From a new look at health care leadership to medical advancements aiming to change the lives of millions. We are highlighting some of the positive and encouraging health care industry achievements around Sacramento. Hello, I’m real love on the health beat. Let’s start with mental health.
It’s a topic we’ve covered thoroughly here at ABC 10 and it’s something you’ve most likely experienced in the world beyond our screen, staff at dignity, health mercy. San Juan Medical Center say their emergency department has been filled with people experiencing mental health crises
As a solution to the increase. They’re opening more space for those in need. Here’s ABC Ten’s Alex Bell with a close look at the center’s crisis stabilization unit. Mercy. San Juan Medical Center sees about 5000 patients a month in their emergency room and 400 of those patients are behavioral health related.
A number that has steadily increased. Mercy. San Juan Medical Center’s President Michael Coral says before creating their crisis stabilization unit, the only place people could come to was the emergency room for mental health issues. We didn’t really do a good job of handling patients and mon and
Managing patients who came in with a mental health crisis. Um And so it really put pressure on emergency rooms like mercy, San Juan that are level two trauma centers. 33 hours was our average patients waiting for an impatient psychiatric bed and they’re lined up in the in the hallway on gurneys just waiting,
Not getting their needs met. Dignity, health who operates mercy. San Juan says many of the issues come down to not having resources readily available. I think a lot of it is not understanding it fully. We should be able to treat them just as a medical emergency. When they come into the hospital,
The medical needs trump the behavioral health needs in terms of room and equipment. The hospital recognized. This is an issue. We have to find a way to address this. Mercy. San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael first opened their crisis stabilization unit in 2019 before the pandemic. Since then,
Dignity Health’s behavioral health program manager tells me that the need for services has only grown. We transfer them over here. This is where all of our experts in mental health are. We have psychiatrists, social workers, mental health nurses, um peer support specialists,
All who can really work directly with uh the client to see what their needs are and develop a a safe treatment plan for them. And then so once patients go inside, then what happens so I can go ahead and show you. But our nursing staff takes over from here
To get them set up and get them familiar with what they can expect while they’re here to protect patients privacy. We did not bring our cameras inside the CS U but what we witnessed is patients are immediately being greeted by a staff member in the quiet space away from the emergency room, all
Diagnoses, all types of issues that arise whether it’s somebody who’s acutely suicidal, somebody who might be in a psychotic episode, either due to their pre existing condition or under the influence of street drugs. The Csu’s medical director says most people they treat and assessed are
Able to be stabilized and discharged within 24 hours of seeking care. It was modeled on a model of care called empath, which is the acronym for emergency psychiatric assessment and treatment and healing. The empath model allows for patients to be cleared by the er department
And go straight to getting that specialized behavioral health care. And with the CS U, the average time for patients to get care has gone from 33 hours to 3.4. Now, the CS U is a calming healing, comfortable environment.
Way back in the day, it was giving someone a sheet of paper with numbers on it. Hey, follow up with this clinic or follow up with. Um nowadays, we’re doing a lot more of warm hand offs where we’re setting people up with appointments with a counselor or a psychiatrist before they leave the
Care is so comprehensive and it’s so fast. We have a psychiatrist on site 10 hours a day who meets with our patients. So you say better outcomes and it’s less expensive as a, as a whole. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What we have seen
Prior to the CS U is that we would treat patients and when, when they didn’t really meet criteria for the inpatient uh setting, we would release them back into the community and invariably a high number of them would end up right back in our emergency room.
The number of patients that have come back to the emergency room from their stay in the crisis. Stabilization unit has gone down tremendously. Research proves a diverse workforce can lead to better outcomes that’s extremely important in business and in health care. ABC Ten’s,
Alex Bell has a look at how dignity health is emphasizing women leadership in its hospitals and the impact that’s having on patients. Lisa Haman, Phyllis Boltz, Tina Johnson and Gina Bravo are all hospital ceo si think what you’re seeing right here is a very unique situation.
They run dignity health hospitals in East Sacramento, Folsom Sacramento and Woodland. Being a president of a hospital. As an executive, a female is showing the possibilities to those that there is a pathway trailblazing women who are disrupting the health care industry in the best way. I introduced myself to patients every day. And
I say I’m Tina and I’m the CEO and they are taken aback a bit. Tina Johnson is the CEO of Dignity, Health Mercy General in East Sacramento. She began her career as an er doctor. When I graduated medical school, women were 25% of the graduating class and that was
The highest it had ever been at that school. Fast forward years later and 50% of medical school graduates are women. Her support helped create a woman’s heart center on the Mercy General Campus. Many women delay preventative care that might make a difference for their heart and progression of heart disease,
Delaying preventative care is something Gina Bravo Woodland Memorial Hospital’s first ever female CEO is familiar with. She was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer during the height of the pandemic. I had missed my mammograms for a couple of years. Not put myself first, not taking care of myself.
