Health workers on mission for brain injured
Ritter orders officials to streamline services, care
December 8, 2008 - 10:21 PM
BRIAN NEWSOME
THE GAZETTE
People suffering from traumatic brain injuries can expect to find almost every aspect of their lives - from relationships to work to mundane, day-to-day tasks - upended.
Although services are out there to help them, the services exist as islands, unconnected to what one another is doing.
Now that's about to change.
Gov. Bill Ritter signed an executive order Monday telling the Colorado Department of Human Services to head an effort to coordinate TBI treatment and services. The department will set out to catalog the multitude of programs and agencies available statewide for people with TBI, and figure out a system for them to coordinate their efforts.
Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for Colorado DHS, said her agency will set out to ask: "Who does what? Who are the contact people? Where is there duplication? How can we be more efficient?"
Traumatic brain injuries are nothing new, but their profile has shot up since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. Bomb blasts have led to a sharp increase in such injuries in the military.
"It's called the signature injury of both those conflicts," McDonough said.
Traumatic brain injuries occur when a sudden head trauma causes damage to the brain, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a part of the National Institutes of Health.
Such injuries can produce an array of symptoms that might include memory loss, the inability to concentrate, a loss of coordination, emotional changes, and problems with language or sensation.
About 5,000 people a year are hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries, the state said in a news release, and an estimated 96,000 Coloradans suffer from them.
The effort to coordinate and streamline TBI treatment is expected to take at least a few months, McDonough said.
Sue Kirton, office manager for the Brain Injury Association of Colorado, said the executive order targeting TBI augments one that went into effect in 2000.
"With the number of cases growing, there is a new focus," she said. "This one helps solidify the need for coordination."
It wasn't that major problems were arising because there was no coordination, she said.
"This will just help the different agencies involved have a closer relationship and will hopefully make the system for people with a brain injury easier to navigate."
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Health workers on mission for brain injured
