Local News – Thursday, April 18th, 2024
The Salem Memorial Hospital Board of Directors held their regular meeting at the hospital library Tuesday evening. The Statistical Summary of Operations showed the hospital inpatient admissions were 79, of which 49 were for Medical and Surgical, 5 for Swingbeds, and 25 for Observation. These admissions totaled 280 inpatient census days. Notably, the average length of stay for both Medical/Surgical, and Swingbeds were up significantly compared to March 2023. There were 1,400 Outpatient Registrations, 1,560 Cardiopulmonary Procedures, 6,731 Lab Tests, 1,301 Radiology Procedures, 680 Rehabilitation Treatments and 39 Surgical Procedures. There were 639 Emergency Room visits with 57 patients being admitted. A total of 226 ambulance runs were made with 166 patients being transported. The Chief Nursing Officer report from Ashley Owens stated that there are openings for five night nursing positions as well as a full time EMT. The Mandatory Annual Nursing Skills Lab is scheduled for May 9th. The recognition for the Nurse of the Year will follow on May 10th. In Human Resources there were three new hires while six employees left. According to the First Quarter Report this totals, 10 new hires, while 29 have left, nearly half of those who left were from the Nursing Department.
An accident occurred in Crawford County Saturday night at 10:20 on I-44 at the 220 mile marker. According to the Highway Patrol report a 2002 Ford Explorer, driven by a 16-year-old female juvenile, ran off the left side of the roadway, struck the cable barrier, and overturned. She suffered moderate injuries and was transported by North Crawford Ambulance District to Missouri Baptist Hospital in Sullivan. The Ford was totaled and removed from the scene by Patriot Towing. The Highway Patrol was assisted by the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office and the Bourbon Fire Department.
A recent investigation of illegal tree harvesting on the Mark Twain National Forest that led to the indictment of a southern Missouri man used an uncommon form of evidence—DNA from an illegally harvested log. This case marks the first time that tree DNA was used to investigate a federal timber poaching case in the eastern United States. Timber theft is a common crime on public lands. Black walnut—the tree in this case—is among the largest and longest-lived hardwood tree species growing on the Mark Twain’s 1.5 million acres. Its wood is sought after for veneers and furniture, which makes it an attractive target for timber poaching on federal and other lands across Missouri and neighboring states. In October 2019, witnesses notified a law enforcement officer of a potential illegal harvest on the forest near Siloam Springs, Mo. After identifying eight freshly cut walnut stumps at the site, a Forest Service special agent was assigned the case. He investigated a nearby hardwood lumber mill, where he found one log with dimensions matching one of the stumps. An off-cut from the end of the suspect log showed a near-perfect fit to one of the freshly cut stumps at the theft site. To convincingly prove that this stump and log represented the same tree, the special agent contacted Richard Cronn, a USDA Forest Service research geneticist based in Oregon, who studies forest tree genetics and has pioneered the use of tree DNA in illegal logging investigations. Cronn’s lab evaluated the stump and log samples utilizing the new test, and results showed that the samples were identical across 80 genetic markers. For Missouri black walnut, that DNA database was built by Forest Service law enforcement and timber staff and Adventure Scientists, a citizen-science volunteer organization. The group’s volunteers collected leaf and wood samples across the species’ range, and Forest Service geneticists analyzed the samples to determine the “DNA profile probability’—or the chance that two random walnut trees would share the same DNA fingerprint. Using this database, the research team determined that the DNA profile probability for the illegally cut tree was less than one in a million-trillion-trillion. The combination of physical evidence and DNA testing proved irrefutable. The defendant pled guilty in July 2023 to one felony count of depredation of Government property, and was sentenced to five months of time served, a 3-year supervised release, and restitution for the value of timber and ecological damage to the forest.