Health Care Crisis
<pdf (New Views, Vol. 7, No. 1)
Last year Tina Langman noticed a small lump on her neck. With no health insurance and little cash savings, she exercised an all too common option. She ignored it. Over time, it grew to the size of an egg. Tina visited physician after physician but none would help her because she had no health insurance.
"I work hard. I clean other people's houses for a living. Even though I am employed, I don't make enough money to afford my own health insurance," said Tina, 41. "What am I supposed to do?"
Her neck got worse, much worse. Finally, a shaken Tina went to the OHSU Emergency Department terrified that the lump meant cancer...
Urban Access
<pdf (New Views, Vol. 6, No. 2)
Astarte Rainbow proudly shows off her giant yet still growing pumpkins in the backyard of her Victorian-style home in the Brooklyn neighborhood of southeast Portland. She's wearing a flowered sundress that shows a few of her 12 tattoos. Rainbow, 56, has gray close-cropped hair. She has gingerly placed each of the pumpkins on wooden pallets to keep them from rotting.
Besides growing pumpkins, Rainbow has spent the last year working just as hard to help OHSU Family Medicine at Richmond provide access to health care to the poor and the elderly in the southeast area. Rainbow has been a patient since it opened in 1995 and has served on its newly formed board since it started a year ago...
Smart Partnership
<pdf (New Views, Vol. 5, No. 1)
There are an estimated 1,500 homeless youth in Portland. Without a doubt they are among the city's most vulnerable residents. Many flee to the streets to escape dire family circumstances. But once there, they all face intimidation, harassment, exploitation and exposure.
For Oregon agencies that serve homeless youth, there are challenging times. For at least one innovative Portland agency, however, challenge has bred ingenuity - and a special partnership with OHSU...
Where They Live
<pdf (New Views, Vol. 4, No. 2)
Whether she's fine-tuning a training session for public health nurses, consulting with staff about a clinic in La Grande, or leading a multi-agency discussion about improving services, Cathy Renken's, R.N., M.P.H., work on behalf of children with complex needs has a simple, common thread. "The bottom line is helping families," says Renken, an administrator in the OHSU Child Development and Rehabilitation Center (CDRC)...
The Medicare Albatross
<pdf (New Views, Vol. 4, No. 1)
Scientific breakthroughs aren't the only phenomena changing the face of medicine. During the last few years, more than 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations that rival the federal tax code in their complexity have come to exert a tremendous influence on the relationship between physicians and patients.
"Over the last decade or so, I've witnessed the regulatory position of the government shift dramatically," says Brett Sheppard, M.D., associate professor of surgery in the School of Medicine. "Reluctantly, this has forced me to shift my own conduct toward patients."
More and more physicians around the nation are voicing their frustration with the current regulatory framework.
"The Medicare system was designed to provide health care for as many Americans as possible, and that's a noble goal," says Sheppard. "But this original intent has been lost"...
