In the Public Eye

Post date:: Saturday, June 15, 2013 - 11:22am

It’s amazing how quickly your Iphone can fill up with aps. But working in healthcare, what are the useful ones – and what ones do you actually use?

I have about 40 aps on my phone. I know that’s small potatoes. And most are pretty vanilla – FaceBook, Twitter, NPR, various sports, news and weather sites, Pandora and a couple of flashlight aps. But only four are health related – and only one (California Healthline, an ap from the California HealthCare Foundation) that I’ve actually use.

In the Public Eye

Ambulance at 8,000 feet

Post date:: Friday, May 31, 2013 - 9:40am

No television. Scant cell signal. Mystical, nature-sculpted rock formations called hoodoos. The Lodge at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. Rustic. Tranquil. Elevation, about 8,000 feet. Breath taking. Literally. Take five breaths where you’d take three at lower elevations. And what happens if….. or when…

Haiku of fatherhood

Post date:: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - 2:51pm

The frozen burgers rage against the propane grille. Our faces grow oily in afternoon sun there at the smog line, at my son’s home on the pathway to Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park.

Relentless world of Pappa Mike

Post date:: Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 2:02pm

Mike and I would jawbone as the sun was setting outside the Fresno Bee’s E Street cafeteria, ignoring the indigestion from eating Friday’s fried fish in a Monday sandwich. He worked in production. I edited copy and churned out headlines. The real work he was doing, in his off hours, was handing out sandwiches to the homeless folks a few blocks away.

Train wreck? So far, maybe

Post date:: Monday, April 22, 2013 - 9:30am

Hyperbole is the aorta of politics, but I believe there wasn’t all that much exaggeration the other day when Sen. Max Baucus warned that “a huge train wreck” was in the offing when federal healthcare reform more fully unfolds next January.

Health madness of "Mad Men"

Post date:: Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - 3:13pm

In my section of New York City in the “Mad Men” 1960s era, both my primary care doc and my dentist smoked cigarettes in their offices as they treated me. OK, the dentist would wash his hands, but his breath reeked. When I was hospitalized for an appendectomy, I kept a diary in my bedside drawer – until some nosy intern found it, called in his friends and read it aloud. And my surgery was delayed because the doc was out Christmas shopping – he had his hands full of presents as he waltzed by me in my pre-surgery anesthetic haze.