THE BULLETIN • Sunday, June 5, 2011 B3
O Group’s new bed resists bedbugs
O B
By Mihir Zaveri The Oregonian
PORTLAND — The war against bedbugs is fought on many fronts, from washing sheets to using bedbugresistant mattress covers to reducing clutter to spraying toxic chemicals. Now, a Portland-based nonprofit has engineered a simple weapon: bedbug-resistant beds. In May the nonprofit Central City Concern shipped 175 of them to the city’s newest affordable housing project, Bud Clark Commons in Old Town Chinatown. The beds keep bedbugs from crawling onto people while they sleep. Officials hope the beds are one more tool to slow the bedbug onslaught. Brand-new beds were unveiled at the housing project’s grand opening Thursday. In the last few decades, bedbug infestations in Portland and across the country have shot up dramatically. The uptick has been particularly felt by organizations that provide affordable housing. Bugs often infest beds in affordable housing units or shelters and, in addition to making residents’ lives miserable, can be so costly to control that the bed is often just thrown out. Which is why Central City teamed up with the Pesznecker Brothers, metal fabricators from Clackamas, to invent a solution. The bed features an ultraslippery coating, splayed legs that push the bed away from walls that bedbugs might climb, an angled metal frame that the bugs can’t bore into and a mattress sealed in medical-grade nylon. Priced at about $500 for the frame and mattress, the bug-resistant beds cost about the same as any bed, said Paul Clithero, development and licensing adviser for Central City. “By word of mouth in the affordable housing community, we’ve been selling hundreds of these here in Portland,” Clithero said. So far, the beds have also been sold to local nonprofits, including REACH Community Development, Innovative Housing, Cascadia Behavioral Health Care and Transition Projects Incorporated. With a patent in the works, Central City hopes eventually to market the beds nationwide. As creepy as bedbugs are, they haven’t been found to spread diseases. No one knows precisely how much the population is exploding here. What is known is they now are resistant to many heavy-duty pesticides that had virtually wiped them out by the 1960s. With the resurgence, though, a lack of tracking has hampered government agencies, said Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury.
Benjamin Brayfi eld / The (Coos Bay) World
Dr. Carla McKelvey examines 2-year-old Darryn Westerman as his 5-year-old brother Jake watches in Coos Bay. McKelvey was appointed president of the Oregon Medical Association this year and will focus on bringing more access to medical care for patients in rural areas.
New medical association director touts rural care Coos Bay doctor wants to ensure physicians in remote areas are heard By Alice Campbell The (Coos Bay) World
COOS BAY — Dr. Carla McKelvey is the first president of the Oregon Medical Association from the South Coast, and said she wants to ensure rural health care issues don’t take a back seat. “I want to make sure that rural physicians are represented,” said McKelvey, a pediatrician at North Bend Medical Center. “I think Coos Bay has often been downplayed,” she said, adding she and others involved in the medical field are bringing it notice. Already, she’s met with Oregon Health and Science University’s president and talked about how important their rural scholars, specialists and other programs that create access to care for patients in rural areas are. Maybe she would have had that opportunity without being president of OMA, she said. “But I think he listened,” she added. McKelvey is the woman for the job, said Dr. Steven Shimotakahara, a fellow South Coast physician. He described her as hardworking, honest and involved in the community and health care.
‘Very helpful’ The South Coast is isolated, he said, and having someone like McKelvey representing this area and other physicians is “very helpful.” Before being elected in April, McKelvey was involved with the organization for at least seven years, first as a delegate, then vice speaker and various other roles until eventually reaching the top. Her election comes at a time of change, with implementation of new health care legislation and defining how it will look for care and patients, she said. The legislation is filled with ambiguous terms like ‘patient navigator,” she said.
“We need to help define: What is a patient navigator?” Rural health care has issues other care systems don’t, she said, like recruiting and retaining physicians. “I always feel like once you visit here, why would you want to leave?” McKelvey said. But not everyone feels that way. Many residents are trained in areas where they don’t have to be on call for their clinic and at a hospital like many rural physicians do, she said.
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WESTPORT — Union officials say members at Georgia-Pacific’s Wauna mill near Westport have ratified a contract reached last month after contentious negotiations. The Longview Daily News reported it means a 6 percent raise over four years, dating from April 2010, when the previous contract expired. It applies to about 900 members of the United Steelworkers. Union officials said the contract includes a medical insurance plan that will require nearly all workers to get new doctors and to pay more for dependent coverage. They say they hope for a better deal during bargaining with all of the company’s U.S. mills this summer. The mill makes tissue, paper towels and toilet paper.
ALBANY — The Linn County sheriff says his officers are looking for a fourth person in the death of a man found fatally beaten in a sleeping bag off Interstate 5 near Harrisburg. Three Corvallis men were arrested earlier in the death of 39year-old Jose Felipe Hernandez Leiva. Sheriff Tim Mueller said Friday that a murder warrant has been issued for 37-year-old Abiu Antonio Padilla, also known as Antonio Padilla. Originally from the Los Angeles area, he was last seen in Eugene near the Eugene Mission on May 25. He’s also sought on a California parole violation warrant. The victim is believed to have been killed on April 30 or May 1. His body was found May 20. — From wire reports
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Another issue is payment systems. The patient population in rural areas is largely low-income and pays for health care with systems like Medicare and Oregon Health Plan. There isn’t enough of a different population to offset that, she said. Practicing in a rural area is rewarding, though. “I get to be involved with (patients) on a whole different level,” McKelvey said. “You can make a big impact here,” she said, adding the community has a bigger say in their care than they would in a larger city. McKelvey said she won’t represent only rural physicians, and plans to travel the state to hold town hall meetings and gather others’ concerns and priorities. For instance, physicians who
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are employed on a salary don’t worry as much about payment issues and malpractice insurance because their employer takes care of those costs, she said. Other physicians, however, worry about the costs outstripping any revenue. Ensuring that programs like the Medical Liability Fund, which help decrease those costs, continue is one of her focuses, McKelvey said. She also wants to increase community collaboration and strengthen OMA’s foundation grants.
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