June 3, 2026 • 12 mins
Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany speaks on why a British hospital opened an ICU ward on a roof, a common sleep drug could impair driving the next day, and whether you should always get a 2nd opinion
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for medical News with doctor Jim Keeney, chief
medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long
Beach and a certified, honest to god nobs er surgeon
that has all the credentials there and I've seen them
because I've asked many times.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning Jim, Good morning Bill.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
All Right, a couple of issues, and we've talked about
this before and we are looking at for real and
we thought this was going to happen and has panned out.
Childhood diseases and the vaccination decline. I don't know if
real numbers have come out yet, but there is no
issue that every anecdotal story has proven this out.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, it's true. There. The bottom line is that children's
hospitals especially are taking the brune and a lot of
preventable illnesses, you know, like pretessis are coming back to
the hospital and selling the beds. So, I mean, it's funny,
right because people are always trying to say, oh, you know,
big medicine, they're trying to push this or push that.
(01:03):
I mean, we're literally trying to push vaccines that will
reduce the number of people that come to the hospital.
Hospitals pick their money off taking care of people in
the hospital. So you know, this is a way. We
don't want this kind of business, right. We want people
to stay healthy to the extent that they can, and
if it's preventable, let's prevent it and then use the
(01:23):
hospital take care of people that really need it.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, in some crazy way, I can see the argument
on behalf of the no vaccine people coming from the
medical world saying a vaccine is two bucks and we
throw it in your arm and then we're done. But
if you catch the disease, we're now putting you in
the hospital and we get to treat and the doctors
get to get paid, and that's all good stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So yeah, we get I mean that's what people don't understand. Doctors,
don't they You know a lot of times they have
to get the vaccines from the county, and you know,
for free because of how much do they cost. If
they can't get those to give them out, then they
still have to pay somebody to administer them. And then
in those cases they don't charge the insurance company when
they when they buy their own and charge the insurance company,
(02:11):
it really doesn't cover all the cost. So I mean,
the bottom line is this is a losing proposition financially
for doctors, but it's a you know, it's something that
they all feel is very important and that's why they
do it.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So we have a real percentages.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
They have measles. If you get measles, you're going to
come see the doctory. They take more money that way.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
If do they have real numbers yet in terms of
the studies that x percent increase in the number of
these diseases versus what it was when vaccines were more prevalent.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well just in the last few years. So in protest's cases,
they are about seven thousand in twenty twenty three and
there were twenty eight thousand last year, so four times
more than a four times increase there.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So I still still don't get the anti vaxxers how
they go in light of the medicine and light of
the evidence here. And we've talked before. I'm a huge
fan of vaccines. I get vaccinated for everything there is,
and I'll even go to the vet and get vaccinated
for distemper on parvo because I just I just do
(03:19):
it a lot. And I went to the doctor my
physical and literally the nurse said, hey, do you want
your COVID shot, and I said absolutely, And they're still
giving COVID shots even though you know COVID is not
a big deal anymore. So it's fair to say that
as these crazy anti vaxxers are getting more and more traction,
(03:42):
you're seeing more people, more kids getting sick. And I
don't get it because see a parent looking at a
child just horribly ill because of the measles or protessis
for example, and was the anti vaxxer. You know, what
are they thinking? What are they thinking? Have you ever
run into a parent who feels, oops, I made a mistake?
(04:04):
Have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You know? No, none of that will really admit it
at the time. I mean, the bottom line is it's
an emotional decision a lot of times they're making and
they feel like they have concerns. Right, so you have
this vague anxiety and concern overgiving your kid a vaccine.
You've heard, you know, very confident people saying this is
(04:27):
absolutely true. And sometimes like trusted people that are celebrities
or you know that are And why you would trust
a celebrity over a doctor, I don't know, but that's
you know, that's the case. That's not what people do,
and you hear that these things are connected, and there
may be some chances that are connected. And everybody loves
a conspiracy theory that maybe somebody's hiding something somewhere. So
(04:51):
it's a weird dynamic right now going on that Almost
if a drug is approved by the FDA, it's almost
a black mark against it, right, the FDA must be
tainted as well. So if a drug's been rejected by
the FDA, it's like, oh, well, then that must really work.
