The abundance of literature on weight loss inevitably leads one to the understanding that successful weight loss tactics are either very extreme or cumbersomely complicated. Some suggest fasting or a liquid diet; others suggest that primarily lean meats should be eaten and at particular times of the day . . . or night. And still,
The National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC), which provides accreditation for medical services in prisons, jails and other correctional facilities, held its national conference in Nashville, Tennessee from October 28 to 30, 2013.
PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann attended the conference and sat in on several presentations that addressed the issue of telemedicine in the correctional setting. Telemedicine involves medical consultations over a remote connection, typically with a patient speaking with a physician or other medical practitioner on a video screen.
The first NCCHC conference session on telemedicine was conducted by Lawrence Mendel, a physician and acting medical director at the Leavenworth Detention Center, a facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America.
According to Mendel, the first prison telemedicine program began in 1978 at the South Florida Reception Center in conjunction with Jackson Memorial Hospital. The use of telemedicine expanded during the 1990s and it is now used in a variety of settings to provide long-distance medical evaluations and diagnoses.
The three-judge federal court over a long-standing prison healthcare class-action suit against California took a slight turn on January 29, 2013, when the court gave the state a six-month extension to achieve the prison population reduction it had ordered previously. The court had required the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to reduce its