ME Letter December 2015

This Month’s Contents

Raleigh Office Closing After Almost 35 Years!

It was Christmas of 1980 when Dr. Lapp and his associate, Dr. John Marucheck, moved into their Raleigh quarters at 3400 Executive Drive. Until last Fall, that office provided a family practice, geriatric care, and counseling to thousands of patients in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle. In 1984 we began seeing the first “casualties” of the Raleigh CFIDS epidemics, and we have continued to provide care to CFS/ME and FM patients since that time. Due to increasing costs and government regulation, however, the general practice had to combine with a larger practice last Fall, leaving Hunter-Hopkins Center the sole resident of a large medical office space on the campus of what is now Duke Raleigh Hospital.

To make a long story short, Duke plans to repurpose our building and has purchased the office space, so the office closed after the last appointment this November.

Dr. Lapp has been making monthly trips to the Raleigh office since 1988, when he started working regularly with Drs. Paul Cheney and David Bell in Charlotte. “After 25 years of back-and-forth, I know every service station, bathroom, and fast food restaurant between Raleigh and Charlotte,” Dr. Lapp quips. “It is sad to close the Raleigh office and a lot of people from eastern NC, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC will no longer have that Raleigh option,” Dr. Lapp opines, “but at least the Charlotte office remains open and will certainly accommodate those individuals.” HHC has been seeking more providers for the Charlotte office.

CDC Grand Rounds on February 16 at 1-2 PM.

Every month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hosts an hour long seminar from the CDC Auditorium in Atlanta. These seminars focus on current key topics, and for February the topic will emphasize CFS/ME/SEID and the recommendations made in two special reports: recent recommendations from the Institute of Medicine (Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Redefining an Illness)* and the Pathway to Prevention (P2P) report.

The seminar will include presentations by Dr. Beth Unger (Chief of CDC’s Chronic Viral Diseases Branch), Dr. Lapp, Dr. Tony Komaroff (Harvard School of Medicine) and Dr. Avi Nath (NIH’s NINDR). This session of Public Health Grand Rounds will describe the illness and impact on patients, present CDC’s work addressing CFS/ME as a public health problem, present IOM recommendations, and discuss next steps to addressing this problem.

While the presentation will originate from the CDC auditorium in Atlanta, it will be webcasted to thousands of providers, researchers, and the public. Details and previous programs can be viewed at http://www.cdc.gov/cdcgrandrounds/ To review the Institute of Medicine report, go to http://iom.nationalacademies.org/reports/2015/me-cfs.aspx#sthash.h1qfxM13.dpuf . Hint: the complete report is over 300 pages, but the executive summary is pared down to about 25 pages.

Portal for HHC Lab Results

Although HHC has always provided copies of lab results drawn in our office, many individuals like to have results available 24/7 on the internet. That way they can be reviewed or shared with other providers at will.

HHC contracts with LabCorp, the largest commercial medical laboratory in the USA, to provide our lab services. In turn, LabCorp offers a portal for access by anyone who has had LabCorp services in our office. The portal is supported by Microsoft HealthVault, an extremely secure storage cloud and application provider.

To access your HHC LabCorp studies go to LabCorp.com, then click on the “I Am A Patient” banner, then “My Lab Test Results”. Follow the instructions and voilá!!

Other interesting apps can be found on Microsoft’s HealthVault.com site. Enter the site, then choose “Explore Health Vault,” then “Browse the Apps Directory”. We particularly like:

MyHealth Folio, where you can store and manage your diagnoses, family history, medication list, allergies, test results, surgeries and procedures, and medical contact information (e.g., multiple providers, emergency numbers, et cetera).

My Family Health Portfolio, which builds a family tree with health information on each member. This is particularly helpful when there are inherited conditions like Ehlers-Danlos, MTHFR mutations, hemochromatosis, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, and so forth. Data can then be shared with other family members or providers.

Family Health Portfolio. This provides tools to organize, track, measure and forecast a family’s health care expenses.

Confirm Your Appointment!

Be sure to confirm your appointment when you receive that reminder call from Pam or one of the other HHC staff members. Because appointment time is so valued, it is our policy to cancel an appointment and reschedule someone else if we have not heard back from you within 24 hours of your appointment.

Holiday Greetings

As 2015 draws to a close we thank all of you for your kind words, your Christmas cards, and your support. We sincerely hope that we have provided both hope and help to you! And thanks to all of you who have participated in research projects this past year! We could not move forward without your time and energy on such projects.

We wish you all a happy holiday season, a heartfelt Merry Christmas, and best wishes for health, happiness, and prosperity in 2016.

Dr. Charles Lapp
Dr. Laura Black
And the Hunter-Hopkins Staff — Wendy, Pam, Mimi, Darie and Melissa

Hunter-Hopkins Center, PLLC