They're hiding the good stuff from us, right, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Right now, Yeah, it is nuts. Okay, Okay, Jim, and
we've talked about this topic many many times, and that
is the myth of sleep drugs impairing driving the next day.
Would you care to comment.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
On that, so you know, I know you have a
vested interest in this. Unfortunately, this you know, we have
lots of data. This is just one more study that
shows that when you do take sleeping medications that they
have the potential to impair driving after they've worn off. So, yeah,
you wake up the next morning, you may feel refreshed,
(05:46):
you may feel like you had a good night's sleep,
but you still may not be as good at driving
as you thought you were.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Huh, okay, So what if you start I'm going to
get personal here. What if you start with the fact
that you're a bad drive or like I am.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, that's that's when you Yeah, you have no hope
basically a self driving car that's your only option. No,
it's this study that we're talking about as a small study,
but it definitely it looked at sarahquel specifically, and that's
not the typically first go to sleeping aid, although some
people like it because it has been shown to actually
(06:26):
reduce sleep ATNA in the process where other medications may
increase sleep ATNA. It's not FDA approved from insomnia, but
it's used that way. And in this case, it was
specifically that sarah Quil they looked at and the next
day there was impairment in driving.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, let's talk about that for a moment. Not that
specific drugs, but the fact that it's not FDA approved
and any doctor can use virtually any drug off label
because well, he or she says, well, I think I
think this is going to work, even though the drug
has nothing to do with whatever ailment is in front
(07:03):
of the doctor.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, but I mean, it's not done like Willy Nilly is. Basically,
if there's some suggestion that the drug might be good
for something, people tend to to do studies like this.
In this case for seraquil, there are studies done in
using it as a sleep aid. So those studies don't
rise to the level of FDA approval because the drug
(07:27):
company had to put it through that process and you know,
pay the money and do all that, and they're not
necessarily going to do all that and they're not going
to go through all that trouble when it's already a
legal drug to use and it's approved by the FDA.
So physicians just want to know there's some scientific backing
to say that the stuff could actually work to help
somebody in a certain condition, and that's that's why we
(07:49):
use things off label.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, but that's not a requirement that there has to
be a connection, correct. I mean the doctor can basically,
again use almost any drug if he or she thinks
that this may have some ameliator of ameliorate. Yeah, could
help as well, Yes, could help.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah. No, we're we're completely allowed. I mean it's from
a from a drug writing dea you know, legal perspective. Yeah,
we can write a drug that has is legally approved
by the FDA for any use. We can write for
anything we want. And now, of course again we wouldn't
do that unless we had some reason to believe it's
(08:31):
going to help somebody.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
The GLP one drugs that are now popular, which a
lot of people consider the magic bullet for a weight
loss and it's as close to a magic bullet as exists,
I think, uh, and that is it's a diabetic drug
if I'm not mistaken, and all they do is just
turbo it to the point where it becomes a weight
(08:54):
loss medication. Wasn't there any danger that when you take
a drug and really we move up on the dose,
there there's an issue as to your health.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Potentially, Yeah, you know you can. That's what you're looking at.
If you want to use always the lowest level prescription
that you can, you can use for a specific drug.
In the cases of low exempic and wago vi, the
starting doses are really actually similar to diabetic doses. They're
(09:27):
not super high there. I mean, people do end up
on higher doses, but they're given in at wise manner.
A lot of times, even if you're going to end
up at a higher dose it's better to start at
the lower dose. Your body kind of gets adjusted to
it a little bit and some of the side effects
are not as bad. So when you say magic bolt,
typically magic bullet we think of right as the magic
(09:49):
bullet that can can maybe go through a crowd, go
around corners, and still hit only the person you're or
the target of whatever it is you're intended to hit.
