Had Trouble Finding a Doctor Lately? We, the physicians of Humboldt and Del Norte County, want you, our patients, know that the state of medicine in this area has deteriorated greatly over the past years, and is in danger of falling into dire straits right now. There are many reasons why that is so, and we cannot claim to understand them all, but the fact remains that local medical care is falling apart. This is what we know: 1. People are having trouble finding a doctor. The local medical society had to drop its physician referral program because the number of calls from people wanting help finding a doctor became unmanageable, and the medical society didn’t have anyone to send them to anyway. 2. Hospitals are providing more services for ever-decreasing reimbursements. The region’s largest hospital, St Joseph’s, managed to pull itself back from the brink of financial insolvency, but not by much. Recently St. Joseph’s rehabilitation program came very close to having to be shut
Thoughts on health care reform and other local occurences