44 states that have accepted pain management and allow it to be practiced. However, of those 44 states, only 24 have based their operating practice on the Model Guidelines accepted by the American Medical Association, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federation of State Medical Boards. Arkansas is not one of these states.
A number of states have passed intractable pain legislation in order to correct this problem, and protect physicians from suspension or penalty for practicing accepted and legal pain management. Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri are a few of the states that already have an intractable pain law. Sen. Jack Critcher, D-Grubbs, chairs the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee. He said he has received a number of emails from people urging him to support passage of the bill. None of the emails he has received so far, he said, have been against passage of the bill.
"This is a real problem," Critcher said. "They feel the bill Sen. Altes is carrying will solve this problem."
Altes would like to hear comments from physicians and citizens regarding the Intractable Pain Bill. He can be reached by email at [email protected] us.
Rep. Kevin Goss, D-Wilson, is a member of the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, which will receive the bill after it clears the Senate. Goss said he has read the bill and is familiar with it, and at this time sees nothing really wrong with it. He especially likes the fact that there are a number of safeguards placed within the bill, particularly the required formation of an oversight committee made up of pain management specialists."It's easier to police something if you are knowledgeable in the area you are policing," he said.
Goss said he wants to hear arguments on both sides of the issue before making up his mind about the bill.
He encourages his constituents to contact him at [email protected] with their views about the Intractable Pain Bill.
A local doctor will soon be able to practice her trade fully again following a second decision by the Arkansas Medical Board. According to Dr. Judith Butler, the Medical Board notified her last week she was approved to reapply for her Drug Enforcement Agency license, a license which allows physicians to prescribe certain types of medications and have hospital privileges.
Butler was called before the board early in December to face charges that included continuing juvenile patients on medication routinely prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder without seeking a second opinion each time a refill was prescribed, and prescribing diet pills.
Butler explained when she came to Arkansas from Nebraska after 17 years of practicing medicine there, she was not aware the laws governing these medications were different in Arkansas. When she was notified by the board she was not in compliance with Arkansas law, she took steps to change her practices and came into compliance.
That original communication was two years ago, and Butler said even though she has since come into compliance with those regulations, she was investigated and disciplined for that oversight. Butler's attorney, Diane Mackey of Little Rock, said the Medical Board gave no reason for the decision, but that is not uncommon. "They don't have to give a reason," she said.
Mackey said the decision to approve Butler's DEA status came following a petition filed by Butler stating the she had complied with all the Medical Board's requirements, and cited the hardship being endured by her patients because of the suspension.
"This has been emotionally and physically devastating," Butler said. "My entire life has been dedicated to study and labor directed toward caring for the sick and the poor. My staff and I were so convinced we were in line with national standards of care with 'good medicine', we really did not expect any penalty no matter who reviewed our work.
"An unfortunate complication of the board's action was the loss of admitting privileges to the hospital, so continuity of care, something extremely valuable in patients with complex health problems, was interrupted," Butler continued. "We are all relieved by the board's recommendation to allow a return to full prescribing."
While charges against Butler did not specifically mention pain management, which she practices in her clinic, Butler believes that was a major issue in the actions taken against her by the Medical Board. Butler said the issues of chronic pain management, of who should be the policeman for the problems of street drugs and how best to merge the two, remains to be solved, but that job should not be the responsibility of physicians.
"I don't believe the doctor can be the law officer of record," she said. "If he is not the patients' advocate, who will be? We have always taken reasonable measures to assure appropriate safeguards to control abuse or misuse of medications and to avoid diversion (illegal selling) of prescriptions given for the intention of relieving pain and suffering."