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Yale-New Haven Hospital bans smoking on grounds 

Yale-New Haven Hospital would like to make the city sidewalks around its buildings smoke-free, and the Board of Aldermen is considering the idea.

If the proposal, which was given approval by the aldermen's Human Services Committee earlier this month, passes the full board in January, the hospital will paint signs on the sidewalks outside its buildings designating the area a smoke-free zone. The sidewalks are mostly along York and Cedar streets, South Frontage Road and Howard Avenue.

In the meantime, beginning Thursday, smoking will be banned on all hospital grounds, both inside and out. The policy will mean the elimination of designated smoking areas, such as on Cedar Street and in a glassed-in smoking room just outside the hospital's main entrance on York Street. The Air Rights Garage also will be smoke-free.

Kevin Myatt, senior vice president of human resources, said the ban is a logical next step to keeping patients, staff and visitors healthy.

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• Authority: No smoking with oxygen  

A fire in September that resulted in third-degree burns to a Fairview Hills resident has led the Altoona Housing Authority to formally prohibit smoking in rooms containing equipment for supplemental oxygen.

Several residents complained to Executive Director Cheryl Johns that the prohibition would be unfair, but none showed up at the recent meeting where the board adopted the policy.

The authority has the right to adopt the policy to protect itself from lawsuits, solicitor Bill Haberstroh said.

The Fairview Hills woman was smoking in bed while inhaling oxygen, with an ashtray on the mattress, according to city fire marshal Randy Isenberg. . . .

The authority evicted her after the fire, but several other residents who use supplemental oxygen continued to smoke in their apartments, according to Johns. . . .

The authority, which is writing the prohibition into leases, will evict violators immediately for one transgression.

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• Two Hospitals Seek to Extend Smoking Bans to Cover Public Property  

WHILE some Connecticut hospitals want to ban cigarette smoking on their property to protect patients and employees, two hospitals are trying to go one step further by seeking to ban smoking even from the public streets and sidewalks nearby.

Earlier this month the Human Services Committee of New Haven's Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a request by Yale-New Haven Hospital to paint the city sidewalks surrounding the hospital with a thin blue line to denote a smoke-free zone.

Yale-New Haven Hospital's campus will be completely smoke free beginning on Thursday, and if the full Board of Aldermen votes to allow it, the smoke-free zone will extend past the hospital's property line and onto the city-owned sidewalks. Currently, the hospital allows smoking only in designated outdoor spaces.

Bristol Hospital is pursuing a similar goal.

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Hospitals could depend on cigarette tax passing next session 

Earlier this month, both the King's Daughter Hospital in Brookhaven and the River Oaks System in central Mississippi announced plans to layoff hospital staff.

Virtually every other hospital across Mississippi has ordered a temporary hiring freeze.

Patient care is said to be unaffected...for now.

All this because the national and state economy is on life support. But a possible cure may come from an unlikely source.

"I think the shortages we've seen just put an additional burden on those people to provide health care under less than desirable circumstances," said Rikki Garrett, Mississippi Nurses Association.

The executive director of the Mississippi Nurses Association, Rikki Garrett says nationwide hospitals are working with fewer nurses than they need. Now, it gets tougher.

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Hospitals cut staff  

Recent layoffs and hiring freezes at Mississippi hospitals are raising questions about some residents' access to health care.

River Oaks Healthcare has put an unspecified number of employees on leave and imposed a hiring freeze at its five hospitals: River Oaks and Woman's Hospital in Flowood, Crossgates (formerly Rankin Medical Center) in Brandon, Madison County Medical Center in Canton and Central Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. . . .

lawmakers are pushing for a $1 tax increase on cigarettes, which would raise an estimated $174 million in annual revenue, while earmarking about 90 percent of that for Medicaid.

Gov. Haley Barbour has proposed a more modest increase of 24 cents on each pack of premium-brand cigarettes to reduce consumption.

"The Medicaid program has been underfunded in Mississippi, leaving millions of dollars in potential revenue on the table," said Mitchell, referring to federal matching funds: The state receives the highest federal Medicaid assistance percentage in the nation, around 76 percent.

"If Medicaid funding was being increased, I bet the hospitals wouldn't be cutting staff," Mitchell said.

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Group home fire started by resident with cigarette lighter  

A mentally disabled man accidentally started a Nov. 9 fire in a Mendota group home, killing a fellow resident, while playing with a cigarette lighter.

The death of 55-year-old Thomas Guisinger was ruled an accident Thursday at a hearing before a La Salle County coroner’s jury.

Coroner Jody Bernard said Guisinger died from smoke inhalation sustained in the home. Toxicology results showed a lethal concentration of carbon monoxide poisoning. Detective Sgt. Greg Kellen told the coroner’s jury that the fire started when a fellow resident activated a Bic lighter in the pocket of his pajamas, which caught fire and spread to the bed.

The resident, Kellen said, was permitted to smoke outdoors and carry a lighter, though his cigarettes were restricted to limit his daily intake.

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Health workers push smoking  

HEALTH workers contribute to the high rates of smoking among people with mental illness by using it as a behavioural tool and justifying the habit as their "only comfort," a damning new report has found, as NSW Health considers whether to ban smoking in all psychiatric facilities next year.

The report, Smoke And Mirrors, was commissioned by the Cancer Council NSW, and shows there is a "deep-rooted smoking culture" among mental health staff and patients, and little support for the mentally ill to quit the habit.

