EMANUEL DELIVERS - Support Emanuel

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Leading Perspective Dear Friends, This year, Emanuel Medical Center embarks on its 95th year of service to Turlock and the surrounding communities. We’re proud of our history and the role we play as a non-profit hospital in ensuring everyone in our community has access to high-quality health care. In fact, ensuring access to care is one of the primary responsibilities we have as a non-profit health care provider, and one we take very seriously. One way Emanuel ensures access to care is by bringing new services to our community, as we’ve done with comprehensive cancer care at the Emanuel Cancer Center, and with cardiovascular services, including cardiac surgery. We are fortunate to have an impressive list of physicians in our community— some who have served our area for decades. However, as our community grows, we continue to monitor the gaps in the health provider network locally and recruit physicians to come to Turlock to fill those gaps. Emanuel’s efforts helped bring Turlock’s first infectious disease specialist, rheumatologist, neurologist, cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon and interventional cardiologist to town. We will continue to monitor community needs and respond by bringing needed services and specialties to Turlock. Another way Emanuel increases access to care is working with large employers in the area to reduce health care costs by developing a new network of doctors and health providers to serve their employees at lower costs. Through this network, employers can realize lower health care costs for their companies while ensuring high quality care for their employees. Perhaps the most direct way Emanuel ensures access to health care is by serving all patients in need. We were founded by the Evangelical Covenant Church and our ministry is to extend compassion, mercy and justice. At Emanuel, we believe access to health care is a basic human right and it’s been a central part of our service mission since the day we opened in 1917. We hope you enjoy this latest issue of HeartBeat, and wish you all a happy and healthy 2012. Sincerely, John R. Sigsbury President & CEO Jennifer Larson Chair of the Board EMANUEL MEDICAL CENTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS John R. Sigsbury | President & CEO Kathleen Kearns, M.D. | Chief, Medical Staff Jennifer Larson | Chair Ronald Arakelian, M.D. | Vice Chief, Medical Staff Walter de Bruyn | Vice Chair Huy Dao, D.O. | Secretary, Medical Staff Art De Rooy | Treasurer David Dwight | President, Covenant Ministries of Benevolence Marlene Stante | Secretary Wade Fullmer Bill Gibbs Jim Pallios Arlon Waterson Tom Wilson, M.D. 2 HEARTBEAT
A NEW KIND OF SPECIALIST JUST FOR HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS Specialists are a critical component of modern medicine. Patients with a heart problem see a cardiologist. Patients with cancer see an oncologist – or possibly more than one. One of the newest and least understood specialties is a hospitalist. Like the name suggests, hospitalists specialize in treating patients who are hospitalized. The term hospitalist was first used in 1996 and the specialty has become more focused, formalized and common ever since. Now, it is more common than not that most patients admitted to hospitals are treated by hospitalists. That decision is made by the patient’s primary care physician. “What we’ve come to realize in the last 15 or 20 years is that outpatient medicine is different than inpatient medicine,” Dr. Greg Greenberg explained. Greenberg is the regional director of Valley Emergency Physicians, the medical group that provides Emanuel’s hospitalists and emergency physicians. “The treatments are different, the medications are different, the risks are different and even the treatment of the same disease is different.” “As the amount of medical information has expanded – the number of drugs and treatments and studies – physicians more and more have to specialize,” Dr. Greenberg said. “It’s more effective to focus on one area than to try to stay up on all the advances in all areas.” Put another way, most primary care physicians are specialists in outpatient medicine and hospitalists are specialists at inpatient medicine. Time considerations on primary care physicians led to the expanded use of hospitalists, explained Dr. James Knapp of Family Medical Group in Turlock. “What we’ve come to realize in the last 15 or 20 years is that outpatient medicine is different than inpatient medicine” “When we’re seeing patients in our office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., we can’t also tend to one of our patients who is in the hospital at all hours of the day. Dr. Knapp said. “The hospitalists being there 24/7 allows patients to receive care more promptly than most primary care physicians can provide trying to manage their care from a distance.” That doesn’t mean a patient’s primary care physician is out of the loop when they are in the hospital. “When a patient is discharged, their treatment history and discharge instructions are sent to their primary care physician,” Dr. Greenberg said. “Also, most physicians have access to the hospital’s computer system and can access their patients’ treatment information at any time.” At Emanuel, the daytime hospitalist teams work on one-week rotations, so patients usually see the same Dr. Greg Greenberg doctor throughout the week, although they will see different physicians at night. However, not all of the physicians treating a patient in the hospital will be unfamiliar. “Most of the time, when a patient is in the hospital they’ll be seeing specialists – cardiologists, pulmonologists, etc.,” Dr. Knapp explained. “And the vast majority of the time they’ll be seeing the same specialists that would be caring for them on an outpatient basis as well, so there’s some familiarity with those doctors.” Because the specialty is still new, some patients don’t quite understand the hospitalist concept and wish their regular primary care doctor would treat them, even when they’re hospitalized. Dr. Greenberg thinks that will change as people come to recognize hospitalists as specialists, not as substitutes. “When you have a heart problem, you want to see a specialist whose career is devoted to knowing as much as possible about the heart,” he explained. “The same is true in the hospital. Hospitalists spend their time practicing inpatient medicine and they’re the ones who you want treating you when you are in the hospital.” Dr. James Knapp WINTER 2012 3
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Page 11 and 12: Giving and Receiving Shirley Pok, C
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EMANUEL DELIVERS - Support Emanuel

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