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Morning Press: Medicaid, monarchs, law enforcement, legislature, education

The Columbian
Published: January 18, 2015, 4:00pm

Were you away for the weekend? Catch up on some big stories.

The weekend’s torrential rain is easing up. Local weather coverage is online here.

Effort seeks to organize tangled threads of Medicaid

John Smith enrolled in Medicaid after losing his job and, with it, his employer-provided health insurance.

He has chronic back problems and became addicted to the oxycodone his doctor prescribed to manage the pain. That addiction, coupled with his inability to afford his medication, led him to a heroin addiction.

He lost his apartment and is now staying in a shelter. The dramatic changes led to his depression — another condition going untreated.

John Smith’s scenario is a hypothetical. But it’s not unrealistic.

Clark County’s Medicaid population is often facing numerous health and social issues. In order to have their needs met, local health officials say Medicaid clients must navigate a complex state system with providers isolated in “silos” that thwart efforts to coordinate care.

In the hypothetical John Smith case, that means he could see different providers to address different issues, and those different providers don’t likely talk to each other about their shared patient. A physician seeing him for back pain might not know about his heroin addiction or depression.

But by April 2016, the pathway to health care — physical, mental and chemical dependency services — should be markedly easier. That’s when Southwest Washington is set to become one of three regions in the state with fully integrated Medicaid services and a collaborative process in place to address the social issues that impact a person’s health.

The goals are better health outcomes, better care and lower health care costs.

“If we really are going to achieve the triple aim, we can’t continue to work in the siloed health care system,” said Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County Public Health director. “When you’re seeing patients, especially the Medicaid population with high needs … it’s not really effective.

“Even though our health care system is siloed, our bodies aren’t siloed,” he added.

  • Read the complete story here.

Following flight

The muscular monarch: It’s not a word we associate with a butterfly.

That characteristic, however, is helping a Washington State University scientist track the migratory paths of Pacific Northwest monarchs.

With monarch populations declining, David James wants to bring national attention to the plight of the iconic black-and-orange insect.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced it will conduct a one-year status review of the monarch to determine if it rates protective status under the “threatened” classification of the Endangered Species Act.

James was among 27 monarch experts and advocates who signed a letter to the Secretary of Interior in November supporting the review.

James is providing some of the research for developing conservation strategies along monarch butterfly migration corridors. It includes tagging monarchs so their flights can be tracked.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds, James explained.

The tag is a tiny stick-on label, much like a postage stamp, with an inventory number and an email address.

“It’s durable and waterproof and it will stay on for life, which can be nine months,” James said.

“It doesn’t affect the flight of the butterfly,” James said. “A monarch butterfly is strong. It does this migration thing, and it’s very muscular.”

  • Read the complete story here.

Jail makes changes after attack by inmate

Clark County plans to start issuing body alarms to certain professionals working inside the jail as part of its response to an inmate attack Tuesday on a female mental health counselor.

Clark County Jail Chief Ric Bishop said the jail already has the body alarms, but the county’s last contractor for mental health services had opted not to use them.

The body alarms allow a professional to press a button and sound an alarm if they’re in danger. The system will be used on an interim basis while jail officials review their protocols in light of the incident, Bishop said.

The attack left mental health counselor Kristine Kystrom with a head injury, bruising and lacerations, according to court papers.

Convicted sex offender Gregory Antonio Wright, 34, of Vancouver was incarcerated in the jail on a pending charge of failure to register as a sex offender when he met with mental health counselor John Furze. After the session, Wright allegedly requested to speak with a different mental health counselor, a specific woman he had talked to before, according to court papers.

The woman, Kystrom, met with him in an office and kept the door open, per jail policy, so that a medical unit corrections deputy could see inside.

Clark County sheriff’s Detective Kevin Harper wrote in a court affidavit that after about 15 minutes of conversation, “without warning, inmate Wright looked out the door, kicked the door jamb out, closed the door and struck her in the face,” Harper wrote.

Kystrom was knocked to the floor. As she was struggling to stand up, Wright allegedly barricaded the door with a heavy metal desk from inside the office.

Corrections deputies, who heard her screaming, rushed to force open the door and were able to stop the attack, Harper wrote.

According to court papers, Wright acknowledged that he asked to speak with Kystrom but said he doesn’t remember attacking her.

  • Read the complete story here.

Police chief acknowledges frictions

In the tense and uncertain history of race relations in America, a recent string of high-visibility killings of unarmed blacks by police and others has made this a particularly tense and uncertain moment.

Vancouver Police Chief James McElvain, a special guest at Saturday morning’s fifth annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast celebration at Clark College, acknowledged the problem but told the crowd of several hundred that “the police industry” is changing, and Vancouver is leading that change.

He said that police nationwide, and notably in Washington state, are leaving behind a “warrior mentality” to embrace a “community guardian” approach where listening, explaining, dignity and equity are paramount.

