| A self-help incentive to employee health
For a guy who started a successful health plan and sold it for hundreds of millions to America's biggest health insurer, Kyle Rolfing is surprisingly down on the industry.Patients just don't trust insurers, Rolfing says.That's why he and other co-founders of Definity Health, now part of UnitedHealth Group Inc., started a new kind of health services company altogether called RedBrick Health. The Minneapolis-based company is not an insurer but it does a lot of things insurers do these days. RedBrick runs health-and-wellness as well as disease-management programs for companies, then translates better employee health to lower monthly premiums."When we built Definity, we recognized trust was an issue," Rolfing said. "We have a different solution now." RedBrick has signed up its first clients: Hannaford Brothers Co., which owns more than 150 grocery stores in the Northeast; Welch Allyn Inc., a medical device manufacturer in New York; and Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia.For CEO Rolfing, it's the next stage in the evolution of so-called consumer-driven health care."It puts more accountability on consumers," he said.RedBrick works with large, self-insured employers and designs incentives for employees to get healthier.
Friends of the Park program Friday: Local Briefs
Friends of the Parks will present "To Yellowstone and Back," at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9, at the lodge in Blue Spruce Park, located six miles north of Indiana off of Route 110 near Ernest. Larry Turton will use slides and lecture material to demonstrate significant changes in Yellowstone National Park, the world's largest super volcano, between 1972 and 2006. The show will look at physical changes as well as some of the socio-political issues affecting the future of the park. Friends of the Parks is a volunteer nonprofit organization that sponsors environmental education programs at Yellow Creek State Park and throughout the Indiana County Parks system. The program is free to the public, and registration is not required. For further information, contact Friends of the Parks at (724) 463-8636 or visit the County Parks Web site at www.indianacountyparks.org.
Briefly in Tompkins
The Tompkins County League of Women Voters will meet at 7 p.m. today in the Beverly Livesay Room at the Human Services Building on Seneca Street to discuss affordable housing in Tompkins County. There will be a panel discussion with John Spence from Better Housing, John Ward from the Red Cross program for the homeless, Martha Robertson from the County Legislature, and Paul Mazzarella of Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services. The meeting is open to the public. Senior citizens' dinner is today .
The Faith Column
What picture pops into your mind when you read the word feminist? Is it a woman layered in petticoats with a big, swooping hat, picketing the white house for her right to vote? Is it Gloria Steinem in her aviator glasses, sleek, straight hair hanging down both sides of her pretty face? These are the dominant images that so many people associate with feminist history, and for good reason. The first image�the suffragist�represents the so-called �first wave� of feminist history. These women, philosophising and organising from the late 1800s through the 1930s, were primarily focused on legal and institutional changes that would allow women to gain more power and autonomy. The �second wave,� then, was most active in the 1960s and 1970s and was concerned with social and psychological liberation (think dishes, contraception, and objectification).
Good news and bad for SNP: He's popular - but independence isn't
THE SNP won the Scottish Parliament election in May because people trusted Alex Salmond to be a good first minister, not because they wanted an independent Scotland, according to a major new piece of research published last night. Researchers found that support for independence is now at a ten-year low of 23 per cent, despite the SNP's victory in May. .
Federal storm shelter grants available locally
The Columbus-Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency is providing and accepting applications for the federal Safe Room/Storm Shelter Initiative, which provides monetary assistance to homeowners who meet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's standards for low to moderate income.Information on specific income limits within Lowndes County and throughout the rest of Mississippi can be found online at HUD's Web site. The address is www.hud.gov.The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Development Authority are partners in a $500,000 program to assist qualified homeowners in an effort to offset the nonfederal match on the nationwide Storm Shelter Initiative's 75-to-25 percent split.For more information, call the Columbus-Lowndes EMA office at (662) 329-5110.
illumistream Launches Video Health Platform: Good Health Isn't Boring Anymore
The illumistream video health platform, which launched earlier this week, profoundly rejects the premise that medical videos have to be painful to watch. Instead, illumistream offers videos that are dynamically visual, incorporating 20 to 30 powerful animations, diagrams, and images in every three minute video. This compelling presentation enables our world class physicians, like PGA Tour Doctor Dr. Vijay Vad and Stanford Epilepsy specialist Robert Fisher, to explain complex medical issues in a clear, easy-to-understand format which is accessible and interesting. .
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