Pennyroyal Center taking over rehab

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer

Psychiatrists often see the same drugs paired with certain mental illnesses: patients with severe depression using cocaine, those with panic disorder becoming alcoholics, those with schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder combining narcotics, Psychology Today magazine reports.

The drug addiction can result from the mental illness. For instance, someone with bipolar disorder might smoke marijuana heavily to even out moods.

It’s a way of quelling the symptoms — “self-medicating.”

Tim Golden, spokesman for the Pennyroyal Mental Health Center, said rehab programs typically focus on the addiction alone.

“But if you don’t treat the mental side as well, then you have the recipe for another relapse,” Golden said.

To reverse this trend, this month the Pennyroyal Center took over the rehab program at Western State Hospital. 

JSMC works to address community expectations

CEO of Jennie Stuart Medical Center Eric Lee recently met with New Era Publisher Taylor W. Hayes, Editor Eli Pace and Opinion Editor Jennifer P. Brown to answer questions about the hospital and changes in health care. The interview lasted more than an hour, and in this, the second of a two-part series, the questions are primarily about the hospital and the hospital’s role in the community.

Pace: How is a community hospital fundamentally different from a university or for-profit hospital?

Lee: The biggest difference is at the board level. In a community hospital, like Jennie Stuart Medical Center, you have a strong board who is very committed to keeping its health care, the impact of that health care and the decisions about that health care, and what is available, local. Having local control and the ability of this community to self-determine where we want our health care to go, that is the single biggest advantage we have.

Hospital’s credit rating downgraded

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer

Because of decreases in business, a small revenue base and a large debt load, a rating agency downgraded the bond credit rating of Jennie Stuart Medical Center this week from BBB+ to BBB.

This means the hospital may have to pay a higher interest rate if it needs to borrow money in the near future.

But Sam Brown, Jennie Stuart’s vice president of financial services, said it won’t affect rates the hospital pays on current loans.

“It really has no impact on our financials at all, currently,” Brown said Thursday. “It’s a little disappointing that we had the downgrade, but it’s happening to a lot of hospitals around the country.”

Pennyroyal Center’s care takes teamwork

Its staff integrates physical, mental treatment on an unprecedented scale

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer

Several years ago, Shirley Porter’s depression and physical ailments were preventing her from keeping a job — and thus from affording medical treatment.

She knew she faced the risk of diabetes, and she knew her blood pressure sometimes shot up too high. But Porter, now 49, felt so lethargic some mornings that she struggled just to brush her teeth and comb her hair.

One day, she told her therapy group at the Pennyroyal Mental Health Center her head ached and her arm felt a little numb.

The Pennyroyal Center was in the early stages of developing its primary care center. A nurse checked Porter’s blood pressure. It was 217 over 135 — high enough to cause a stroke.

Blood trail

A circuitous journey from donors to patients

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer

Lisa Troutman gets an emotional lift each time she donates. She knows it saves lives, she says.

She just doesn’t know exactly how. After staff members bag up and seal her blood, Troutman never sees it again.

On the other end, patients at six Western Kentucky hospitals routinely have blood Troutman donated pumped into their veins.

They never find out where it came from, and few ever wonder where it went in between.

Read the full entry here.

Beyond duty

73-year-old doctor puts skills to work at free clinic

By Nick Tabor
New Era Staff Writer 
During his 38 years running an internal medicine practice on South Main Street, Dr. Terry Fuqua says he brought in a smaller income than most of Hopkinsville’s physicians.

He’d spend an hour to do every physical thoroughly. He eschewed high-tech tests—“gobbledygook,” he says—preferring to test patients with just his stethoscope and his five senses, unless he specifically needed the assistance of a machine. He made house calls for patients who couldn’t get to his building. Often he took patients into his private office to explain their illnesses and treatment, said Patty Gamble, Fuqua’s nurse for many years.

When patients came to him and said they couldn’t pay, he’d ask them to give him $5 a month. They could pay their full bills later, but if they coughed up just a little, he’d keep treating them. It showed they were trying.

Read the full entry here.