Photo illustration of a man who has overdosed on a combination of drugs.(Photo: Victor Moussa, via Shutterstock)OPINION: The man experiencing homelessness was nodding off when a street medicine provider from Venice Family Clinic recognized the signs of an opioid overdose. The provider gave the man a dose of naloxone (Narcan®) and prevented another potential overdose death on the streets of Los Angeles.
Evangelina Padilla-Vaccaro’s medical team gathers around her on the day she received her gene-therapy stem-cell transplant. (Photo: Padilla-Vaccaro family, via UCLA Health)A London-based biotech firm has given up its life-saving treatment for the bubble baby disease and turned it over to California’s $12 billion stem cell agency and UCLA, where it was developed with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.
A doctor writes out a drug prescription for a patient. (Photo: Lisa-S, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Step therapy forces patients to try insurer-preferred medications before approving the medication initially prescribed by the doctor. Utilized by both public and private insurers, step therapy undermines the clinical judgment of doctors and puts patients’ health at risk.
Telemedicine male dentist showing dental X-rays on a screen of an elderly woman's tablet. He explains to the remote patient her problems like cavities and impacted teeth.OPINION: Orthodontists in practice throughout California embrace new technologies as a way to improve service delivery and access to care, but we want to caution policymakers and consumers that its utilization should not come at the expense of patient health and safety.
Judge Stephen V. Manley on the bench in Santa Clara County. (Photo: Veteransvoices.net) Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Stephen Manley refers to defendants in his courtroom as “clients” – an indication of the unusually informal and conversational tenor of the Behavioral Health Court he created more than two decades ago. “It tends to break through a barrier,” Manley said.
Hospital medical staff checking a patient's records. (Photo: Stokkete, via Shutterstock)OPINION: It’s never a good idea when insurers cut costs by interfering in the decision-making process between patients and their doctor. But during a national pandemic, it’s a particularly bad idea. I am thinking specifically of an insurance strategy called step therapy.
A suspect in custody, handcuffed by police. (Photo: Boyfare, via Shutterstock)Police response to mental-health calls often ends – again and again – in chaotic, noisy hospital emergency rooms, where staff is stretched thin, and a heart attack is likely to take precedence over someone in the throes of a mental-health crisis. “Traditionally, people would be dropped off at the ER, and the only option was to transfer them to a psychiatric facility,” says Dr. Scott Zeller, a nationally known emergency psychiatrist and former president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry.
A young cancer patient stares out a hospital window. (Photo: Solid photos, via Shutterstock)OPINION: In the many years we have been treating patients, the hardest conversations to get through were always revealing a person’s cancer diagnosis to them for the first time. But like everything else in our world today—that has changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Robert Klein at a November 2017 meeting of CIRM directors. (Photo: California Stem Cell Report)The man regarded as the father of the $3 billion California stem cell agency is thinking about changes in the program to help win voter approval of another $5 billion for the research program. They include a stronger requirement to make state-backed, stem cell therapies more affordable and accessible and to provide more cash for creating a greater stem cell work force in the Golden State.
A photo illustration of opioid addiction. (Photo: Kimberly Boyles, via Shutterstock)OPINION: A key focus of this year’s California legislative session is the nation’s opioid crisis, and rightly so. According to the California Healthcare Foundation, an estimated 2,000 Californians died of an opioid overdose in 2016. The opioid epidemic confronting California and the rest of America is a growing public health crisis from which no state is immune.