Uninsured | Access to Care

Nearly half of the 107 medical school students graduating from the University of California Davis in June will enter primary-care residency programs, the highest percentage in more than a decade.

While celebrities and golf professionals gathered at Pebble Beach as part of the AT&T Pro Am in February, a group of teenagers gathered under a tent in a rainy parking lot at the Twin Creeks Golf Course in Salinas to await appointments at a mobile clinic.

Christina’s Smile Children’s Dental Clinic has been following the PGA tour for 20 years, stopping in nearby communities to offer free dental services to low-income, uninsured children from ages 6 to 15. Christina’s Smile dental clinics are held in cooperation with the PGA Tour and Champions Tour, with some members of the tours on the advisory board for the nonprofit. Diane Stigler, the vice president of operations for Christina’s Smile, said scheduling stops in conjunction with the golf tournaments also helps to raise the profile of the nonprofit.

Millions of uninsured Californians will gain medical coverage under the national healthcare overhaul beginning in January, but Guadalupe Luna won’t be one of them.

Luna, an illegal immigrant and tamale vendor in Los Angeles, doesn’t qualify. So she will continue going to the clinic where she has received free care for more than 20 years: Los Angeles County’s Hudson Comprehensive Health Center. There, publicly funded doctors will help manage her diabetes and high cholesterol.

More than 27 million Americans will soon gain health coverage under the health law. But who will treat them all?

With such a large coverage expansion, and with an anticipated shortage of primary care physicians available to serve them, some states have or are considering allowing so-called advanced practice nurses — those with advanced degrees — to treat more patients. David Hebert is at the issue’s center. Hebert, a veteran health care lobbyist and former CEO of the American College of Nurse Practitioners, is the first CEO of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) — a new group with 42,000 members recently formed from the merger of the American College of Nurse Practitioners and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

It’s a brilliant new idea for a rapidly aging population: a health center serving older adults that offers wraparound care spanning medical, dental, vision and mental health. Add specialties like dementia and end-of-life care. Finally, blanket patients with case management to connect them with important social services like housing, food, and other social programs for nutrition advice and abuse prevention.

New? Sure, in 1976.

The Over 60 Health Clinic in Berkeley was established during the revolutionary heyday of Bay Area politics by the Gray Panthers, an activist group paying homage to the far more radical Black Panthers, whose socialist agenda included better healthcare for the underserved.

WASHINGTON – In the largest one-year enrollment bump in program history, 8 million Americans are expected to gain health insurance through Medicaid in 2014 under the nation’s massive health care overhaul.

The Medicaid expansion is a signature provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and will mark a symbolic turning point in the controversial public and private effort to provide health insurance for all Americans.

Yet questions about the cost of the expansion, whether states will cooperate and a potential shortage of care providers has cast a cloud of uncertainty over the move as the nation’s rapidly evolving health care system readies for this rare jolt of newly insured patients – and whatever surprises come with them.

Rural health care administrators got some good news this week.

The Obama administration Monday [February 4, 2013] proposed to ease some Medicare regulations – a change that could save rural hospitals much-needed money by allowing for more flexible staffing requirements. But for about 450 health care professionals who attended this week’s National Rural Health Association Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., sustaining the often low-volume hospitals will continue to be an uphill battle.

“We are going to lose hospitals,” said Lance Keilers, administrator at Ballinger Memorial Hospital in Texas, at a panel on Monday [February 4, 2013] titled Threats to Rural Hospitals.

Jabari Kelly showed up at San Francisco General Hospital’s dental clinic last Friday looking like he was hiding a golf ball in his left cheek. He had been in pain for three weeks.

The 36-year-old San Francisco man had an infected wisdom tooth, and swelling had spread into his jaw and cheek. A few more days, he was told, and the infection could have advanced below his chin, possibly restricting his breathing.