It’s too easy for people to misjudge and misunderstand one another due to race or religion or any other comfortable, familiar dividing line, McElvain said. Trending news of police shootings can strengthen those divisions and “fray the social fabric” of our nation, he said.

“What about the thousands of incidents we never hear about,” McElvain pointed out, where people work together and find common ground despite differences, where there’s mutual support and peaceful resolution by people who choose what’s right instead of what’s the quickest reaction?

McElvain said we are all on a “lifelong quest to learn from our mistakes” and build better lives. That means building a more diverse community, he said.

The Vancouver police have well-established citizen groups, including a diversity advisory team and a volunteer citizen crime-prevention patrol, that are all about building bridges between police and neighbors, he said. And McElvain himself, a 29-year police veteran who came to Vancouver in late 2013, said he has met with interfaith religious groups and Vancouver’s main black congregation, the Community A.M.E. Zion Church, to make sure those bridges are being used.

McElvain urged everybody to get involved in building a better community. He challenged the crowd to “look past the negativity of the world around us and … seek the good. We are all in this together.”

  • Read the complete story here.

State Senate bars openly carried guns in gallery

Citizens wanting to openly carry firearms in the state Senate gallery are prohibited from doing so, state officials announced Friday, as Southwest Washington activists made plans to carry their own guns in the Capitol’s public viewing areas.

The House is also considering a ban, with a decision expected Monday.

Frank Decker of Vancouver, who is behind the effort to mobilize open-carry advocates to head to Olympia, said the move disenfranchises people.

“There are a lot of people in this state that open carry is a lifestyle,” Decker said.

“If they make a rule you can only conceal carry when you’re in the gallery, they marginalize these people who want to be in state government and who want to listen,” he said.

Lt. Gov. Brad Owen called the decision a “reinterpretation” of existing rules, pointing out that people aren’t allowed to demonstrate in the public galleries and backpacks, placards and props have long been banned.

“It’s my job to maintain order and protocol and security in the galleries … So we took a look at this and it’s my opinion that the rules have not changed. The rules are being made clear to folks — we won’t have demonstrations in our galleries,” Owen said.

Owen’s announcement came a day after protesters at the Capitol, there to rally against a voter-approved measure that expanded background checks, brandished their weapons in the House gallery.

House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, D-Covington, said the House is weighing a similar decision.

“We have to be thoughtful about the impact, the constitution, thoughtful how a rule would be enforced, how that notification would be made,” Sullivan said, who added the House clerk is looking at how other states handle the issue.

Sullivan noted there have been very few instances “like what occurred (Thursday) in the House chambers” with the protesters, but conversations surrounding the issue have been happening for a long time.

  • Read the complete story here.

Proposed deep cut to state Fair Fund could hit widely

A proposed cut to the state fund that supports local fairs across the state has prompted strong push-back from advocates who say it could hurt many events, including the Clark County Fair.

The Fair Fund, as it’s known, splits about $2 million among 66 fairs in Washington each year. In his recommended budget released last month, Gov. Inslee recommended cutting that to a little more than $300,000 per year.

“The governor’s budget, for all practical purposes, does away with the Fair Fund,” said Heather Hansen, a legislative lobbyist for the Washington State Fairs Association.

The Clark County Fair received more than $83,000 from the Fair Fund last year. As a multimillion-dollar event, the 10-day fair wouldn’t be crippled if it lost that money. But many of the state’s smaller community and youth fairs depend much more heavily on the fund, drawing as much as 70 percent of their budgets from it, said Clark County Fair Manager John Morrison. Some could disappear entirely, he said.

Many state programs are facing pressure this year as lawmakers grapple with huge financial demands on education and other issues. But fairs are largely youth-oriented, and 4-H and FFA participants learn lessons in leadership, responsibility and other skills through the experience, Hansen said.

“We see fairs as a part of education,” Hansen said. “We would hate to see such a valuable educational activity cut in the name of saving education.”

  • Read the complete story here.

Evergreen district succeeds at certification

From the first moments of Kimberleigh Anderson’s beginning creative movement class at Heritage High School, the students jumped, slid and danced. Facing a wall of mirrors, they moved together as Anderson counted and clapped out the beat.

“One, two, three and four, five, six! And jump!” she shouted.

A few years ago, Anderson started each class with students sitting on the floor while she laid out the class agenda. But going through the rigors of becoming a National Board Certified Teacher helped her focus intensely on her teaching, and she found a better way to engage students from the start.

“Now I have them moving right away and I talk while they’re dancing,” she said.

Anderson attained board certification in 2013. It’s a thorough process that takes teachers 200 to 400 hours of looking closely at how they teach and how they can improve.

Washington has the nation’s largest group of new National Board Certified Teachers, according to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Last year, 946 Washington teachers achieved their certification. In all, 8,285 Washington teachers are board certified. That’s still a minority of Washington teachers, but it’s enough to rank the state fourth in the nation for the total number of board-certified teachers.

Anderson’s district, Evergreen Public Schools, has 46 new board-certified teachers, nearly twice as many as all other county districts combined.

  • Read the complete story here.
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