The misconceptions that people with psychiatric disorders smoke to self-medicate or relieve symptoms and anxiety "are too easily used as excuses to justify inaction about smoking," said the head of the Cancer Council, Andrew Penman.

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• Why Do the Mentally Ill Die Younger?  

If you were to ask Scott, she would say she is a healthy person overall. So she was shocked when the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) published a study two years ago called Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness. The report analyzed data from 16 states and found that, on average, people with severe mental illness die 25 years earlier than the general population. . . .

The findings were a bombshell for the rest of the mental-health community. "The study jarred the field," says Dr. Bob Glover, the executive director of NASMHPD. . . .

One of the most common contributors to early death among mentally ill patients, for instance, is smoking. While about 22% of the general population smokes, more than 75% of people with severe mental illness are tobacco-dependent. According to Glover, a study conducted by NASMHPD after the publication of its mortality study found that 44% of all cigarettes in the United States are consumed by people with psychiatric histories. "I used to run state hospitals, and we'd use cigarettes as reinforcement -- 'You did good; you get a cigarette,'" he says. "When people didn't do well, we took away their tobacco privileges. We were part of the problem." The agency is now working to make state mental hospitals smoke-free by 2011.

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LETTER: Entrance clouded by cigarette smoke 

I write regarding the smoking clipe having a positive impact on the smokers outside Ninewells Hospital, Dundee.

This I commend as a positive act. However, when is the clipe going to visit the entrance to the Princess Alexander Suite at the back of the hospital?

Being a regular visitor, as a patient, entering this department is "clouded" by both visitors and patients from Oncology services out having a cigarette.

Having cancer and being a non-smoker, to which my cancer is attributed to by passive smoking, this I find both disgusting and belittling to my choice as a non-smoker.

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Man lights cigarette, sets face on fire  

A 44-year-old man who uses oxygen was flown to Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill Monday morning after he lit a cigarette and set his face on fire.

The condition of the man, whose name hasn't been released, wasn't immediately known, but he received burns in his nostrils, throat and face, said E.M. Holt Fire Chief Mark Fuqua.

The fire department was called at 9 a.m. to Auburn Springs Apartments on Crouse Lane, where the man was a resident.

"He was on oxygen and smoking," Fuqua said. "When he went to light the cigarette, it blew up in his face."

Smoking is not allowed inside the two-story facility. The man, who had the oxygen hooked into his nostrils at the time, lit the cigarette inside his room.

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• GIORDANO et al. v. CONNECTICUT VALLEY HOSPITAL et al. (PDF) 

In late September 2007, Plaintiffs – nine long-term residents of Connecticut Valley Hospital ("CVH"), a state-operated psychiatric facility – sued CVH, Thomas A. Kirk, Jr., the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services ("DMHAS"), and Luis B. Perez, the Chief Executive Officer of CVH, seeking to enjoin them from implementing a complete ban against smoking and tobacco products scheduled to take effect on the CVH campus on October 1, 2007.1 Plaintiffs, then proceeding pro se, alleged that the proposed smoking ban violated a number of their federal and state constitutional and statutory rights. . . .

For the foregoing reasons, the Court GRANTS Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment insofar as Plaintiffs' federal constitutional claims are concerned. As to Plaintiffs' state law claims, the Court declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over those claims. Plaintiffs' state law claims are, therefore, dismissed without prejudice. Plaintiffs may re-file their claims in state court.

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RIVERVIEW: Bedridden smoker's cigarette was likely cause of fire  

Careless smoking caused a fire Thanksgiving Day that killed a man and injured up to 10 residents of Bellaire Independent Senior Apartments, Fire Chief Timothy Bosman said.

Ralph Dyer, 68, died of soot and smoke inhalation, authorities said.

The injured were among 85 residents evacuated from the complex at 12621 Hale St. by the Riverview Fire Department with the assistance of fire and police personnel from nine other communities.

Bosman said the source of the fire was a cigarette smoked by a bedridden 86-year-old woman. She was badly burned and is hospitalized.

"Smoking in bed is not a wise thing," Bosman said.

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EDITORIAL: A compromise 

After many months of rejecting requests to establish a no smoking area on its campus, King' Daughters' Medical Center has relented and agreed to place a kiosk for smokers on the top floor of its Lexington Avenue parking garage and to "strongly encourage" its use by the hospital's employees, visitors and patients who smoke.

The compromise reached during meetings between Ashland city officials and Kings' Daughters administrators is a commendable -- if somewhat belated -- recognition by hospital officials that the littering and loitering by smokers in Central Park and in residential neighborhoods adjacent to the hospital were caused by the hospital's smoking ban.

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Mary Lanning goes completely smoke free  

Thursday is Great American Smoke Out Day. It is a chance to help smokers quit tobacco for good. And Mary Lanning Hospital in Hastings is helping people put an end to the habit. Its entire campus is now smoke free.

The hospital has been smoke free inside for years, now smoking outside is off limits as well.

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PIONZIO: How will Smokers Deal with Smoke Free Hospitals?  

Connecticut Hospitals, including St. Vincent's in Bridgeport and Midstate Medical in Meriden, have started a two-year campaign to become totally smoke free to create a healthier, cleaner and safer environment.

That means no smoking breaks for employees (or patients) on hospital campuses. . . .

If the hospitals that are involved in this smoke-free initiative have allowed their employees (and patients?) the time to smoke a few cigarettes each day, will they also give them the time to seek recovery?

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