Arkansas Blog

The 2nd link takes you to the Berry/Snyder site also.

Second link now fixed.

Thanks to David Koons story and bravo to "Will" for acting like all informed adults should.

If only more American children had the guts and gumption of Will to truly exercise their freedoms rather than go along with the mindless drudges and robotic taskmasters. In a world of ugly pseudo-Americans, it's great to see the beauty in one young man's soul as he practices what America is really about.

It's sad when students are smarter than the teacher.

Progressive blog supporting Snyder and Berry? Supporting this sham of a health care bill?

A lot of of things may be debatable on whether or not one is progressive... But, you are absolutely not progressive if you vote to support the eFFing Stupak anti woman's health amendment! (Which all AR Representatives voted for).

Let the band stay home.

I went to Dollarway with my elementary kids when our school had made it to a new level in state playoffs. Kid #1 on team. Kid #2 ordered not to leave my side.

all during game very, very large, attractive black man, kinda stood out because he was wearing a London Fog style raincoat, kept coming over to our side to retrieve his Dollarway kids.

turns out he was the principal or superintendent, I forget. Kids had guns. I saw them. My football stadium neighbors saw them. This was a good 10 years ago.

Its a whole new world out there, and kids who go to school here,as well as PA, I can easily guess, arent ready for it. Keep the band safe and at home, especially in these crazy times.

that just makes me think how many horrors hadn't happened ten years ago. Dear Lord. how the hell do we endure, just tie a knot and hang in there and pray a lot?

As usual, the paper pushers keep their jobs (UAMS). Ark. Childrens', at great expense, sent several people to Disney to learn how to teach the "jump the river" propaganda and morale dropped precipitously after the mandatory in-services were held to pass on the "smile, be happy employees" indoctrination.

The smile-be-happy philosophy rather than actual care is being pushed in hospitals for workers as well as patients. Patients are told to be happy with jalopeno-flavored KY jellly for their rectal exams. Nurses are told they should be happy to get overtime pay after their 12-hour shifts. To save hospital costs, pharmacists are supervising more numbers of high-school non-graduates filling critical prescriptions and killing patients. In health care, the direct-care proportion to administrative staff has drastically been upended over the last decade of insurance company control.

To make money, UAMS is continuing its contract with the dysfunctional billing company by double-billing patients, charging non-insurance patients exorbitant rates, and charging people for services never provided. The Arkansas legislators who oversee this crime are only satisfied with the profit, not the care. They tell their voters that the new huge UAMS buildings are improvement for health of Arkansans, but they are only rooms for more high-priced pencil-pushers.

The for-profit health insurance industrial complex has destroyed any real health care in this country. They have turned hospitals into profit centers not care-givers.

Yossarian, I think it's more a case of UAMS outgrowing itself and not knowing what to do to manage itself now. I guess that's what you just said, hm.

I dont know anything about the smile-be happy philosophy but anything that involves road trips of committees who are probably told to sit in a circle and play games like at a tupperware party never fixed anything and has driven some good people crazy.

But I do know this about UAMS, having been a patient there: The doctors,nurses, pharmacists, etc. care. They do the best they can with understaffed and sometimes extremely undertrained employees. But they care. often the doctors are expected to provide coverage for uams and the VA simultaneously, which is hard to do unless Mickey Mouse taught them how. The staff is not to blame in any way. They do care. they may get too frustrated at not being able to do their jobs properly and leave, but thats because they care too and they cant stand trying to take care of patients when they know they are in way over their heads as far as their workloads.

In other wacky news...hold your breath....FOX News actually FACT CHECKS Sarah Palin...

Palin gets it soooo Wrong, again.

on blue click.

Tina Yes, the staff cares, but the administration doesn't. Customer relations rather than patient care is the rule at UAMS. The "smile, be happy, trust the administration" courses are mandatory, but the administrators don't trust the staff. Profit is first and employees are deficits. Lab work done at one division of UAMS is not available at other divisions because of lousy computer programming, resulting in more sticks and more medical costs and probably some kind of kickback to the hospital board of directors. There are many other examples where the contracted (wonders of private enterprise) services make a profit on UAMS inefficiencies. Term-limited legislators lack the knowledge and courage to take on the well-financed UAMS medical lobbyists. Your examples of good care there are exceptions. I know, I work there.

Yes, UAMS has outgrown itself. It is no longer a hospital that takes care of people. It is a bureaucracy that populates offices.

Yossarian (Lord, that's a mouthful ;), I do know what you mean.

I wonder how much UAMS spends on overtime salary for nurses. i had surgery there a few years ago and my preop nurse got a call and said sure, she'd come work in ICU when she got off at 3 or whatever. since she took the call in my little room, I asked her if she did that often, and if it wasn't hard on her, since she had already mentioned having 3 teenagers, and she said quite a bit, because the money was so good.

i guess they were too busy, at that time anyway, addressing customer relations instead of hiring enough nurses to avoid paying overtime every single day.

If you stick one of my family members a whole bunch of times and then you lose my blood sample, CUSTOMER RELATIONS has just gone to hell in a handbasket and I would probably squawk good and loud and long about it. I always have good veins. lose mine, minor squawking, unless you did it every time.

I remember that dealign with billing dept and anything like that -- do they hire these people off the streets fresh every day?? -- was much more painful than blood draws anyway. Good Lord. But that was 10 years ago, so I really can't say today. If you work there, I guess you know.

i do know that its a shame that we are losing doctors like (spelling ?) Dr. Al-Mefty. This shouldnt happen because he's unhappy here, only if he feels he can do more and help more people somewhere else. and even then, we'd like to keep him. God only knows what's behind that.