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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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JoNel Aleccia

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All Stories

News >  Spokane

Empire Health gets new manager

Empire Health Services has hired a top manager to oversee day-to-day operations of Deaconess Medical Center and other sites, freeing Chief Executive Officer Jeff A. Nelson to focus on a search for new capital or possible sale, officials said Friday. Philip G. Dionne, the new chief administrative officer, is a 30-year hospital restructuring expert whose recent duties have included shepherding a failing New York hospital into bankruptcy.
News >  Spokane

Spokane getting HPV vaccine

Free vaccine will be available by the end of May in Spokane and across Washington state to immunize girls against a common cause of cervical cancer. Local health care providers have ordered 2,300 doses of Gardasil – enough to treat 766 girls with a three-shot series – as part of Washington's first wave of funding for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine.
News >  Spokane

Health officer position will stay as it is

Spokane's next public health officer will remain the chief medical director and administrator for the Spokane Regional Health District, board members agreed in a close vote Wednesday. After nearly three hours of discussion, members voted 6-5 not to split the single position into two posts that would report separately to the board.
News >  Idaho

Southern exposure

Call it the San Diego syndrome. North Idaho's rate of melanoma, the often deadly skin cancer, is twice that of the rest of the state, mostly because so many California refugees and Arizona snowbirds have moved to the area's resort communities, medical experts said this week.
News >  Features

INBC hosts bone marrow drive

Inland Northwest Blood Center officials are hoping to register 1,500 area donors as part of a national bone marrow drive scheduled through May 21. Donor registration will be free for those who sign up at any of the agency's fixed sites. The drives are among hundreds of similar efforts in the "Thanks Mom" campaign aimed at increasing the number of people included in a national registry to 20,000.
News >  Spokane

Keeping up with disease

Of the 784 people diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in Idaho two years ago, 10 were men – and Dave Shaw was one of them. The Coeur d'Alene retiree still shakes his head at the odds of developing a disease that affects far more women than men, by a national ratio of 100-to-1. But it's not that Shaw, 58, is squeamish or shy about the kind of cancer he has. "A lot of men are ashamed of it," he said. "If you've got cancer, you've got cancer. Let's deal with it."
News >  Spokane

Community vibe appeals to Ukrainian

Halfway up Doomsday Hill on Sunday morning, Oksana Nikolaienko needed no translator. The 35-year-old visitor from Kershon, Ukraine, communicated her feelings as clearly as any other first-timer tackling the most notorious stretch of Spokane's 31st Lilac Bloomsday road race.
News >  Spokane

Health official to educate about bird flu in Asia

Spokane's spokeswoman for public health has been chosen to spend at least three months in Southeast Asia helping to spread the word about potentially deadly bird flu. Julie Graham, public information manager for the Spokane Regional Health District, will leave next week to join an international team convened by the World Health Organization to coordinate communications in areas at highest risk for avian influenza.
News >  Spokane

Prepared to help

When Rebecca McKillip was a 3-year-old trying to pour her own cereal in a maggot-infested kitchen, no one was there. When she was an 8-year-old watching her stepfather beat and rape her mother, no one helped.
News >  Spokane

What works: YWCA program offers safe space, help

A year ago, the 39-year-old mom and her six children arrived at Spokane's YWCA domestic violence shelter with nothing more than a few suitcases of clothing. "I grabbed three little Lego princess figures for my 3-year-old," recalled the woman now known as Linda Baker. "That's what she had for toys."
News >  Spokane

Conditions ripe for West Nile flare-up

Hoping to thwart an early crop of mosquitoes that could spread West Nile virus, health officials in Eastern Washington and North Idaho are urging people to take their spring yard chores seriously. Draining sources of standing water, from old buckets to stagnant bird baths, could help avoid spread of the disease that infected nearly 1,000 people and was linked to 23 deaths in Idaho last year.
News >  Features

Dietitians honored at annual convention

Four of five awards granted at the Washington State Dietetic Association convention this week will go to professionals from Spokane, organizers said. Michelle Weinbender will receive the award for Outstanding Dietitian of the Year, the highest honor granted by the group. Weinbender is a clinical dietitian at Sacred Heart Medical Center who specializes in medical nutrition therapy for patients with heart and kidney disease. She also works with dietetic interns from the University of Idaho.
News >  Spokane

