Flood of new patients forces SF General to innovate

By Richard C. Paddock

For hospital administrator Roland Pickens, Healthy San Francisco offers more than universal health care and coverage for the city’s uninsured. The three-year-old city program also is inspiring new approaches to streamlining medical care. Pickens, chief operating officer of San Francisco General Hospital, said the city health care program has led to innovations that include evening and weekend clinics, better care of patients with chronic conditions, electronic referrals that speed up the appointment process and a teleconferencing system that has doubled the availability of interpreters.

Family medicine docs can prevent disease with activism

By Ronald Fong. M.D.

Every spring around this time, thousands of graduating medical school students get matched with residency positions at hospitals and clinics across the country, the final stage in their training to become doctors practicing on their own. This year’s match game carried some good news: 91.4 percent of the openings for family medicine residencies were filled by the graduates, the highest percentage ever. But there was a catch: the percentage of positions filled went up in part because the number of positions available went down, the result of several family medicine residency programs closing within the last decade.

Success story: Humboldt County Juvenile Hall

By Meira Shuman

I liked this student the first time I met him. He was rowdy, he cursed, he broke rules with wild abandon, he was a pain in the neck for a lot of the teachers…He hated school… He told me that he thought he would grow up to be just like his brothers. Everyone else seemed to agree with him. His brothers are all in prison for gang-related activities.
He was soon locked up in his room for misbehavior. Instead of behaving so he could return to the classroom, he refused to do any work, and continued to tag his papers with gang writing. I was told this was typical for this student. I knew that he could work hard, he just wasn’t motivated. On a whim, I wrote him a letter in his cell.

This employer supports health care mandate

By Richard C. Paddock

The Nibbi Brothers construction company is a big supporter of San Francisco’s nearly universal health care program, even though it includes a mandate on employers to provide benefits to their workers. Bib Nibbi, the company’s president, says the law levels the playing field with companies that bid against him and win by slashing their labor costs. The city, he says, should avoid a “race to the bottom.”

San Diego tenants get no help fighting rats, mold

By Megan Burks

Residents of City Heights in San Diego often deal with mold and vermin infestations in rental housing, but a bureaucratic rats’ nest prevents them from getting any action. The city does not enforce parts of the state code dealing with these issues, and the county enforces codes only in areas not served by cities. The could step in but is taking a go-slow approach. The result: a runaround, and no help for tenants.

Price of ‘progress’: displacing low-income tenants

By Joy Hepp

Boyle Heights has weathered its share of threats over the years, from proposed prisons and hazardous waste plants to criminal gangs. Now residents of the historic East LA neighborhood are feeling the pressure of city-backed development that is displacing low-income housing. Community groups are using a lull in construction caused by the down economy to organize so that residents have a voice when the city pushes again to gentrify the community.

Students at risk from pesticides

By Teresa DeAnda

Ten years after the state passed a law allowing the creation of pesticide buffer zones around public schools, not one such zone has been adopted by the state’s county agricultural commissioners. Students remain at risk.

Federal health reform bill includes a new focus on prevention

By Daniel Weintraub

The federal health reform bill that President Barack Obama signed into law last week will expand access to health insurance for millions of Americans. But the bill will also pour billions of dollars into programs intended to keep those people from ever needing the kind of care for which they will now be eligible. The bill includes new mandates on public and private insurers to provide more check-ups and screenings without co-pays. But the most intriguing provision creates a grant program to transform communities in ways designed to improve the health of their residents.

For universal health care, but not on his shoulders

By Richard C. Paddock

Daniel Scherotter, a restaurant owner and chef, is leading the fight against Healthy San Francisco. It is not that he opposes the health care program. He simply thinks the city’s businesses, particularly restaurants, should not be required to finance universal health care.

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