And it made me look back that I didn’t follow all the rules that I tell everybody else as a patient. I was receiving chemotherapy and radiation. I was bald. I was making it to work and I was offered this job as CEO because somebody still trusted me
To take care and to run this hospital for Gina. It’s a job that she doesn’t take for granted. So it’s gonna be really important as presidents that we don’t plateau women by taking these roles as personal achievements. But we understand that there’s a responsibility with these roles
To pave the way for the people behind us. I truly believe our role and our duty isn’t these four walls. But it’s this in higher community. Women currently make up 70% of the global health care workforce, but only hold 25% of the senior roles.
It’s a challenge to be able to find the opportunity, be given the chance to progress your career. Phyllis Voltz Ceo of Methodist Hospital in South Sacramento says she’s learned to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and mentor others along the way, especially females who are interested and see that maybe there
Is a pathway to an executive position down the road. After 30 years of health care administration experience, she knows firsthand that representation of females in executive positions as part of the decision making table makes a better rounded broader decision making in an organization which just only benefits the organization.
I have always reported to men my entire career. And this year for the first time in my entire life, I report to a woman, Lisa Haman is also breaking barriers. As the first female CEO of Mercy Hospital in Folsom. She like her three colleagues are also known as mom.
The biggest challenge has been finding balance as a mother and as a CEO of a hospital. And there’s not a magic recipe for that. You know, I was just traveling and someone asked me who’s watching the kids, she hopes the legacy she leaves behind paves the
Way for her own daughter and changes societal expectations. And I think that mentality is shifting. As you see, women start to elevate in their careers and a quote that reminds her of that and, and it actually kind of gets me emotional any time I hear it
Is that while we haven’t shattered the highest hardest glass ceiling ceiling, there are about 18 million cracks in it. And that’s to me is so important as female leaders that we continue to advocate to make sure that there is diversity at the table
For women breaking barriers for the next generation of health care leaders. The fentaNYL crisis impacts so many people, including many communities across our region and our state. Though there aren’t many solutions. There is something you can do in the event of an overdose naloxone or Narcan is an over the counter
Drug and you can find it at local stores with pharmacies like Target Rite Aid and Walgreens for about $45. I spoke with health expert Doctor Shriti Sharma who shares what to do if you see someone overdosing shirty. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
So we’re talking about Narcan if I needed to find some right now, where could I get it? So recently, the government has passed a law that says that um Narcan can be available made available on all pharmacies. Um You don’t need a prescription to get Narcan.
You can just go up to the pharmacist and who will be able to issue it to you. Um You can also find Narcan in harm reduction centers and other community centers, you know, which, which provide substance use disorder assistance. So I can see that you’re holding it in your hands right now.
It’s so tiny, it could probably fit in your pocket or in a purse who can administer this. Is there a certain age limit people who are exposed to opioids. If, if you are a bystander, you can administer it. So you can be a family member,
You can be friends or just just a regular person walking down the street. If you see someone who’s wit, you think that somebody is having an opioid overdose, you can administer Narcan. Uh There has been a study that says about 46% of opioid overdoses are witnessed by somebody.
So, you know, it’s, it’s always handy to have one in your, in your purse if you want it. So let’s talk about how to administer it. So Brandon, our editor here was so kind to agree to help us with this. Let’s do a demonstration. Can you just walk us through?
So if you see someone on the on the ground and they are unresponsive, you know, you can look at the people see that they are pinpoint, they’re breathing really slowly and you think that there’s an opioid overdose, then you, you, you can definitely go ahead and um you know, do this nasal spray.
So get on the ground on, at the chest level, try to wake them up and. Ok, Brandon. Brandon, can you hear me? All right, you do something called the sternal rub, which kind of wakes up a person if they are not
Oing on uh on um on Narcan or sorry, they are not o oing on opioids. Um Once you know that they are not responsive, all you do is you tilt the head a little bit, tilt the head a little bit. Take the Narcan, push it up the,
Push it up the nostrils until your finger hits the nostrils and then just press and that’s it. Once you’re done administering the Narcan, turn the person to the side, fold his arms. Yep. And then you can do that. And then if you can bend his legs
And straighten the top one out, this is what’s called a recovery position when a person, um, you know, once you administer Narcan, if uh, if the person has opioid withdrawal, um, you know, if they start vomiting, this will help them from preventing, you know, choking on their vomit each morning.
