Team Concept of Health Care
The main purpose of last week’s PeaceHealth Medical Town Hall was to give the community an update on the status of recruiting and hiring more primary care physicians. But, officials also took the opportunity to talk about the “team concept” of providing health care. It’s similar to what many might think of as “the good old days” when a single family physician oversaw a practice with several good people working with him or her to take care of patients. Dr. Mark Adams, the Chief Medical Officer with PeaceHealth, says they’re taking that concept and updating it.
Dr. Mark Adams – “What we’re trying to do is reproduce the good parts of that old approach with the reality of today. And so what we’re trying to do is build teams, including a physician, advanced practice clinician which could be a nurse practitioner, a physician assistant, a nurse, a medical assistant and really build them and have them work together.”
The viability of the team concept is borne out by the realities of the competitive market for family practice physicians. Efforts to recruit and hire additional primary care doctors face intense competition from other communities. While PeaceHealth recently hired just one primary care doctor, they also were able to recruit two physician’s assistants and one Nurse Practitioner. Two additional physicians are expected to arrive in coming months.
Cinemas break-in brings unexpected response
Sometime in the very early morning hours of Saturday, someone threw a log through the front door of City Lights Cinemas. They broke out the glass, made entry and proceeded to steal several bottles of beer and wine. City Lights owner Michael Falter said he never expected what came next.
Michael Falter – “What was really astonishing to me was just how quick the news spread and how much support we had. In fact I even had a couple wonderful members and they dropped off a card for me and it had, on the card itself, it said ‘door prize’ and I opened it up and there was a nice note and $20, so…”
The money isn’t an issue. Falter said the total damage and loss is expected to be about a thousand dollars, something he can afford. But the response of the community has been the biggest boon. Falter said he is still hearing from people expressing their concern and support. He called the community response very “powerful”.
South coast crabbers can catch Dungeness
Oregon commercial crabbers will be able to begin pulling in Dungeness crab next Sunday, but only south of Cape Blanco. Officials say tests have shown low biotoxin results in crab found between Cape Blanco and the California-Oregon border.
In a similar move Friday, the Departments of Fish and Wildlife and Agriculture opened recreational bay and ocean crabbing on the far northern stretch of the coast, extending it as far south as Cape Lookout.
Officials say levels of domoic acid, which can cause extreme illness and even death if consumed, remain too high in Dungeness crab between Cape Lookout in Tillamook County and Cape Blanco in Curry County. They say repeated testing will take place in coming days and weeks to determine when it would be safe to consume the crustaceans… allowing them to consider opening both recreational and commercial crabbing in those areas.
Annexation request
The Florence Planning Commission will hear a request to annex several residential properties into the City this evening. Four property owners are seeking the annexation on the eastern edge of Florence, near the site of another annexation along Highway 126 that was completed earlier this fall.
Robert and Sarah Gage, Lon and Robin Beale, Mark and Laurie Hamilton, and David Williams are asking for their properties on either side of Xylo (ZY-lo) Street between 12th Street and 126 to be brought into the city.
There are six vacant parcels of land included in the request. All properties, if approved for annexation, would be zoned either residential or neighborhood commercial.
The Planning Commission will hear testimony on both the annexation and zoning requests. They meet at City Hall at seven pm.
City Council to retreat… and consider goals
The Florence City Council will meet Wednesday morning for an annual year end retreat. City Manager Erin Reynolds says the objective is to look back at goals they previously set and check on the progress.
Erin Reynolds – “The City Council met two years ago about this same time, and started out on setting a set of goals. Started out at seven and now we’re down to five. This is a report back to the City Council from staff on our progress made over the last year. And really it’s kind of a two year look-back at this point.”
The work done this week will guide what Reynolds and city employees work on over the next one to two years.
Erin Reynolds – “We construct our budget around the City Council goals and the items that have been approved on the work plan, things that we need to be working on, that we need to be focusing on.”
The Council work session is a public meeting, but there will be no public input allowed. They begin at Driftwood Shores Conference Center at 8:30 am… and are expected to be done by 1:30.
Less is best in the holiday season
More trash is created during the holiday season than at any other time of the year. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Kelly Bell with the Lane County Master Recycler Program says scrap items and other things that might have otherwise wound up in the landfill can be used to create gift wrapping materials.
Bell says she remembers using a cut potato to make a stamp and create decorative patterns on plain paper bags for gift wrap. She makes paper flowers from old calendars, and snowflakes from plastic six-pack rings to decorate gifts.
She suggests visiting the recycling program’s “Less is Best” webpage for more ideas. That’s at www.LaneCounty.org/lessisbest