Dr. Emily's Blog

Our household has had the dubious honor of being deeply and directly affected by some of the major initiatives contained in the economic stimulus package. My husband, who is a sales manager at Mid City Motor world has been working long, busy days trying to accommodate the rush of car buyers flooding in to take advantage of the “Cash for Clunkers” program, while our pediatric office, with the promise of future reimbursement for “meaningful use” of an EMR, has begun the process of converting to electronic medical records. The cash for clunkers program is meant to reduce carbon emissions by encouraging people to turn in gas guzzlers and purchase more fuel efficient vehicles, but questions remain as to the overall benefit. Cash for Clunkers does not reduce, recycle or reuse in the least. The clunkers must be destroyed and sent to landfills,—so no used vehicles come out of the transactions to sell again, and no parts can be gleaned for resale. Jobs involved with used car sales and p...

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 ...