I have the latest health news on the ABC 10 morning news at five and six and I look into advances in care such as a simple but groundbreaking treatment for burns in Sacramento. Take a look. A decades long Australian practice is traveling overseas after the burn injury has happened.
There’s still a lot of thermal heat trapped under the skin and that’s still burning underneath that wound that you can see from the outside. So, what we’re trying to do is to mediate that depth from progressing down and that can keep on happening for days after the injury.
These researchers from Queensland Australia have cracked the code and they’re in Sacramento to spread the word. It’s called 20 crw and you don’t need any medical training. It’s as simple as water. Let me walk you through how works. So let’s say you accidentally touch a hot stove.
This one isn’t on, but your first thought might be to cover the burn. What you really want to do is cool it. So you’ll walk over to the sink, turn on the cool running water and place the burn underneath it for at least 20 minutes.
It doesn’t have to be done all at the same time. It can be, but it needs to be done. Adds a total of 20 minutes in the first three hours. Kaiser Permanente’s Doctor Kevin Mackey is the medical director for the Sacramento Fire Department and he recently traveled to Australia.
The burn center was empty, not a single kid in the burn center. And I said, how, how is it possible that the National Burn Center doesn’t have any patients right now? It’s because every citizen in Australia knows this. The degree of scarring goes way down.
The degree of needing for grafts, skin grafts goes way down, pain goes down, hospitalization goes down. Everything that we think about a burn that creates not only the immediate effects but the long term effects are mitigated by just a simple act. It’s care you can do while you call for help fire
Crews pick up when they arrive and the hospital could finish. That’s something any of us can do. Moving on to our next story. Now, a Stockton Audiology Center is using artificial intelligence to improve the hearing and lives of older adults. ABC Ten’s Xavier Yar.
I went there to see it firsthand. I’ve had a very exciting life. Very exciting for a little homemaker from Stockton California. I also wrote the Sis Centennial show that was done for the City of Stockton. I also performed at Carnegie Hall. I was having trouble hearing.
I didn’t realize how much trouble I was reading to Children and I wouldn’t hear their questions. I went to my hearing checked and they said, oh yeah, you, you know, I definitely needed hearing aids. I fell in love with Tony and Lizzie. I, I can’t tell you how gracious they were when we
Start somebody on their hearing journey because it’s a process. It should not be a one and done. There you go. Thank you sa it should be a, this is our practice. This is who we are. I hope you like us because we’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other.
We have the signia come across our desk and we started to read the literature on the um artificial intelligence that they’re employing about five years ago, they were able to, the technology blossomed and they were able to get 360 degree sound field, which is huge because that affects your balance.
It also is safety people behind you next to you near you, you know, traffic, your hearing is centered in the temporal lobes along with your memory. And so when that isn’t getting stimulated, it kind of recedes and shrinks it atrophies like any other muscles. I am not a tech person at
All, but I can use my phone to adjust my hearing aid. So it is easy. If I can use it, anybody can use it. The A I is not traditional A I, it’s not taking any of your personal information, it’s not taking your name, anything that’s can be connected to you.
It’s just taking mathematical understanding of an environment and shooting it up to the cloud. Then if you’re in a situation where you’re struggling and your situation matches something else or most likely many other things that people have experienced, it will then put those sound parameters
As options for you to experience, to see if that’s something that will work for you. Whenever you hear a beep, no matter how softly I want you to press the button. We do a lot of work within our community um in the past uh we started with Rio Las Palmas
And we have a number of clients in their facility that we still will visit on occasion. And we do work at the Stockton Community Center. Uh, we work at the Lodi, the Lowell Center. We go when we test, we offer all of our testing and clean and checks.
Gratis completely free. I look forward to making a difference in people’s lives because what I do what I spend like maybe three minutes doing here on a computer will affect them every single day inside and outside of whatever it is they’re doing. And that’s huge.
Many people my age think, well, you know, they’re at home alone anyway. It doesn’t make that much difference. You deserve to be able to enjoy every sound available to you. If you are 50 60 70 you can’t live your life thinking
I don’t know how much time I have left. I mean, that would be a horrible way to exist. And your hearing is a huge part of that. There’s a form of insulin that’s changing the lives of diabetics who use it. But doctors and patients say it doesn’t have widespread name recognition.
It’s called a freezer and it’s FDA approved ABC Ten’s Becca Hoeger reports as it’s the only drug of its kind in terms of an inhaled non liquid form of insulin. I was diagnosed in 1983. I was 13 years old that puts me at 38 years living with type one diabetes.