And so you're right, it is pretty close to that,
but it still does have side effects, uh and other
you know, issues that you want to try and avoid,
(10:09):
especially if you don't need the drugs. So yeah, I
think you're right, it's close to that, but dose wise,
it isn't that far off from diabetic dosing.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Okay, all right, So with that being said, I had
I had never heard of a diabet a dose of
that medication for diabetes connected to weight loss. That just
seemed when the medication became hugely popular. Did you see
that or were you aware of that and were the
studies out there?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, no, I was aware of it. What happened is,
you know, doctors were seen across the board that people
on this drug were losing weight, and so they began
prescribing it first for people with diabetes, and they saw
they lost weight. Then they saw people with elevated H
one C you know hemlomy one, sees that where that's
(11:01):
a suggestive of pre diabetes, and so they started prescribing
it for that and they got better, and then they realized, hey,
you know, this is really good for weight loss, and
so they started prescribing it just for weight loss off label,
and that's that's how it all snowballed into it. But
in this case, you know, the drug company knew that
this was a blockbuster in a way that they could
(11:22):
it actually is worth getting FDA approval because then it's
a very expensive drug. So when you use drugs off label,
you may not get it covered by your insurance company.
But in this case they want to get it covered
by an insurance company to the extent they can. That's
why they paid the extra money to go and have
it FDA approved.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, and when you say it's a very expensive drug,
I mean obviously for people that are litting a hand
to mouth and have a rough time, But three to
four hundred dollars a month or one fifty to three
hundred dollars a month seems relatively low, as compared to
almost any other medication that is on brand that you
(12:01):
buy without insurance.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I don't know, Bill, I mean, I bet you half
the population lives off that much as far as their
entire food budget. So could you're essentially you're taking their
entire food budget and turning it into a messense. So
that's the problem for you know, for people on the
higher end going to restaurants and you know, going out regularly.
I bet you they saved three hundred dollars a month
in restaurant bills, you know, by being on this stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So yeah, that makes sense. And that's the other side
of it, because you simply don't eat as much. You're
not even close. All right, Jim, we'll contact you and
talk to you next week. Thanks as always for your information.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Rank You
It's time for medical News with doctor Jim Keeney, chief
medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long
Beach and a certified, honest to god nobs er surgeon
that has all the credentials there and I've seen them
because I've asked many times.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning Jim, Good morning Bill.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
All Right, a couple of issues, and we've talked about
this before and we are looking at for real and
we thought this was going to happen and has panned out.
Childhood diseases and the vaccination decline. I don't know if
real numbers have come out yet, but there is no
issue that every anecdotal story has proven this out.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, it's true. There. The bottom line is that children's
hospitals especially are taking the brune and a lot of
preventable illnesses, you know, like pretessis are coming back to
the hospital and selling the beds. So, I mean, it's funny,
right because people are always trying to say, oh, you know,
big medicine, they're trying to push this or push that.
(01:03):
I mean, we're literally trying to push vaccines that will
reduce the number of people that come to the hospital.
