Mark Ray

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, home infusion reimbursement rates weren't top of mind for Varner R. Richards, Pharm.D., CEO/owner of Columbia, S.C.-based Intramed Plus. Instead, he focused on how his infusion pharmacy could help local hospitals move patients home for post-acute infusion therapy.

With apologies to poet Robert Burns, the best-laid estate plans of women and men sometimes go awry.

Consider the friend of estate attorney Roz Carothers' client. The woman, a single parent, left behind a detailed estate plan, but also left behind a problem: after she died, the guardian she'd named for her teenage daughter declined to serve.

Robeson County, North Carolina, ranks dead last among the Tar Heel State’s 100 counties for health outcomes and health factors like smoking and obesity. Diabetes, cancer, poverty and a lack of local medical specialists make it hard for the rural county’s residents to maintain and improve their health. But the situation is slowly improving, thanks to Marshirl Locklear.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been deadly and disruptive. It's also been a real-world test of the best flu prevention strategies. Thanks to masking, social distancing, limited travel and the closure of schools, businesses and entertainment venues, the 2020-2021 flu season was extremely mild both in the United States and globally.

Hospitals should be places of healing, but far too often, patients develop infections before they can be discharged. In fact, hospital-acquired infections are among the most common hospital-related complications, affecting 1 in 25 patients, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. And they're largely preventable.

Ancillary services have long been a popular way to increase revenue for physician practices. In fact, 82% of practices offer at least one ancillary service. Such services account for 11% of revenue for both internal and family medicine practices, according to Medical Economics ' 92nd Physician Report.

From apples that are slightly dated to items returned by members, Costco takes steps to keep perfectly usable products out of local landfills. Through partnerships with various groups, these goods end up in needy communities where they’re put to good use.

If you hate Zoom meetings, imagine how Heidi Carles, 56, of Bernville, Pa., feels. Carles, an auction lead, cataloger and photographer for an online auction company, has hearing loss, which makes videoconferencing challenging at best. Early in the pandemic, Carles often struggled during calls that included dozens of co-workers. Between the crosstalk and background noise, she found them exhausting and frustrating.

Are you a comfort giver or a flu giver? That’s the question the UK’s South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust recently posed in a series of advertisements targeting its employees. In one advert, an elderly woman reaches out to a nurse, who shares a smile — and perhaps the flu virus. In another, a boy tightly hugs the neck of a caregiver who may well be infected even though she shows no symptoms.

He’s been called Patient Zero, but his real name was Emile Ouamouno. He was two years old, he lived in the Guinean farming village of Meliandou and he loved listening to his family’s bright red portable radio. Emile died in December 2013, the first victim of an Ebola outbreak that would quickly spread across Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries in 2014. Ebola eventually claimed 11,325 victims, including Emile’s mother, grandmother and three-year-old sister, all of whom died within a month of the young boy.

Despite the many challenges of the past year, Autumn Dodson was an unstoppable force. More or less simultaneously, she wrote the dissertation for her Doctor of Education at Brenau University and a children’s book, My Teacher Looks Like Me. Both explore the importance of having diverse teachers in the classroom.

In a 1996 robbery gone wrong, jewelry store owner Mark Chilutti lost the use of his legs. In 2015, a tragic auto accident made TOPGUN instructor Buddy Marshall a quadriplegic.
But disability isn’t the only thing that connects the two men’s stories.

In April 2020, Eleanor Howland moved into an independent living apartment at Concordia Village of Tampa. She barely left it until July. The continuous care community went on lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, so Howland spent months isolated from staff and neighbors she'd never even met.

Prostate cancer grows so slowly in some men that doctors often recommend active surveillance or watchful waiting instead of more aggressive treatment. In fact, one study from the Johns Hopkins Active Surveillance Program found that less than 1% of men with low-risk prostate cancer developed metastatic disease after 15 years of active surveillance. But if prostate cancer grows slowly, the same can’t be said for research into the disease.

Joel Sartore (Eagle Class of 1977) is an overachiever. Like most concerned citizens, he wants to save the whales and the giant pandas. But he also wants to save the Florida grasshopper sparrow. And the Colombian spider monkey. And the hellbender. And even the homely Sunda pangolin, which looks like a dinosaur that didn’t get the memo about extinction.