Anthony Hightower, his partner, Lenie Santana. I was diagnosed in 1999 and their friend Matt Mascio, I came late to the party. I got diagnosed at 25. All have type one diabetes. It could be a very lonely disease if you don’t have that support. They’re part of a Sacramento based group called Duck
Diabetes, which Anthony started years ago as a team name for a cycling event. And now, you know, we have this community of diabetics here locally in Sacramento. And so we’ve hosted roller skating parties, baseball games, they tell other diabetics about a medicine that has changed their lives. But to understand how it works,
It’s important to know this diabetes is a condition where your pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin. Adela Ansari of mercy Medical group explains. We all need insulin to turn blood sugar or glucose into energy that fuels our bodies. It is important for your blood sugar to be at certain range.
And if patients have diabetes, it results in a much higher level of blood sugar, which leads to a long run, more complication, affecting your eyes, your kidneys, nerves and high risk of strokes and heart disease. There are several types of diabetes and we won’t get into the specific differences here,
But generally type one patients have to put insulin into their body every day and some type two patients do as well. The most common way by far is through liquid insulin that can be taken by injection or by using a pump, which involves an insulin dispenser connected to a
Small tube placed just under the skin. People who use insulin to control their blood sugar levels, take extra around a meal or s that’s because the food will raise their blood sugar level and they need the insulin to help lower it back to a safe range.
But as Anthony explains, figuring out the timing and the dosage is complicated. An injection for me takes about 45 minutes to an hour to start working, which is very difficult. If you’re going out to eat, you don’t know what you’re going to pick. But yet you still have to guess
And count your carbs and figure out what you’re going to have. Take your insulin based on those calculations and then 45 minutes to an hour later, if your food’s not ready, you could be in trouble. So now what a lot of people are doing is they’re just taking
Their injections once their food is there or right when they order it. But at that point, now you’re dealing with these high blood sugars because you’ve already eaten, but you’ve only taken your, your insulin just before you’ve eaten. So now your blood sugars are sky high for
45 minutes to an hour or so before your insulin starts to kick in. And then the traditional insulins continue to work for 3 to 5 hours. So now your food is out of your body, your insulin is still working and you’re dropping below that low level.
So now you’re feeling these post meal hypoglycemic reactions. Hypoglycemic reactions are when your blood sugar drops below a certain levels and gives you this feeling of like you’re about to die. But Matt Anthony and Letty, all of whom used liquid insulin for years say that’s not a problem for them anymore.
They now use an insulin delivery method that’s inhaled. It’s the only one on the market and it’s been available for more than seven years. It’s called Afrezza. Having the liquid insulin was always a struggle and then getting the medication just right. Going from that to Afrezza has just been absolutely life changing.
It’s been so freeing. I would say it’s absolutely life changing. It’s changed my life as far as my diabetes is concerned. Instead of having to calculate the exact amount of liquid insulin to take based on a guess of the amount of carbs in a meal, Afrezza comes in just three different doses.
We don’t even count carbs. I don’t, don’t count carbs anymore. I just see a meal and see small, medium large and dose accordingly. That kind of just gives you a range. As long as you’re within this range, you’re fine. But Afrezza is a whole new way of thinking about insulin.
The biggest benefit they say is how quickly Afrezza gets to work and then gets out of their system, you have a noticeable effect between 10 and 12. We can see it because we all wear a thing called a continuous glucose monitor and that goes in every five minute increments.
So after about three dots or 15 minutes after you’ve inhaled, you’ll see a noticeable effect where if you’re starting to trend up, it starts to level out and then starts to go back down to the level that you want it to be. Liquid. Insulin is four hours out of your system. A Frezza
Is out in 90 minutes. The beauty of Frezza is the speed in and speed out. So not necessarily, that’s an inhaled to me, that’s a bonus. Now, I actually take it when my meal is to me. So while my food is now digesting it out of my system,
My blood sugar is starting to level out because Afza is leveling up. I definitely can tell you it’s a game changer for patients. Dr Ansari says Afrezza is faster acting because of how the inhaled insulin is absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs. The majority of the injectable insulin are delivered through
Capillary system which takes longer time to really peak and stay longer in your system. But when you look at the Afrezza, it really delivers the insulin directly into the arterial blood system. So it goes quickly into taking effect very fast as opposed to the injectable, you’re dippin dots ice cream.