Hospitals pick their money off taking care of people in
the hospital. So you know, this is a way. We
don't want this kind of business, right. We want people
to stay healthy to the extent that they can, and
if it's preventable, let's prevent it and then use the
(01:23):
hospital take care of people that really need it.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, in some crazy way, I can see the argument
on behalf of the no vaccine people coming from the
medical world saying a vaccine is two bucks and we
throw it in your arm and then we're done. But
if you catch the disease, we're now putting you in
the hospital and we get to treat and the doctors
get to get paid, and that's all good stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So yeah, we get I mean that's what people don't understand. Doctors,
don't they You know a lot of times they have
to get the vaccines from the county, and you know,
for free because of how much do they cost. If
they can't get those to give them out, then they
still have to pay somebody to administer them. And then
in those cases they don't charge the insurance company when
they when they buy their own and charge the insurance company,
(02:11):
it really doesn't cover all the cost. So I mean,
the bottom line is this is a losing proposition financially
for doctors, but it's a you know, it's something that
they all feel is very important and that's why they
do it.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So we have a real percentages.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
They have measles. If you get measles, you're going to
come see the doctory. They take more money that way.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
If do they have real numbers yet in terms of
the studies that x percent increase in the number of
these diseases versus what it was when vaccines were more prevalent.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well just in the last few years. So in protest's cases,
they are about seven thousand in twenty twenty three and
there were twenty eight thousand last year, so four times
more than a four times increase there.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So I still still don't get the anti vaxxers how
they go in light of the medicine and light of
the evidence here. And we've talked before. I'm a huge
fan of vaccines. I get vaccinated for everything there is,
and I'll even go to the vet and get vaccinated
for distemper on parvo because I just I just do
(03:19):
it a lot. And I went to the doctor my
physical and literally the nurse said, hey, do you want
your COVID shot, and I said absolutely, And they're still
giving COVID shots even though you know COVID is not
a big deal anymore. So it's fair to say that
as these crazy anti vaxxers are getting more and more traction,
(03:42):
you're seeing more people, more kids getting sick. And I
don't get it because see a parent looking at a
child just horribly ill because of the measles or protessis
for example, and was the anti vaxxer. You know, what
are they thinking? What are they thinking? Have you ever
run into a parent who feels, oops, I made a mistake?
(04:04):
Have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You know? No, none of that will really admit it
at the time. I mean, the bottom line is it's
an emotional decision a lot of times they're making and
they feel like they have concerns. Right, so you have
this vague anxiety and concern overgiving your kid a vaccine.
You've heard, you know, very confident people saying this is
(04:27):
absolutely true. And sometimes like trusted people that are celebrities
or you know that are And why you would trust
a celebrity over a doctor, I don't know, but that's
you know, that's the case. That's not what people do,
and you hear that these things are connected, and there
may be some chances that are connected. And everybody loves
a conspiracy theory that maybe somebody's hiding something somewhere. So
(04:51):
it's a weird dynamic right now going on that Almost
if a drug is approved by the FDA, it's almost
a black mark against it, right, the FDA must be
tainted as well. So if a drug's been rejected by
the FDA, it's like, oh, well, then that must really work.
They're hiding the good stuff from us, right, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Right now, Yeah, it is nuts. Okay, Okay, Jim, and
we've talked about this topic many many times, and that
is the myth of sleep drugs impairing driving the next day.
Would you care to comment.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
On that, so you know, I know you have a
vested interest in this. Unfortunately, this you know, we have
lots of data. This is just one more study that
shows that when you do take sleeping medications that they
have the potential to impair driving after they've worn off. So, yeah,
you wake up the next morning, you may feel refreshed,
(05:46):
you may feel like you had a good night's sleep,
but you still may not be as good at driving
as you thought you were.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Huh, okay, So what if you start I'm going to
get personal here. What if you start with the fact
that you're a bad drive or like I am.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, that's that's when you Yeah, you have no hope
basically a self driving car that's your only option. No,
it's this study that we're talking about as a small study,
but it definitely it looked at sarahquel specifically, and that's
not the typically first go to sleeping aid, although some
people like it because it has been shown to actually
(06:26):
reduce sleep ATNA in the process where other medications may
increase sleep ATNA. It's not FDA approved from insomnia, but
it's used that way. And in this case, it was
specifically that sarah Quil they looked at and the next
day there was impairment in driving.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, let's talk about that for a moment. Not that
specific drugs, but the fact that it's not FDA approved
and any doctor can use virtually any drug off label
because well, he or she says, well, I think I
think this is going to work, even though the drug
has nothing to do with whatever ailment is in front
(07:03):
of the doctor.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, but I mean, it's not done like Willy Nilly is. Basically,
if there's some suggestion that the drug might be good
for something, people tend to to do studies like this.
In this case for seraquil, there are studies done in
using it as a sleep aid. So those studies don't
rise to the level of FDA approval because the drug
(07:27):
company had to put it through that process and you know,
pay the money and do all that, and they're not
necessarily going to do all that and they're not going
to go through all that trouble when it's already a
legal drug to use and it's approved by the FDA.
