'I'm right where I want to be'

If not for Star Trek’s Dr. Spock, Johnnie Wren, MD, might not be practicing family medicine at the Au Sable Forks Health Center in northern New York. Fresh out of medical school and hoping to find a residency program to launch her career into family medicine, Dr. Wren attended a regional recruitment conference in Massachusetts. She remembers the conference was held shortly before Halloween. “I saw one group of program recruiters, head-to-toe in full costumes – including one [...]

Don't Delay Care

Don’t Delay, Get Screened Today The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many things in our lives but not the importance of regular cancer screening. Screening for breast, cervical, colorectal, lung and prostate cancers can dramatically improve treatment outcomes and in some cases, prevent the cancers from occurring in the first place. According to the National Cancer Institute, when detected at its earliest stages and confined to the primary site, the 5 year survival rate for: Breast [...]

Homegrown: Training North Country Kids For a Career in Medicine

Ten years ago, high school student Joey Tousignant enrolled in career exploration program called New Visions at UVM Health Network-Alice Hyde Medical Center. The program offers motivated, high-achieving students an insider’s view into a wide range of health care roles through college-level courses, supervised clinical experience and job shadows with Emergency Department physicians, pediatricians, nurses, occupational therapists and much more. Fast forward a decade and that high school s [...]

Getting the Care You Need

A guide to help you receive the right care in most appropriate setting

Need Care? Know Where to Go. As the pandemic presses on and the national shortage of health care workers intensifies, it’s more important than ever to understand your health care options to ensure you receive the right level of care in the most appropriate setting. Health care options for North Country residents often include primary care, urgent care and emergency care so it’s not always obvious where to go for care – or when.  So in the heat of the moment, this gui [...]

What are you waiting for?

The COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective and easy to get

If you are waiting to get vaccinated, what specifically will end the waiting? If you are vaccinated but still masking, when will you decide it is safe enough? We don’t typically wait forever for anything. There is usually an “until.” What is your until? If you are waiting until there is more information about the COVID-19 vaccines, here are a few facts that may ease your concerns: As of June 11, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported more t [...]

COVID-19: Hitting Close to Home

What we do now determines if our hospitals will get overwhelmed

As COVID-19 cases surge in our region, many people are worrying about where they might contract the virus. In reality, you may only need to go as far as your own home. For most of us, our guard is up once we leave our home. We are on high alert, taking many precautions to reduce the risk of getting sick. Yet, the number of positive COVID-19 tests in Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties is rising at a troublesome rate. As of Thursday, December 17 in Clinton County alone, the seven-day rolli [...]

The Diabetes Guessing Game

Expanding Our Knowledge About Types and Treatments

Written by: Ashley Williams, PA in Endocrinology It sounds like a bad joke, “Three people walk into a clinic. One pulls out an insulin pump, the second a bottle of pills and the third a carrot. When the front desk staff asks what they are there for they all respond, 'Diabetes.'” This depicts the great variation in types of diabetes and treatments for the disease.  Treatment is not quite as simple as it used to be. Since the discovery of insulin in 1922, w [...]

Patient Touts Safety Undergoing Surgery at CVPH

It’s natural to get nervous about having to go through a major surgery. Getting the procedure done in the middle of a pandemic is sure to add to those nerves for many people. But, for Plattsburgh resident Richard Boulrice, COVID-19 was hardly a concern. “I could not have asked for a better situation than I had right here at CVPH,” Boulrice said just a couple weeks after undergoing a complicated gall bladder surgery at the hospital this summer. Richard Boulrice The [...]

Expanding Our Understanding: Do Masks Work?

There is growing evidence that some people who got infected with COVID-19 despite wearing a mask are still alive today because of that mask. And that gives us a new way of thinking about the protection face coverings provide. From early on in the pandemic, you’ve heard from me, my colleagues here at CVPH and public health officials across the country bang the drum on the importance of wearing masks and how they can help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. The initial selling point [...]

Cooking With a Doc Program Promotes Healthy Eating

The Difference Your Donations Make

“If we can really help change behaviors for patients, we can really help change health outcomes," Cooking With a Doc creator Therese Ray, MD said. But, that's something that Dr. Ray realizes can be a tough thing for people to learn given the eating habits they've had their entire lives. “For a lot of patients, eating more fruits and vegetables and really changing their diet, it’s a big change, it’s something that a lot of our patients are not familiar w [...]

Vein Finder Provides Comfort For Youngest Patients

The Difference Your Donations Make

Mindy LaPier, RN, CVPH Labor and Delivery: “It’s always hard for parents to have to sit there and watch their baby be stuck with a needle, whether it’s for blood work or an IV, and sometimes it takes multiple tries." “If you can’t get it in, you can’t give them their antibiotics, you can’t start any treatment without having their lab values, so you just keep trying and trying and trying." Now, the vein finder gives patients and emplo [...]

CVPH Meets Retired Nurse's Lofty Expectations

Patient Received Urgent Care She Needed

Plattsburgh resident Barbara Thompson knows a thing or two about providing excellent care. The 96-year-old guided countless patients to better outcomes as a public health nurse in the city for more than a decade. But in the early morning hours of June 1, Thompson suddenly found herself on the receiving end of care. She woke up in the middle of the night with significant pain in the area of her left shoulder and immediately began worrying about a potential heart attack. A short time later, [...]

Taking Advantage of Telehealth

Imagine being able to get out of bed, do your normal morning routine, and then head to your doctor appointment – without having to leave home. There’s no need to find a babysitter for the kids, spend money on gas or lose more time from work. That’s what thousands of people have experienced thanks to CVPH’s telehealth services. The program, which has already been operational for years, was expanded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as an additional option to help pat [...]

Kathleen Helps Alzheimer's Patients & Their Families Stay Together - One Mile at a Time

Ride to Remember is Annual Tribute to Administrator's Mom

Each year, Kathleen Freeman, along with her husband Pat and as many as 150 other local bikers make their way along the winding roads of the Adirondacks. The route is different each year but it sometimes takes the bikers past a little white house with a sprawling back yard to pay homage to the late Barbara Tobin, Freeman’s mom. Her mom is the catalyst behind the Ride to Remember, an annual fundraiser to benefit the Third Age Adult Day Center, which provides services to those with Alzheimer& [...]

CVPH Family Medicine Residency Exceeding Expectations

2018 class will expand to six

"So far, this residency exceeds all of my expectations,” explained Stephen Winfield, MD, one of four Family Medicine Residents of the UVM Health Network – CVPH Family Medicine Residency.  A native of Prince Edward Island, Canada, Dr. Winfield said the quality of the people at CVPH, access to exceptional facilities, the community and the strong affiliation with the University of Vermont Medical Center have made his experience so far, exceptional. As a member of the first [...]

Match Day: Family Medicine Residency Takes One Step Closer to Welcoming First Class

Program will increase access to primary care in the North Country

What is “Match Day?”   Well, it depends on whom you ask.  To a medical student, it’s the day that marks the reward all of their hard work has earned them: a position in a residency program in the specialty of their choice.  They’ve worked tireless hours developing their clinical skills, learning the ins and outs of practicing medicine and studying endlessly for qualifying examinations. To a program, specifically, to our new Family Medicine Reside [...]