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Proud Member of the ND Colorectal Cancer Roundtable
CHI St. Alexius Health is a proud member of the North Dakota Colorectal Cancer Roundtable, a 2020 80% in Every Community National Achievement Award Honoree. North Dakota designated this week as Colorectal Cancer Awareness Week, as we celebrate the North Dakota Colorectal Cancer Roundtable national award and bring CRC screening back into focus in this new pandemic environment.
Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. when men and women are combined, yet it can often be prevented or detected at an early stage. But there is good news: the number of deaths from colorectal cancer has been dropping in both men and women for several decades. One reason, researchers say, is the use of screening colonoscopies to remove colorectal polyps before they develop into cancers, or find cancers earlier when the disease is easier to treat. Another factor is that treatment for colorectal cancer has improved.
CHI St. Alexius and Bismarck nurses agree on contract
Bismarck nurses and CHI St. Alexius Health Bismarck Medical Center have agreed on a contract after months of negotiation. Nurses negotiated the right to adjust patient assignments, the ability to pause new patient admissions to a unit if nurses feel they need time to catch up and minimum staffing levels in the emergency department, according to a news release from the Minnesota Nurses Association.
FDA grants authorization of convalescent plasma treatments
After months of clinical trials by the Mayo Clinic, the FDA has granted emergency authorization of convalescent plasma treatments for COVID-19 patients. However, health care experts say there's still a lot they don't know about it. Experts weigh in on FDA authorization of plasma treatments for COVID patients. Centers like Vitalant have been collecting COVID-19 convalescent plasma throughout the pandemic to be used in antibody treatments.
Returning to school sleep schedules
In today’s Your Health First: After sleeping in and staying up late all summer, it’s time for kids to get back on a routine sleep schedule. CHI St. Alexius Nurse Practitioner Kristy Weigum says it’s best to do it gradually, rather than making an abrupt change the night before school starts. If school is still a week out in your household, she says now’s the time to start.
Bismarck Hospitals Have Plenty of COVID Capacity
As the number of active coronavirus cases tends up, some are wondering if North Dakota can handle a potential increase in hospitalizations. KX News sat down with leaders of both health systems, locally, to separate fact from fiction. We’ve all see the national reports of full or overcrowded hospitals across the entire country, we’ve even gotten stories like that here from viewers like you here at KX. So what is the truth regarding the state of hospitalizations in the Bismarck-Mandan area? Well, we went to the two largest providers here to get that answer.
Bismarck staff create phone charger system
The last thing most people probably think of when heading to the hospital is grabbing a phone charger. So two CHI St. Alexius employees in Bismarck created a way to keep patients connected to the outside world. Carolyn Carpenter and JoAnn Mahlmann saw a need as the pandemic began and visitation became restricted. So Carpenter reached out to a few phone companies and one company in California donated 100 phone chargers to help out. After several months of going through the legal hoops to implement the system today, it launched.
Providers weigh in on the safety of returning to school
It’s almost back-to-school time already. And, while school districts work on their individual restart plans, one thing is certain - it’ll look different this year. Doctors say that school-aged children are less prone to serious complications and hospitalizations from coronavirus than adults are. However, parents and students might still have some concerns. Doctors say there are ways to prepare at home to help minimize risk at school. This is how schools were before the pandemic. Now, with students preparing to return to school in the fall, we don’t know yet what it will look like.
CHI St. Alexius Health purchases robot to assist in Total Knee Replacements
CHI St. Alexius Health and The Bone & Joint Center are excited to offer Zimmer Biomet’s ROSA® Knee System, a robotically-assisted surgical system designed to help perform total knee replacement surgery. Close to 800,000 knee replacement surgeries are done every year in the United States. The ROSA robot builds a virtual model of the patient’s knee allowing the surgeon to operate with even more precision. For the patient that means faster recovery, less pain and improved mobility.