So physicians just want to know there's some scientific backing
to say that the stuff could actually work to help
somebody in a certain condition, and that's that's why we
(07:49):
use things off label.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, but that's not a requirement that there has to
be a connection, correct. I mean the doctor can basically,
again use almost any drug if he or she thinks
that this may have some ameliator of ameliorate. Yeah, could
help as well, Yes, could help.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah. No, we're we're completely allowed. I mean it's from
a from a drug writing dea you know, legal perspective. Yeah,
we can write a drug that has is legally approved
by the FDA for any use. We can write for
anything we want. And now, of course again we wouldn't
do that unless we had some reason to believe it's
(08:31):
going to help somebody.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
The GLP one drugs that are now popular, which a
lot of people consider the magic bullet for a weight
loss and it's as close to a magic bullet as exists,
I think, uh, and that is it's a diabetic drug
if I'm not mistaken, and all they do is just
turbo it to the point where it becomes a weight
(08:54):
loss medication. Wasn't there any danger that when you take
a drug and really we move up on the dose,
there there's an issue as to your health.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Potentially, Yeah, you know you can. That's what you're looking at.
If you want to use always the lowest level prescription
that you can, you can use for a specific drug.
In the cases of low exempic and wago vi, the
starting doses are really actually similar to diabetic doses. They're
(09:27):
not super high there. I mean, people do end up
on higher doses, but they're given in at wise manner.
A lot of times, even if you're going to end
up at a higher dose it's better to start at
the lower dose. Your body kind of gets adjusted to
it a little bit and some of the side effects
are not as bad. So when you say magic bolt,
typically magic bullet we think of right as the magic
(09:49):
bullet that can can maybe go through a crowd, go
around corners, and still hit only the person you're or
the target of whatever it is you're intended to hit.
And so you're right, it is pretty close to that,
but it still does have side effects, uh and other
you know, issues that you want to try and avoid,
(10:09):
especially if you don't need the drugs. So yeah, I
think you're right, it's close to that, but dose wise,
it isn't that far off from diabetic dosing.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Okay, all right, So with that being said, I had
I had never heard of a diabet a dose of
that medication for diabetes connected to weight loss. That just
seemed when the medication became hugely popular. Did you see
that or were you aware of that and were the
studies out there?
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, no, I was aware of it. What happened is,
you know, doctors were seen across the board that people
on this drug were losing weight, and so they began
prescribing it first for people with diabetes, and they saw
they lost weight. Then they saw people with elevated H
one C you know hemlomy one, sees that where that's
(11:01):
a suggestive of pre diabetes, and so they started prescribing
it for that and they got better, and then they realized, hey,
you know, this is really good for weight loss, and
so they started prescribing it just for weight loss off label,
and that's that's how it all snowballed into it. But
in this case, you know, the drug company knew that
this was a blockbuster in a way that they could
(11:22):
it actually is worth getting FDA approval because then it's
a very expensive drug. So when you use drugs off label,
you may not get it covered by your insurance company.
But in this case they want to get it covered
by an insurance company to the extent they can. That's
why they paid the extra money to go and have
it FDA approved.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, and when you say it's a very expensive drug,
I mean obviously for people that are litting a hand
to mouth and have a rough time, But three to
four hundred dollars a month or one fifty to three
hundred dollars a month seems relatively low, as compared to
almost any other medication that is on brand that you
(12:01):
buy without insurance.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I don't know, Bill, I mean, I bet you half
the population lives off that much as far as their
entire food budget. So could you're essentially you're taking their
entire food budget and turning it into a messense. So
that's the problem for you know, for people on the
higher end going to restaurants and you know, going out regularly.
I bet you they saved three hundred dollars a month
in restaurant bills, you know, by being on this stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So yeah, that makes sense. And that's the other side
of it, because you simply don't eat as much. You're
not even close. All right, Jim, we'll contact you and
talk to you next week. Thanks as always for your information.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Rank You
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