Health care close to home.

• Author: Baker, Allen
• Position: Alaska

Alaskans are finding they don't have to go thousand of miles - and incur high travel costs - to get medical attention. Health care is increasingly available in Anchorage, in regional medical centers and even in more remote Bush areas.

Changes in Alaska's health care system are bringing more medicine closer to home - whether home is Anchorage or Aniak. That's a relief to families of people who get sick, and it's keeping more dollars in Alaska.

When one member of a family gets sick and has to travel out of town for care, others in that family have to spend money on travel, hotels and restaurant meals, as well as lose time at work.

"You have to look at the total cost of the illness - and that's the impact on the family, not just the individual," says Harlan Knudsen of the Alaska Hospital and Nursing Home Association. The mental strain of being far from home can also retard the healing process.

Despite the sparse population, Alaskans are building one of the best rural health care systems in the nation, Knudsen and others agree.

Services to Alaska's Bush communities are being improved as regional centers convert from government operation to control by local Native nonprofit groups. Community health aides, Alaska's version of China's "barefoot doctors," are getting more training and support as they work directly with the people in their villages.

Meanwhile, in Anchorage, Alaska's traditional health care hub, services now rival those available Outside.

"Basically, every acute or tertiary care service that's available in the Lower 48 is available at Alaska Regional Hospital," says Lyn Whitley, marketing director for that 238-bed operation.

Alaskans still must travel Outside for organ transplants, and that's not likely to change in the near future, given the specialized procedures and Alaska's distance from many potential donors.

Anchorage Advances

But services short of that are available here and now. Alaska Regional just added a special operating room that's reserved strictly for open-heart surgery, and a Level 3 neonatal care unit will provide for newborn infants who need intensive care.

Virginia Collins, program director for the in-patient rehabilitation unit at Alaska Regional, recalls her time as a medical management consultant in 1975.

"Then," she says, "at least 85 percent of the patients who needed almost any extensive treatment or therapy had to go outside the state." That situation has changed dramatically, and now, she says, "We're...