District delays restructuring decision

A decision expected Thursday about whether to restructure the Spokane Regional Health District has been postponed for at least two weeks. Too many board members will be absent from the scheduled monthly meeting to allow full consideration of whether to divide the health officer's current duties into two posts, member David Crump said Monday.
News >  Spokane

Pharmacy disposal sites established

Dr. Mary Noble knows there's a nightmare lurking in most medicine cabinets. Nearly every time she asks patients to show her what drugs they've got, they bring in vials and vials of unwanted, outdated and potentially dangerous medications.
News >  Idaho

Students can’t mask their delight

More than 600 Lakes Middle School students donned surgical masks Friday afternoon in Coeur d'Alene in a gesture of support and affection for a favorite teacher recovering from a heart transplant. Dave Eubanks was "completely, absolutely and stupendously" surprised by the ceremony that included presentation of more than $1,400 in student donations to help other transplant patients – and an unexpected visit from the doctor who performed his surgery.
News >  Spokane

Standard review in Phelps case

A Washington child welfare official has declined to call for an executive-level review of Summer Phelps' death by abuse, mostly because the 4-year-old Spokane girl had so little contact with state agencies. Cheryl Stephani, assistant secretary for the Children's Administration, said this week that a standard review will be held to look into circumstances that left the girl abused and fatally beaten on March 10.
News >  Spokane

Thorburn settling into new post

Two weeks after starting work as medical director at Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest, Dr. Kim Thorburn still has to double-check her office phone number when she returns a call. Otherwise, though, the woman who was publicly fired last fall as health officer for the Spokane Regional Health District says she's nearly up to speed in a new position that allows her greater latitude to pursue a broad range of community health goals.
News >  Features

Rockwood Clinic surgeon targets varicose veins

More than half of women over age 50 can expect to develop varicose veins, says Dr. Renu Sinha, a Rockwood Clinic surgeon. Sinha will discuss the prevention, causes and treatment of the common condition during a seminar Wednesday in Spokane. Varicose veins and spider veins can cause discomfort, swelling and leg fatigue, said Sinha, whose presentation is part of HealthTalks, a series of discussions that has continued in the community for 17 years.
News >  Spokane

Deaths often unreviewed

Outrage erupts every time a child dies by abuse – and the loss of Summer Phelps has been no different. Since the death of the Spokane 4-year-old last month, cries have come from all quarters: letters to the editor, radio talk shows, even a YouTube post that simply screamed "Murder!"
News >  Spokane

Man sues McDonald’s, saying burger had wires in it

A Spokane man who said he bit into a McDonald's hamburger two years ago and got a mouthful of wire is suing the fast-food giant. Jason M. DeGeorgio, 30, suffered severe cuts on March 18, 2005, after taking a single bite of a Quarter Pounder with cheese, according to a complaint filed Monday in Spokane County Superior Court.
News >  Spokane

For-profit group eyeing Deaconess

Empire Health Services officials have notified local doctors and competitors that they are talking with the largest for-profit hospital system in the country, possibly about the sale of Deaconess Medical Center and Valley Hospital and Medical Center. Community Health Systems Inc., of Franklin, Tenn., was the only "potential partner" discussed by name during meetings this year with medical executives about the future of Empire, Spokane's century-old nonprofit hospital system.
News >  Spokane

System under scrutiny

Summer Phelps soon may join the ranks of Washington child abuse victims whose deaths demanded urgent review – and action – a state investigator said Tuesday. The Spokane 4-year-old, who died March 10 of severe abuse, allegedly at the hands of her father and stepmother, likely will be the subject of a full fatality report by the Office of the Family and Children's Ombudsman.
News >  Spokane

For Spokane researcher, rush of fame gets heart pumping

A Sacred Heart Medical Center researcher got a taste of celebrity last week when she unveiled results of a study that showed no difference in two popular diets used to treat heart attack patients. Dr. Katherine R. Tuttle admitted that she was fascinated to discover that a Mediterranean-style diet rich in olive oil and other "healthy" fats was no better than the low-fat, chicken-and-veggies regime long recommended by the American Heart Association.
News >  Spokane

Confronting child abuse

Before she became Spokane's most horrific example of abuse in recent memory, Summer Phelps was an invisible child. No one recalled much about the girl with the red hair and brown eyes who lived with her father and stepmother in the cramped Dresden Apartments on Spokane's North Monroe Street.