Growing up, my cholesterol was very low. On entering medical school it was only about 100. My triglycerides were also very low. Back on the farm we ate at least 14 high-fat meals a week. But hard farm work obviously kept it low. When I entered Medical School, my cholesterol was edging up towards 150. […]

San Mateo County’s Century In the San Mateo County Medical Association Bulletin, Michelle B. Caughey, M.D., President of the San Mateo County Medical Association, reflects on the society’s 100th anniversary. “On September 21, the SMCMA will host an event celebrating 100 years of (somewhat) organized medicine on the Peninsula. A full-length book will debut in September as […]

Why health insurance costs so much The Bulletin Humboldt-Del Norte County Medical Society, summarizes the California Medical Association’s report on health plans that spend the least of the premium dollar on health care. Those spending less than 10 percent on administration included Scripps Clinic, Sharp, Kaiser, Cal Optima and others. Those spending 15 to 25 percent […]

Federal Government Finally Issues Compliance Rules: HIPAA’s Little Instruction Book Curtis Franklin, Jr, reports in Network Computing, www.nwc.com, that the federal government has finally issued, after nine years, guidelines for complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. He concludes: “The publication would have been worth its weight in gold nine years ago. But if […]

A patient with obstructive sleep apnea came in for his annual evaluation. He had been snoring for decades, but about six years ago, his wife noted that his snoring stopped abruptly in the middle of the night. She observed her husband and noted that his chest was still moving, as if he was breathing, but […]

A forty-year-old lady with a tender breast bone that she called chest pain in the hospital emergency department, spent four hours in an exam cubicle from, 8 PM to 12 MN. The triage team had ordered a chest x-ray, electrocardiogram and a number of lab tests. She was told at midnight that it would be […]

Doing the Right Thing – Return to Solo Practice Eric Holmberg, MD, a Petaluma family physician , writes the featured article in Sonoma Medicine. He left a salaried position at the Petaluma Health Center and embarked on a solo medical practice. “This move seemed to fly in the face of common sense because the number […]

Vital Signs, the official organ of the Fresno-Madera Medical Society, is a 12-page non-glossy magazine published monthly. It is primarily written by physicians and thus a true “Voice of Medicine.” Hats off to a medical society whose members still communicate with each other on a monthly basis. We’ve selected two “Voices” from the last two issues. […]

Are Obesity Policies Too Thin? Russell Jackson reports in Southern California Physician: Obesity is an increasingly urgent medical issue. A Journal of the American Medical Association report says that obesity-related deaths – those caused by lousy eating and exercise habits – rose by one-third from 1990 to 2000, to about 400,000 a year. By comparison, smoking-related deaths totaled […]

CMA Backs Stem-Cell Research The California Medical Association has endorsed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative that will earmark $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research to develop cures for Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases. That one sentence in Southern California Physician continues the confusion of equating embryonic stems cells that have never cured any diseases with […]