Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 5-4-23

Learn about Connie healthcare database

I would think it might interest your readership to know about Connie. Connie is a new Connecticut healthcare database to which all providers from podiatrists to psychiatrists, social workers to hospitals and nursing homes must begin to connect their electronic medical records next week. The fact that there has been no coverage is unsurprising. It has been word of mouth among providers although Connie has a Facebook page extolling its virtues as well as a website.

Forty-five other states already have health databases in place. As of last Friday, none of the Connecticut doctors and therapists I talked to had heard about their mandate under Connie to share their (and your) records to this database and to begin this process by May 3. This underscores the rather stealthy nature of the mandate. Our professional associations have advised us to sign in to be in compliance but not to dream of signing the 56-page Docu-Sign attachment that lands in your mailbox every day thereafter until it has been thoroughly reviewed by providers’ lawyers.

Among behavioral healthcare providers and their patients, privacy concerns are running high. While Connie’s apologists claim that HIPAA concerns will be appropriately handled, the privacy required for the handling of behavioral health and substance treatment records far exceeds HIPAA standards. Do you really want even basic progress notes from your most private and privileged conversations available in the cloud? There is a movement to have those of us who provide such treatment exempted from this database.

Supposedly these data will aid in patient care, but in fact data based such small numbers as will be gathered in the state will not be particularly strong. (It is unclear whether all the state health databases will ultimately be connected.) Better information can be gleaned through collegial interaction with other providers and the use of Cochrane Reviews and other bigger data sets. It is also claimed that this database will aid in patient care by eliminating the current Tower of Babel effect due to electronic health record systems that don’t communicate thereby forcing many providers to communicate among themselves by fax, email and telephone. Which works just fine.

Marietta Whittlesey

MS LPC

Sharon and Gallatin, N.Y.

Arbor Day tribute at North Canaan Elementary School

Thanks to Dr. Roy and all the North Canaan teachers who elevated Arbor Day at NCES to a high holiday on April 28th. The enthusiasm of the students was electric, especially the Arbor Day song and “My Roots Go Down.” The fifth grade poems were delightful and the Recycling Challenge was very well delivered.

This year’s planting of our 34th Arbor Day tree was made possible with a generous grant from the Canaan Foundation. I also wish to acknowledge the contributions of North Canaan Selectmen Craig Whiting, who trucked the tree to NCES, and Charlie Perotti, who made Town Crew foreman Bryon Carlson’s excellent backhoe skills available for tree-pit preparations.  Thanks too to Selectman Christian Allyn, and to Kyle Acuna, foreman for Toomey Tree Care, for their skilled assistance with the actual planting. Topsoil was provided by Laurelbrook Natural Resources and Tallon Lumber provided the bark mulch.

This year’s catalpa will become a large tree with heart-shaped leaves that will emerge soon and expand to 7-12 inches. Its most notable feature will be the 6-inch clusters of blossoms that appear in June to embellish the campus around graduation. That is why historically catalpas were often planted on campuses. The tree’s 10-20 inch seed beans will form in fall and persist through winter to open in spring. This fifth grade “Class of ‘26” tree is 2 inches in diameter at planting. Canaan’s Champion Catalpa is 61 inches in diameter and is estimated to be 150 years old.

There is more that could be done to enhance the NCES Children’s Arboretum as an educational resource. This includes updating Robin Cockerline’s arboretum map and its data, providing Class Tree species identification signs, developing a Canaan Champion Tree Calendar, etc. Ideas are welcome.

Tom Zetterstrom

North Canaan
Beautification
Committee

North Canaan

Just Another Thursday in the U.S.

Odd going-ons have become the ordinary—a former President indicted, the daily mass shootings, FDA approval questioned by a Texas judge without knowledge or evidentiary fact, a Supreme Court Justice not financially disclosing hundreds-of-thousands $ received. What would have been shocking to me and the public at large in prior days is just another Thursday in America.

Tap into the internet, turn on the TV, read your New York Times, New York Post  and the headlines are rife with coverage of the tales of the day — tales of law and order discarded, disclosures of national security documents, violent perpetrators laden with praise and promise of pardon, women endangered, killed by the legislative whims of white men in red states.

Negative gravitational pull makes rising above it all a near impossibility.

An Australian Sheepdog hoofed his way across 150 miles of ice to a place where the locals with good ‘ole American goodwill traced his home, his family, and returned him by cooperative ingenuity. A doctoral student has devised a low-cost plastic window with easy install to replace windows bombed and gunned down across Ukraine. Insulin prices are down. Overall unemployment in the US is 3.5%, Black unemployment is at 5% after hovering at 17% during Covid. The pay of the lowest wage earners in the U.S. is up 7%. Two young Black state legislators ousted for supporting protests against mass gun violence are reinstated in Tennessee. In prior days tales of good news: generosity, local Samaritans, innovations were not out of place in the news — we cheered rescuers, applauded helping hands, admired a chef traveling with volunteers, food and equipment to feed the distraught, the endangered, the survivors at sites of disaster. High performance news was headline news.

Today I had to go to the Good News Network to find an actual listing of this week’s good news.

Some prominent news agency have good news segments accessible on line but only when the ask includes good — not just news.

Irish headlines are Biden Joy, U.S. headlines are Marjorie Taylor Green defending the source of the recent national security leak as “a white, male, Christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.” Unspoken by Green is the endangerment/death to 1000’s of civilians in Ukraine in war as well as their military by this leak. Whistled out of New York City when she went to the courthouse to cheer on Trump, Green possesses high regard for doing violence unto others — she seems to be casting her own do unto others golden rule.

In the U.S., Easter week ends in a dense fog of falsity and fraud. Negative gravitational pull is undaunted. I have however found a source of good news on line — ask for good news. Perhaps soon noteworthy coverage of human triumph, human honor, and human goodness will once again fill columns, segments, and headlines.

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” 

Napoleon Bonaparte

Kathy Herald-Marlowe

Sharon