American College of Lifestyle Medicine Launches Bill of Rights to Raise Awareness of Lifestyle Medicine’s Role in Type 2 Diabetes Informed Consent and Treatment
The Bill of Rights is a companion to ACLM’s recently launched “Reversing Type 2 Diabetes and Insulin Resistance with Lifestyle Medicine” 18-hour, 20-module, evidence-based CME/CE accredited online course for physicians and health professionals. This is the first comprehensive educational curriculum offered to equip physicians and other health professionals to treat and reverse type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. In addition, ACLM recently published a position paper, “Type 2 Diabetes Remission and Lifestyle Medicine: A Position Statement from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.” ACLM will also present a free webinar, “The Reversibility of Type 2 Diabetes with Lifestyle Medicine—Q & A” on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 12 p.m. CST.
ACLM defines Lifestyle Medicine as the use of an evidence-based, whole food, plant-predominant dietary lifestyle, regular physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connection as a primary therapeutic modality for treatment, reversal and prevention of chronic disease. Addressing lifestyle is the first step in type 2 diabetes and other chronic disease treatment and management guidelines, but it has been overlooked due to a lack of physician training in lifestyle, barriers to practice and a lack of consumer understanding.
“We believe that a patient does not give fully informed consent if this option is not presented to them at the time of diagnosis,” said ACLM Founding President John Kelly, MD, DipABLM, lead faculty for the new course. “COVID-19 has highlighted the vulnerabilities created by type 2 diabetes, amplifying the urgent need to restore health to those impacted by this lifestyle-related chronic disease, as opposed to simply managing it.”
“COVID-19 has exposed the long-standing issue of racial health disparities in America, as people of color have been disproportionally affected by the pandemic,” said ACLM President Cate Collings, MD, DipABLM. “While the causes of racial health disparities are many, and include the range of social determinants of health, the most devastating impact is from the significantly higher incidence of chronic disease, most notably type 2 diabetes.
“If you are talking about racial health disparities and are not focused on the disparate impact of type 2 diabetes, you are missing the heart of the matter.”
“Truly addressing racial health disparities will only happen when our nation recognizes the role of lifestyle and trains its clinicians accordingly, fully informs patients, removes the barriers to practicing Lifestyle Medicine and rewards physicians and health professionals for restoring health rather than merely managing disease,” said Kelly. “ACLM is actively addressing each of these areas.”
Diabetes has a devastating impact on the quality of life of millions of Americans. Treatment for diabetes is also a major contributor to the country’s health care spending. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 90 percent of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care expenditure pays for the treatment of chronic health conditions, including type 2 diabetes. In the United States
Chesapeake OB-GYN admits backdating patient consent forms but denies unnecessary surgeries
Dr. Javaid Perwaiz knew that government-funded Medicaid insurance required that patients consent to sterilization surgeries at least 30 day before they were performed.
And yet he admitted during testimony Thursday in his criminal trial in U.S. District Court in Norfolk that he frequently backdated the forms to make it appear he’d complied with the rule, which prosecutors said was created decades ago to prevent low-income women from being pressured into getting sterilized.
“It was to help the patients,” Perwaiz said of his backdating practice.
Each had already expressed a desire to get sterilized more than 30 days before the procedure was done, he said, and he didn’t want to make them wait any longer. Even the ones who’d first come to him just a few days before getting procedures done had told another doctor they wanted it, he said.
Also, some were close to having their Medicaid insurance run out and he wanted to ensure they got the surgery while still covered. Perwaiz said he always informed them the procedure was permanent, but also told them it could be reversed later.
The 70-year-old doctor’s testimony came during the 11th day of his trial on 61 counts of fraud.
The trial began Oct. 14 and is expected to last several more days. Prosecutors have alleged Perwaiz performed numerous unnecessary surgeries and procedures on his patients for years in order to fund a lavish lifestyle.
The doctor first took the witness stand in his own defense Wednesday, testified all of Thursday, and is set to return Monday when the trial resumes.
During testimony Thursday, Perwaiz also conceded he never used scopes with cameras that could project what he was seeing inside the patient onto a monitor in the operating room — a common practice used by all the other OB-GYNs doing surgery at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center.
Perwaiz said the equipment wasn’t available when he was training in the 1970s, nor was it something he was comfortable using, or was required to use.
But the longtime physician strongly denied ever doing surgeries that weren’t medically necessary, or inducing pregnant patients to deliver their babies earlier than was medically safe. Prosecutors have alleged he regularly induced pregnant women early in order to make sure he was the one to deliver the baby and get paid for it.
Assistant U.S. District Attorney Elizabeth Yusi asked Perwaiz to explain why most of his pregnant patients in 2019 had their labors induced early, and almost always on Saturdays when he was at the hospital performing surgeries.
Perwaiz said that there were risks with letting a patient go beyond 39 weeks of pregnancy and he was trying to prevent that.
While prosecutors contend that the inductions were routinely scheduled at 38 weeks of pregnancy — which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says is unsafe for the mother and baby — the doctor said he always did them in the 39th week.
He also said he was proud that his rate of cesarean section
Robert Claude McGrath retires license under consent order, agency says
Cherry Hill Library is displaying more than 30 scarecrows in a Halloween season contest
Cherry Hill Courier-Post
TRENTON – A Cherry Hill doctor who pleaded guilty to defrauding Medicare can no longer practice medicine in New Jersey, a state agency says.
Robert Claude McGrath, D.O., has retired his license under a consent order with the state Board of Medical Examiners, according to the agency’s website. It said the license retirement would be “deemed a permanent revocation.”
The order noted McGrath pleaded guilty in June 2017 to conspiring to commit health care fraud and received a 30-month term in federal prison.
Robert Claude McGrath, D.O., of Cherry Hill cannot practice medicine in New Jersey after a criminal conviction, the state Board of Medical Examiners has reported. (Photo: bjphotographs, Getty Images/iStockphoto)
McGrath admitted to defrauding Medicare and other health care benefit programs of $890,000 in payments, according to the order.
McGrath, 69, was released from custody in May of this year.
The doctor and his chiropractor son — Robert Christopher McGrath, 48, of Cherry Hill —were accused of using unqualified people to give physical therapy, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey.
The fraud took place from January 2011 through April 2016, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
It said the McGraths owned Atlantic Spine & Joint Institute, a practice with offices in Westmont and Wayne, Pa., the federal prosecutor’s office said.
The younger McGrath received a 10-month prison term for conspiring to commit health care fraud in December 2017.
The McGraths and Atlantic Spine also agreed to pay $1.78 million plus interest to the federal government to resolve allegations that their scheme caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare.
The state Attorney General’s Office moved to suspend or revoke the elder McGrath’s license in August, according to the Oct. 13 consent order.
McGrath’s registration to prescribe controlled substances has also been revoked, it said.
Jim Walsh is a free-range reporter who’s been roaming around South Jersey for decades. His interests include crime, the courts, economic development and being first with breaking news. Reach him at [email protected] or look for him in traffic.
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