Public, Private Collaboration Announced for UAMS Northwest
A public and private collaboration was announced to help fund a physical therapy academic program, an internal medicine residency and related programs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Northwest campus in Fayetteville.
UAMS officials were joined at its regional campus by supporters and state legislators to celebrate more than $2 million total in gifts from individuals and foundations as well as economic development grants supported by area legislators. The funding is being used for renovation and construction of facilities as well as program support.
The grants were awarded to UAMS by the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District and the Western Arkansas Planning and Development District from surplus state funds allocated to the districts this year by the state Legislature.
A physical therapy clinic, to open in late 2014, is being built at UAMS Northwest, where faculty therapists will provide care for patients and eventually offer hands-on clinical experiences for UAMS physical therapy students in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program. The program expects to welcome its first 24 students in 2015. It is part of the UAMS College of Health Professions and is the first UAMS academic program to be housed solely on its Fayetteville campus.
The three-year postgraduate internal medicine residency program at UAMS Northwest will increase the number of new physicians starting their careers in the state. The program, now working toward accreditation, hopes to admit its first group of eight physicians in July 2015.
The internal medicine residency program will have 24 total residents — admitting eight per year — who will serve in five hospital systems across the region. They will join UAMS family medicine, pharmacy and psychiatry residents already completing their training in northwest Arkansas.
In addition, some of the grant funding will be used to create a sports medicine fellowship at UAMS Northwest to give physicians specialized training in physical fitness, treatment and prevention of injuries related to sports and exercise.
About 10,000 square feet on the UAMS Northwest campus is being renovated for teaching and administrative space for the physical therapy program. Students will take advantage of existing UAMS Northwest resources, such as the simulation lab for exercises involving simulated patients. The students also will participate in team-based multi-disciplinary opportunities where they will learn alongside students from the other programs at UAMS Northwest.
Once the three-year physical therapy program is at full enrollment, 72 students in 2018, annual revenue from tuition and the faculty-run clinic is expected to cover operational expenses.
NARMC Welcomes New Director of Cardiac Rehabilitation
North Arkansas Regional Medical Center proudly announces that Jean Marie Mulloy, APRN has accepted the position of Director of Cardiac Rehabilitation.
Mrs. Mulloy comes to NARMC from Baptist Health Rural Health Clinic in Clarendon/Stuttgart, AR. She was also previously employed at Hospice Home Care of AR and XL Health in Baltimore, MD.
Mrs. Mulloy has a Masters in Science of Nursing and is a Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner.
Mrs. Mulloy’s associations and accomplishments include; Alumni Association of University of Central Arkansas (UCA), American Association of Nurse Practitioner, Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society of Nursing, Cum Laude Undergraduate (UCA), and Program Scholar in the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at Arkansas State University.
Arkansas Mutual Insurance Company Funds Annual Award At UAMS
An annual $10,000 award has been created by Arkansas Mutual Insurance Company and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) to be given to a third-year medical student with an interest in rural primary care. The award, called the Arkansas Mutual Medical Student Award, will first be awarded this summer.
The award will go to a third-year medical student with financial need that was born, raised or otherwise considered to be “from” Arkansas. The student will have expressed an interest in rural medicine and primary care, and also will have demonstrated an ability to excel in patient communication and patient- and family-centered care. The recipient of the award will be selected in compliance with the policies of UAMS and the College of Medicine.
Arkansas Mutual Insurance Company, a nonprofit organization, is the only medical liability insurance provider that is headquartered in Arkansas and dedicated to serving only Arkansas-based medical professionals. Founded in 2008, Arkansas Mutual is owned and governed by its physician policyholders. For more information go to www.arkansasmutual.com.
One in 65 Arkansas Children Has Autism Spectrum Disorder
One in 65 Arkansas children has been identified as having Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), according to a new report by the Arkansas Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (AR ADDM) Program of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).
The new Arkansas numbers are the first since a 2002 count and are part of national data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was gathered from the national ADDM network. The 2002 count estimated that one in 145 Arkansas children were identified with autism.
The new state estimate is based on information collected from health and special education records of children who were 8 years old and living in Arkansas in 2010. The Arkansas monitoring program, in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Health, is one of only two sites in the ADDM Network to track autism in an entire state and the only site that continues to do so.
The AR ADDM data found that boys are four times more likely to be identified with autism than girls. Also, white children are more likely to be identified with ASD than black or Hispanic children, and 23 percent of children identified with autism had not yet been classified as having it by a community health care or education provider.
UAMS pediatricians treat children with ASD at the UAMS Dennis Developmental Center.
Based on the data, Arkansas already is taking action to allocate increased funding for autism services, reviewing curriculum changes to meet the needs of students with autism, offering a graduate level autism curriculum for students seeking a master’s degree in special education and certification in behavioral analysis. The state also is engaged in initiatives to improve screening for autism and support for parents, educators, law enforcement and mental health professionals.
AR ADDM relies on close collaboration with more than 250 education and health care providers throughout Arkansas to obtain complete and accurate data. The statewide monitoring program covers the second-largest population base and the largest geographic area in the national network. Research team members in some cases must travel more than 500 miles to visit data sources.
UAMS First in State with Ultra-Rapid Diagnostic Device and Automation Tool
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) recently became the first hospital in Arkansas to acquire a breakthrough device that can identify microorganisms in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional diagnostic methods.
The recent purchase of a matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer, or MALDI-TOF, is making obsolete some age-old clinical microbiology lab techniques at UAMS, said Eric Rosenbaum, M.D., M.P.H., medical director of the UAMS Clinical Microbiology Laboratory.
UAMS is also the first in Arkansas to purchase a companion to the MALDI-TOF, called the PreviIsola, Rosenbaum said. This new tool introduces lab automation into UAMS’ microbiology laboratory, an area that has been difficult to automate.
The MALDI-TOF can identify 192 bacterial colonies within minutes. That compares to hours and often days using conventional analytic methods that are standard in the majority of laboratories around the world.
MALDI-TOF is a nearly instantaneous one-step process that eliminates the time-consuming tasks of tracking how bacteria colonies metabolize various sugars or how well a bacteria colony grows on different types of media.
The new device allows a laboratory analyst to simply gather a small amount of a bacterial colony, place it on a slide, and cover the colony with a protective matrix compound. After the slide is loaded into the MALDI-TOF instrument, a laser is fired at the sample, releasing a plume of ionized particles from the specimen that travels through a time-of-flight (TOF) chamber until the particles reach a sensor. Each bacterium, yeast, and fungus analyzed produces a unique spectral “fingerprint” on the sensor that is matched to a database. The result is instant identification.
In addition to helping UAMS, the MALDI-TOF device will be offered as a diagnostic service and resource for other Arkansas hospitals, serving as an alternative to the large commercial laboratories in other states.
Dr. Angela Green Promoted to Vice President/Performance Improvement at ACH
Angela Green, PhD, APRN, NNP-BC, has been promoted to vice president of Performance Improvement at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH), according to ACH Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jay Deshpande.
Green joined ACH in 1998 as an advanced nurse practitioner in the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU). Recently, she served as interim senior vice president/chief nursing officer. Prior to the interim CNO position, she served as director of Professional Practice, where she provided leadership for professional nursing practice, including clinical education, nursing research, and evidence-based practice.
Green holds the John Boyd Family Endowed Chair in Pediatric Nursing.
A native of Daphne, Ala., Green received her bachelor of science in nursing from Auburn University, master of science in nursing from the University of South Alabama, and doctor of philosophy from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She is nationally certified as a neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP-BC).
