Daily Rounds: Another Mass. Hospital For Sale; Fighting Food Ignorance; Forgetting As Illness; Employers Bailing On Insurance

Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton to be sold to bigger health care organization | masslive.com "Hospital officials said Wednesday that they are in active discussions with Baystate Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Vanguard Health Systems, a Tennessee-based organization, about such a merger. Cooley Dickinson’s board of trustees expects to announce its final decision at the end of November, according to Diane Cutillo, the hospital’s senior director of public affairs." (MassLive.com)

Food's New Foot Soldiers - NYTimes.com "FoodCorps, which started last week, is symbolic of just what we need: a national service program that aims to improve nutrition education for children, develop school gardening projects and change what’s being served on school lunch trays. I’ve been looking forward to this for months, because it’s such an up: 50 new foot soldiers in the war against ignorance in food. The service members, most of them in their 20s, just went to work at 41 sites in 10 states, from Maine to Oregon and Michigan to Mississippi. (FoodCorps concentrates on communities with high rates of childhood obesity or limited access to healthy food, though these days every state has communities like that..." (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com) When Forgetfulness Needs Medical Attention : Shots - Health Blog : NPR "Q: What are some early signs of the disease?Stern: Early onset and later onset Alzheimer's are very similar in terms of what's going on in the brain. The most striking initial problem is one of learning new information: for example, being told something and an hour later forgetting it completely. The brain's ability to store something new is hurt because parts of the brain responsible for that storage are damaged. Whether you read it, hear it on the radio — anything that you have experienced may not have a way to stay in brain. But memories for things that happened long ago are for the most part completely intact.
Another symptom is the inability to come up with correct word for something. It's that tip-of-the tongue feeling. Other problems that can exist early on include planning and organization and multitasking. Also there can be issues with spatial functioning, judging distance, and perceiving visual information. But every case of Alzheimer's is unique and individualized." (npr.org)

Some employers may end health coverage, accept penalties - The Boston Globe "Nearly one of every 10 mid-size or large employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014, according to a benefits consultant’s survey.In the survey, completed last month, Towers Watson also found that an additional 20 percent of the companies are unsure what they will do." (boston.com)