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Mike Theisen, Administrator

May 4, 2001
revised January 22, 2002

Current News and Personal Opinion,  is produced as a volunteer service for Minnesota PA's by 
John Hardman, RPA-C

Legislature Makes Changes In Frequency of Supervisory Review

Your state chapter of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, the Minnesota Academy of Physician Assistants, is always working on your behalf. You may be surprised to know that dedicated volunteers, such as Bev Kimball, of Andover Minnesota, have spent countless hours assuring that legislation which regulates how you do your job, is best serving the people of Minnesota, you as the provider, and your supervising Physician.

Most recently, legislation was passed that allows for weekly review of PA’s activities, which includes prescriptive practice, dispensing and administering of legend and controlled drugs and medical devices. No longer are daily retrospective reviews needed, and the various interpretations of what that actually meant. The law now states simply that the review should be outlined in the supervisory agreement, and performed at least weekly. The specifics of the review are between the physician and the PA based on what is prudent and necessary on an individual basis.

The effective date of this change is August 1, 2001. According to Bev Kimball, our Legislative and Reimbursement Chair, making changes in our supervisory agreements, this renewal cycle beginning July1^st, would be appropriate.

If you need more help with your individual supervisory agreement, you may contact Bev at, Bkim8905@aol.com.

MAPA Celebrates 25^th Anniversary!

If you failed to attend the recent 25^th Anniversary Celebration of MAPA, at the Spring CME this past April 20, in Minnetonka, then you owe it to yourself to try to attend the Fall CME, September 27-29, 2001, at the Kahler Grand Hotel, in Rochester, Minnesota. You will have an opportunity to attend well-planned CME sessions, have fun with family and colleagues and get to see a beautiful part of Minnesota at the peak of fall colors. I am sure that anniversary celebrations will continue throughout the remainder of this our 25^th year as an academy. My latest communication with Walt Rothwell, President-Elect, has revealed that an expanded sequel to his slide show is planned.

AAPA HOD Annual Meeting

Your representatives to the AAPA HOD will meet this summer at Anaheim, California, beginning May 26, 2001. If you wish to contact them regarding your beliefs concerning resolutions, you may reach them via email at, clungrrz@fairview.org for Cindy Lundgren, and Bkim8905@aol.com for Bev Kimball.

Patient Education or Cyberchondriacs?

A recent Harris Poll, at: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=229 titled, Cyberchondriacs Update, by Humphrey Taylor, Chairman of The Harris Poll, reports that almost 100 million people look for health information online. On average, they do so three times a month, and most do so using a portal or search engine.

Interesting to me, was the increase in numbers of persons online looking for health information. In June of 1998, 38% of all adults were online from home, office, school, library or other location. Of these, 71% looked for health information. This translates into 54 million persons looking for online health care information. In March of 2001, 63% of adults were online, and 75% of them were looking for health information, which is 97 million people looking for health care information online, three or more times per month!

The question I ask myself is, “what am I doing about this?” Do the patients that I see, know where to go to get reliable information? Is it easy to find? Do they feel comfortable discussing these sources with me? Do I know who likes to use online sources and who does not?

I would like to suggest, that as PA’s, we consider using our patient education skills that we are known for, and apply them to helping patients get the best information available from a variety of sources, including the office visit, as well as, online sources.

A few online sources for patient education that I often refer to are:

NutritionNewsFocus.com at:  http://www.nutritionnewsfocus.com/cgi-bin/birdcast.cgi. Which is a link to a page for referring patients or anyone else. Here you can recommend a daily email be sent regarding a current topic on a nutrition issue that usually has been in the recent popular press, or you may wish to refer them to the site’s main page at: http://www.nutritionnewsfocus.com/.

The Center for Disease Control, maintains a site for international travel that I often refer patients to regarding the latest immunization requirements for travel to specific regions and countries, at: http://www.cdc.gov/travel

The American Heart Association site at: http://www.americanheart.org/ ,  contains many links for your patients to learn about heart disease, stroke and prevention.

Medem is a service for setting up a patient education page, which was endorsed by AAPA. I set this up, but have to admit it is still not a frequent source that I refer to. My personal page is located at: http://www.jhardmanpa.medem.com/ .

CBS Health Watch from Medscape, is a new version of a trusted source of good medical information for professionals as well as the consumer or patient. The URL for the homepage is: http://healthwatch.medscape.com/homepage .

So there you have it for now. A few good references for your patients to look up those topics that interest them. Remember that you are still the best source of information because of your unique ability to put it all in perspective for your patient.

If you have any suggestions of your own, for patient education sites, then forward your suggestions to me and I will follow up in a future article.

To Contact the author regarding this article, email jhardman@charter.net.