Your pop addiction producing profound benefits....Go Flagship!
- Thread starter BurninDownTheCouch
- Start date
Relax Tony. Just pop the top on a can of Mountain Dew with the Pop Tax symbol stamped on it and enjoy it knowing that your penny is going to benefit one of the worlds best hospitals.
MORGANTOWN — For WVU Medicine, the focus on increasing the quality of care for the state's patients and research into addressing health issues affecting the people of West Virginia have paid off as the institute was recently recognized by Newsweek as being among the world's best hospitals.
The weekly magazine selected medical centers in 11 countries for its World’s Best Hospitals 2019 ranking lists. These included Canada, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia and Israel in addition to the United States. These were selected mainly on standard of living, life expectancy, population size, number of hospitals, and data availability.
The hospitals themselves chosen by Newsweek were selected based on recommendations from medical experts, results from patient surveys, and medical key performance indicators.
"Our strategy is to provide the best quality and most comprehensive care to the people of West Virginia so they never have to leave the state to receive the care they need," said Albert Wright Jr., president and CEO of the WVU Medicine West Virginia University Health System and West Virginia University Hospitals. "We have been making great progress in this over the past few years, and to have our health system recognized by Newsweek as one of the best in the world validates our strategy."
Possibly the most significant breakthrough there in recent memory came last October as Judi Polak became the first patient to undergo a new treatment for Alzheimer's disease during a clinical trial.
WVU Medicine collaborated with Israeli medical technology company INSIGHTEC to pioneer the new treatment in which ultrasound waves were focused through a specialized helmet with more than 1,000 probes targeting a precise spot in the brain.
This procedure opened up the brain-blood barrier, which is a nearly impenetrable shield between the brain’s blood vessels and cells that make up brain tissue.
With this method, WVU Medicine could target the hippocampus and the memory and cognitive centers of the brain that are impacted by plaques found in patients with Alzheimer’s. The plaques in this case are clusters of proteins that accumulate and they block-up the brain’s connectivity and prior studies showed they could be cleared with ultrasound tech.
WVU Medicine is also researching more effective cancer treatments. Among these is a new drug developed on campus called Vitrakvi, known generically as larotrectinib. This is designed to treat patients whose cancers have a specific genetic feature or biomarkers across different types of tumors rather than the location in the body where the tumor originated.
Vitrakvi is only the second example of a cancer treatment the Food and Drug Administration has approved based on a common biomarker. Because this treatment is designed to target a cancer gene rather than a specific type of cancer, this could be the beginning of a new paradigm in how cancer is treated to offer alternatives to chemotherapy.
At the Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, researchers are developing new ways to address the opioid crisis by combining the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology and technology to better understand how addiction works so it can be treated appropriately.
A tangible example of this is the development of a tiny pellet that can be inserted in the spine of patients with chronic pain. This pellet contains pain killers that can be gradually released over the course of a year that helps the patient while avoiding risky opioid prescriptions.
These are just a few examples of the work being pursued by the physicians and staff at the institute.
The designation by Newsweek wasn't WVU Medicine's first major splash among national rankings.
Last August, the system's Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown made three national rankings by U.S. News & World Report— 22nd in urology, 28th in diabetes and endocrinology, and 38th in gynecology.
On top of that, Ruby Memorial was classified as High Performing in the specialties of cancer, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopaedics and pulmonology — all in addition to being ranked as the best hospital in West Virginia.
A month before that, WVU Medicine Children's received its first ever national ranking from U.S. News achieving 42nd place for pediatric urology.
"We've been making gigantic progress," WVU President Dr. Gordon Gee said. "We went out and, in a very purposeful way, brought in a lot of talent over the last 3-4 years. We've been very focused on building programs that are worthy of West Virginia but also of great renown. It takes a little while for people to catch up with us because we've been moving so fast."
Gee said that universities and hospitals have in the past fallen into the habit of chasing rankings just for the sake of it and effectively end up teaching to standardized tests to do so. That being said, he advocated for the university being the best resource it can be to serve the people of the state.
"It we do that, the rankings— some silliy, others important— will follow, but for the right reasons," Gee said while praising the strides taken by WVU Medicine's Cancer Center and Heart & Vascular Institute. "They're competitive with almost anyone in the country and the world. I would put it up against anyone, anyone from Tokyo to Tangiers."
Despite all of its recent achievements, WVU Medicine isn't showing signs of slowing down. This can be seen through all the construction projects going on around its campus. The WVU Cancer Center recently finished renovations to accommodate more patients while the Rockefeller Neurosciences Center is undergoing upgrades of its own to be even more effective while construction work continues on a new tower which will house the children's hospital when it's ready.
There's even a new parking lot under construction off Willowdale Road to make room in view of the increased patient visits and staff hired.
As for programs, Wright said the hospital will even do its first heart transplant later this year.
https://www.wvnews.com/morgantownne...cle_0663da39-1f03-5590-93cf-39a53bbe3388.html
They could if only Doctine Dan would volunteer to be the test patient.
Congratulations, Buzztard! Newsweek, a liberal rag, ranks Ruby No. 159! It's just a shame that almost everybody I know in the Kanawha Valley and South of here, who has a possibly terminal medical condition, goes out of state to the Cleveland Clinic, etc.
I wouldn't let those clowns work on a hangnail up there...If the Reds cause me to have a heart attack please get me to UK, OSU or Cleveland Clinic.
At one time, Charleston Area Medical Center's cardiac unit had a good reputation, but I'm not sure that it still does.
My mother was diagnosed with ocular melanoma last fall. Her options were Cleveland, Philadelphia, or WVU Medicine's Eye Institute. She chose the latter. Her radiation treatment took a week and most of her care givers were graduates of the WVU Medical School which benefits from the pop tax. Six months later she is cancer free and her vision is normal again. They are doing wonderful things up there.........
