By Callie Shanafelt
Community clinics are turning technologically savvy. Spurred on by federal funds, they are adopting electronic health records at rates exceeded only by HMOs.
Month: September 2012
Nearly three-fourths of middle-aged Californian voters say they could not afford three months in a nursing home, and nearly half say they couldn’t afford even a single month, according to a new poll released Thursday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Nearly every afternoon this summer, Florencia Ramirez drove past the strawberries and lima beans growing in the Oxnard plain, and each time she grew angry about what she saw. In an area plagued with water shortages and droughts, some of the largest agricultural producers in the nation seemed to be using water with abandon, Ramirez observed.
California’s poverty rate was 16.9 percent in 2011, the highest it has been in 15 years, according to numbers released by the US Census Bureau Wednesday.
Overweight children and adolescents are contending with a problem that used to be rare in young people. They are at least twice as likely to have gallstones as their counterparts who are not overweight or obese.
Law enforcement leaders from throughout California said Tuesday that overzealous school disciplinary policies are making the state less safe, not more. The public schools are suspending and expelling too many students for minor offenses, leaving troubled kids on the street without adult supervision and more likely to commit crimes, said three police chiefs, a county sheriff and a district attorney.
By Robert Fulton
If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em out. That may have been easier said than done for a pair of Los Angeles non-profits, but that’s exactly what happened in July. Community land trust organization T.R.U.S.T. South L.A. and affordable housing developer Abode Communities recently announced the acquisition of South Los Angeles apartment complex Rolland Curtis Gardens.
Low-income Californians are more likely to feel empowered and engaged in decisions about their health care when they are more informed about their condition and the options available to them, according to a report released Monday.
The parents of critically ill children insured by Medi-Cal once had to choose between ongoing treatment and end-of-life care. A program to offer a third option, community-based palliative care, was launched in California in 2009. The program not only improves the quality of life for sick children and their families, it also saves the state money, a recent report found.
A common assumption is that senior homeowners are in the best position to weather the mortgage crisis because they bought their homes before the real estate bubble and have more equity. That assumption is wrong, a recent AARP report suggests. How has the crisis affected seniors in Northern California?