Randy Munson handles physician recruitment for our office and manages the New Physicians of Wisconsin Program. He's been working to recruit and place primary care physicians all over Wisconsin for more than 25 years, for several years with UW-Health and private recruitment firm Caswell-Winters & Associates, and for more than twenty years after that with our office. 

Randy also serves as the Treasurer of the professional organization Wisconsin Staff Physician Recruiters (WSPR).  As his retirement from both our office and WSPR nears, he was recognized for his several decades of service to WSPR at a meeting on Thursday. 
 

Randy's first WSPR meeting was around 1992, and he's helped new recruiters in the organization find their bearings over the past twenty-five years. He certainly seemed at home, cracking jokes and in good spirits with many of his fellow recruiters. "Randy's been fantastic. He's been a great mentor to people," said Dolly Willelms, of Prevea Health. 
 

Anneliese Pratt, a recruiter for Ascension Wisconsin, will become the organization's new treasurer.  
 

Congratulations, Randy! 

An assessment study from the Wisconsin Policy Forum finds significant behavioral health shortages in rural areas.
 

Using data from the Wisconsin Medical Society, the study finds that many of Wisconsin's counties meet both the state and federal standards for behavioral health shortages. Fifty-five Wisconsin counties meet the the state standard for a "shortage," which is defined as fewer than one psychiatrist for every 10,000 people. And more than half of Wisconsin's counties meet the federal standard for a shortage, which is fewer than one psychiatrist per 30,000 residents.
 

Exacerbating the shortage is the fact that the state's psychiatrist workforce is aging rapidly. The average Wisconsin psychiatrist is 50 years old, meaning that rural psychiatrists ought to be in training now, in order to serve underserved areas in the decades to come. 
 

According to Mental Health America, Wisconsin is ranked 41st out of 50 states for prevalence of mental illness. And a 2017 Department of Health Services report finds that over half of the population that is in need of mental health disorder services isn't being served.
 

Some initiatives aim at recruiting psychiatrists and other physicians to underserved areas. Loan assistance programs from our office are available to Wisconsin psychiatrists. Other initiatives include increasing the number of residency programs in underserved areas, expanding the use of integrated care models, and telemedicine. 

Hearing loss is permanent and irreversible. October is National Protect Your Hearing Month, and it’s also a time of year farmers are working around combines, dryers, augers, and other equipment with high noise levels that harm hearing without proper protection. Prevent hearing loss with this checklist from the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center (UMASH). (Image: Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr) 

A new plan released by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services outlines the state's five-year response to Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias. 

The plan, which incorporated input from stakeholders working in health care, human services, and government administration, outlines strategies to better provide support for dementia care. The plan's goals include strategies to enable better community awareness of dementia, make dementia diagnoses from primary care providers more timely and accurate, develop a uniform system of dementia crisis response, and increase training and credentialing of those who work in facility-based care. (Source and Image: DHS)

Law enforcement, health agencies, tribal organizations and more will receive around $9.8 million to help fight the opioid epidemic in the state:

The Wisconsin Department of Justice will receive $1,300,000 for statewide planning and coordination between state level law enforcement, criminal justice, treatment and public health agencies. Wisconsin DOJ will also receive $1 million, and the West Allis Health Department will receive $994,766, to support public safety and public health information-sharing partnerships. 
 

The Menominee Indian Tribe will receive more than $1.2 million to support the development of partnerships between first responders and treatment providers to respond to overdoses. 
 

Winnebago County will receive almost $900,000 for staffing and treatment resources within jails and community reentry efforts. 
 

The state's Department of Safety Professional Services will receive $365,458 to strengthen Wisconsin's prescription drug monitoring program.
 

The Green Bay Police Department will receive $75,172 to facilitate collaborations between criminal justice and mental health treatment services. 
 

Buffalo County ($478,413) and Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, Inc. ($750,000) will receive funding for programs that provide services to youth who are victimized as the result of the opioid crisis. 
 

Sheboygan County Health and Human Services will receive $374,995 to assist its drug courts. 
 

(Source: Justice Department press release; Image: geralt on Pixabay)

A policy brief from the Rural Health Research Center looks at the issue of social isolation and loneliness, which is a key, but hard-to-study, issue in rural areas. The brief — which samples experts working in academia, health care, advocacy, and direct service — identifies four general themes of how rural social isolation diminishes mental health, general well-being, access to basic resources, and quality of life. (Image: Scott Van Daalen on Unsplash) 

A community health center that would receive federal funds to provide care to low-income and uninsured patients may soon come to Racine. The federally-qualified health center, or FQHC, would provide primary care and other services on a sliding fee scale based on ability to pay. A committee of project stakeholders has already been formed, and the City of Racine plans to submit the federal application in early 2019. (Source: Christina Lieffring / The Journal Times; Image: rawpixel on Unsplash)

Two pieces of legislation that aim to inform consumers about drug prices were presented to President Trump on Wednesday to be signed into law. The measures, the Know the Lowest Price Act and the Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act,  lift the industry's "gag order" on pharmacists that prevent them from discussing cheaper price options with consumers. The laws would enable better consumer transparency about prescription drug prices, but do not lower drug costs in any way. (Source: Kaiser Health News; Image: nosheep on Pixabay) 

While the nation has been hit hard by opioid use disorder, those suffering from opioid use disorder in rural areas face increased barriers to recovery — they must travel long distances to receive treatment, and oftentimes have difficulty finding a clinician available to administer medication-assisted treatment.

Now, the Department of Health and Human Services has new materials to help clarify how clinicians can use telemedicine as a tool to treat more patients with opioid use disorder with buprenorphine. These materials especially support those in rural areas, in which a smaller number of providers have a waiver to prescribe buprenorphine.  (Source: HHS; Photo: Harbin on Wikimedia)