Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
By PAUL CRAIG
Special to Martinez Tribune
Dawn Westfall (not her real name) is feeling nauseous. She’s about to go to the emergency room when an idea strikes. She calls the emergency services number at the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center. A nurse practitioner asks about her symptoms, pulls up her electronic record, and provides help over the phone. Dawn’s trip to the emergency room is avoided. She’s saved lots of time and worry. The whole process is way cheaper. Everyone wins.
This kind of capability doesn’t exist now, but Contra Costa County’s Head of Medical Services, Dr. William Walker, believes it will in a few years.
Dr. Walker should know! He’s been working on Contra Costa County health care problems since 1974. He now heads our $1.6 billion medical care enterprise with 4,200 employees. Last year they had some 640,000 visits. Contra Costa County has its own hospital, and runs numerous clinics. The County contracts with local hospitals for special services like hip transplants. The County runs its own health coverage plan. Ninety-eight percent of Contra Costa County public medical expenditures come from government. Only 2 percent is provided by the County.
The key to a healthy life is to live in a safe neighborhood, eat well, and exercise. For Rotarians and most Martizians, these conditions are a given; for lots of Contra Costans, they’re not. We have lots of homeless who lack all these essentials.
Bill Walker and Martinez Police Chief (and Rotarian) Manjit Sappal agree that the best approach to homelessness is by providing housing. Unfortunately, there are people on drugs or who are mentally ill that live on the streets. People who seem to want to live on the streets are a challenge to both Contra Costa’s medical system and to our Martinez police.
Dr. Walker talked about vaccinations and the Zika virus. Zika is enormously dangerous, especially to pregnant women. All cases in the U.S. thus far have been traced to individuals traveling outside the states. Precautions are necessary to make sure the epidemic doesn’t spread here.
Vaccinations are a good thing. They’ve prevented lots of disease. Dr. Walker believes that stories of vaccinations leading to autism are false. California law bans unvaccinated kids from schools. It’s a good law, which all responsible parents should support.
We have fantastic public medical care here in Contra Costa County. Looking forward, Dr. Walker sees it becoming better still. Learn more at http://cchealth.org.
Rotary Report is a brief synopsis of weekly Martinez Rotary Club presentations, provided by a Rotary member. Rotary meets from 7:30-9 a.m. every Wednesday (excluding the last Wednesday of the month) at Grace Episcopal Church, 130 Muir Station Road, Martinez. For more information about the club, visit http://www.martinezrotary.org.
I find it frigthening that the privacy of our medical records are at stake by the Cheif of Police who has immense political agendas playing footsie with the medical director.
Paul, I would also ask the Chief just how many people he has apprehended as homeless and what has he done with them? I would ask him how many people’s private properties has he sent his people on to interrogate their families or attempt to make those with home homeless because someone on council or someone with money or someone on the board of a non profit bad mouthed the person and told the naive Chief libel and slander and the Cheif did not act on a point of law but on lies and his own lack of information and understanding. How many people are targeted by the police when they should not be, even called “homeless” when they are not and they go unprotected from violence when they ask for help.
Peterson was prodded to do the same thing. Ghisletta joins in too for his own ambitions to impress the council.
It is frightening how the police misunderstand and misuse the health care system. Also, the nation wide crisis of police shooting people SUSPECTED OR ACCUSED of mental illness or harmless mentally ill people. No, the housing crisis is in part because people with money and power are getting more of the money and power and therefore have more influence over the justice system.
The police need to stay out of health care. Period. The police need to quit using the term mentally ill, it is not their place nor do they have the education or intelligence to wrongfully take away someone’s Constitutional Rights based on some label they assign the poor or others for political reasons. Know how many of us got red tags at our homes or business when we resisted Berrellesa Palms? Want to know what they did to me around the MPS and the history?
As an affluent person, Paul, you will never understand this. As a protected person who will never understand police brutality or wrongful discrimination, and with all your beautiful but misplaced liberalism and optimism, you will never understand this topic. You are like Gay Gerlack and I love you guys, but rich folk who keep their heads out of controversies and who join all the right clubs and non profit boards are never hurt by the police. Ever.
Poor and those rich enough in spirit to piss the pants of folks like Rob Schroder and Debbie McKillop get wrongfully abused and falsely accused by the police and other things happened. I have proof. Ask me about what Peterson did to me, what Ghisletta did to me, Corporeal Estenol, and now Sappal. Ask me Paul. You will then ask “What country are we living in”?