For the second consecutive year, our Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency Program has been named one of the top 10 such programs in the country.

 

According to research conducted by the physician network Doximity, Contra Costa had the ninth highest-ranking family medicine residency program in the United States this year. Our popular residency program, which receives 800 applications for 13 residency slots each year, also earned top 10 rankings from Doximity in 2015. There are 490 family medicine residency programs in the U.S.

 

The Doximity Residency Navigator is an interactive tool designed to help the medical students research and compare residency training programs nationwide based on their unique career interests. It combines objective data with 260,000 nominations, ratings and reviews from over 52,000 U.S. board-certified physicians.

Performance goals have been set for a series of projects over a five-year state funding program under the Medi-Cal 2020 waiver. The Public Hospital Redesign and Incentives in Medi-Cal (PRIME) program is the ambitious followup to the previous waiver, known as DSRIP. Like DSRIP, PRIME is funding for improvement work related to higher quality patient care.  PRIME, however, challenges safety net systems to expand those efforts by moving beyond the original pilots and integrating care across systems and between health divisions. Not meeting PRIME benchmarks will mean losing millions of dollars in funding.

 

Teams and sub-teams have been created for each of our 10 approved PRIME projects, which include integration of behavioral health and primary care, cancer screening and followup, improvements in perinatal care and ambulatory care redesign. A new data dashboard has been developed to let team members monitor their progress. The PRIME executive team will provide oversight and support to the project teams and the Improvement Academy will be utilized at various clinic locations to educate staff on PRIME and improvement methodology. 

 

For more information, contact Karin Stryker, the assistant director of Safety Performance Improvement, at Karin.Stryker@hsd.cccounty.us. 

A new monthly outpatient clinic serving transgender patients is expected to debut on October 7 at our Martinez Health Center. The clinic will provide a welcoming environment for transgender people to receive routine primary care, as well as more specialized care, such as hormone therapy. Dr. Michelle Orengo-McFarlane will be the lead physician at the clinic, which will be staffed by providers trained in transgender health issues. Planning for the clinic has included many stakeholders, including Contra Costa Health Services' LGBT Pride Initiative. 

In July, we launched three perioperative medicine clinics to provide patients with one-stop shops for medical evaluations, surgical-care coordination and education before their operations at CCRMC. The clinics are located at the West County Health Center (Monday), Martinez Health Center (Tuesday - Thursday), and Pittsburg Health Center (Friday). Chief Medical Officer Dr. Samir Shah said the perioperative clinics are part of an effort to centralize and standardize the process to reduce variation in care and surgical cancellations.

Rich credits years of CPR and first aid training for making it possible to jump into action that day. "I cannot emphasize enough the importance of first aid training," Rich said. "It is a short investment of time that can save lives."

Dr. Jessica Hamilton has been named the physician lead for Detention Health Services. In this new position she will provide, organize, and oversee clinical care in the county's detention facilities. 

Following her residency at CCRMC, Dr. Hamilton worked as an attending physician in our Emergency Department and served as the director of primary care for Planned Parenthood of Northern California.