Four years ago, a sports medicine group began a quest to build a surgery and training center in Alpharetta, in Atlanta’s northern suburbs.

The proposed multimillion-dollar center was to be known as the Legacy Sports institute. It was associated with famed orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews of Alabama, whose patients have included such sports luminaries as Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, John Smoltz, Drew Brees and Brett Favre.

Backers of the Legacy Sports Institute went through the normal state regulatory process for approval of such health care projects, seeking what’s officially called a certificate of need (CON).

Twice, Legacy Sports Institute won state approval for construction. ...

Read More

Georgia’s obesity rate for adults is about average among states, the CDC reports. But it’s still a startlingly high figure.

Almost one in three residents in the state is obese. The overall 31.6 percent rate for 2017 in Georgia is slightly higher than the 30.5 percentage in 2014. It’s a rate that has climbed steadily, both here and nationally.

And African-Americans in Georgia have an even higher rate of obesity, a situation that also prevails at the national level.

The CDC report, released last week, also found that the South (32.4%) and the Midwest (32.3%) had the highest prevalence of obesity, followed by the ...

Read More

Georgia’s uninsured rate ticked up slightly, to 13.4 percent, in 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau reported this week. That’s the fourth-highest rate in the nation.

The state trails only Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska. The uninsured rate in Georgia was 12.9 percent in 2016.

Nationally, 8.8 percent of people, or 28.5 million, did not have health insurance at any point during 2017, the Census Bureau said. The uninsured rate and number of uninsured were not statistically different from 2016 (8.8 percent or 28.1 million).

The Georgia numbers are “mixed news,’’ said Bill Custer, a health insurance expert at Georgia State University. “The change is small ...

Read More

A small DeKalb County nonprofit has been given a statewide grant to provide navigators for people seeking to enroll in the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges.

Navigators are people specially trained to advise and assist consumers who use the exchanges to buy health coverage.

Georgia Refugee Health and Mental Health, based in Clarkston, will get the state’s entire navigator funding of almost $500,000, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The organization has previously worked as a navigator entity, but with far less funding than two other organizations, Insure Georgia and the Georgia Primary Care Association.

Kathleen Connors, head of Georgia Refugee Health and Mental Health, told ...

Read More