So like those freeze little pellets, we freeze dry fres nitrogen in a mono form. So as soon as you inhale in your lungs, it releases the technology into your blood. So there’s not, there’s no waste, there’s no time waiting for it to travel through your tissue. Michael Castagna
Is CEO of mankind. The company that makes a fresa. He says there are about 3000 doctors throughout the US who prescribe a and about 10,000 patients taking it a fraction of 1% of the people who could potentially benefit. About 4,000,005 million people who live with diabetes on
Insulin every day for their meal time control. So I asked him, this has been on the market for some seven years. People who use it call it life changing. Why is it it more widely used and known about?
I would say 22 main things I’ve worked on this for five years now. So, so it’s, it’s first was the company didn’t have a lot of money. So therefore we couldn’t raise awareness. This is no large company. Although mankind has several drugs in the pipeline,
Afrezza was its first on the market with a second one that launched just this summer. I’d say the number one thing is the majority of people do not know it exists. And then the second one is doctors because they were trained on injectable insulin.
They know injectable insulin. We didn’t train the US doctors on inhaled insulin. Doctors just don’t believe it sometimes and it’s very frustrating. I tell them get your own clinical experience. Why wait, birth control often falls on women maybe choosing to get an IUD or take oral contraceptives.
But there are advances for men as well. UC Davis health is testing a potential male contraceptive and ABC Ten’s Tyler Horst reports. As we could see men shouldering more responsibility for birth control. So normally I just grab the gel, um you just open it
And then you would squirt it out onto your hand and just start applying it to your shoulders for about a year. This has been a part of Daniel Castaneda’s daily routine. It absorbs in about a minute or two. No, it’s not a skin care product.
It’s been nice for me not to have to worry about it. Um And it’s also fun just to tell my friends like, oh, I’m actually not on birth control. My partner Daniel Castaneda and Nina Gonzalez are one of several couples currently participating in trials for this male contraceptive gel at UC Davis.
If trials continue to be successful, the drug would be the first of its kind on the market. Male contraception has always been that enigma. Can we figure out something that is not just condoms or permanent vasectomy procedures? Doctor Mitchell Crennan is the director of family planning
And the lead study investigator at UC Davis Health. He says the gel works by combining two hormones, nestor and testosterone, nestor part just telling the body to stop stimulating the testes from doing what it does, which is making hormones and making sperm
And that’s great. If it doesn’t make sperm, then you can’t cause a pregnancy. The nestor also tells the body to stop producing testosterone without it. Men tend to lose energy, focus and their sex drive among other things. That’s why testosterone is the second hormone in the gel.
We already have gels that are available on the market to help men who have naturally low testosterone. So that part in the gel isn’t hard, it’s getting the other part correct. And that’s what’s been the special part of this product. I’ve heard this spiel before like Daniel and Nina,
My wife and I are currently participants in this study, but before we committed, I had some of the same questions did well, just whether it’s going to work, right? I mean, you know, am I going to be able to have Children if I want to have Children down the line?
And so that was a big thing for me. The gel was developed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. UC Davis joined several other locations around the world as a trial site in phase two of testing. And the drug has already shown some early signs of success.
Men in the study are monitored while using the gel to make sure it’s working as intended to lower their sperm count. And there is a very small percentage of people who don’t suppress. But the important thing is we don’t let anybody use this as a contraceptive until we’re certain that
Their counts are suppressed incredibly low. And after they stopped using the gel to make sure their sperm counts go back to normal, which again takes anywhere from 2 to 6 months. So does it seem to be working? Crennan says results so far have been very good in men who use
The gel and their sperm counts go down to very low levels. In fact, they go down pretty much to zero. We find that with continued use of the gel, we’re not seeing anything that shows any signs of pregnancy or not finding any pregnancies.
Thus far as with most drugs, there can be side effects for me. I mean, I haven’t really noticed any significant side effects. The only thing possibly is gaining some weight but not anything significant or cause for concern. And there are some people who feel a little bit moody
And for some that goes away and for some it doesn’t, it’s an based gel. There are some people who’ve gotten some skin irritation. Doctor Crennan says at this point, side effects like these haven’t shown up very much in trials as far as we can tell everything looks really promising. Now,
This doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find this gel at the pharmacy next week or even next month. My guess would be at least 10 years until we would see this on the market. And I think once you get one product into the market, it helps generate much more talk about it. And
I think it will allow better contraception overall. If the drug does get approved, Daniel and Nina say they would definitely consider getting back on it and they think it would be nice for men to have the opportunity to shoulder the responsibility of birth control in an ideal world.
It was sort of flip the script that we have currently where we sort of, you know, villainize young women who get pregnant as though it’s their own fault and it might put more of the responsibility on young men as well. Thank you for watching this edition of Health Beat on ABC 10 Plus.
If you want to watch more features, just like this one, check out our ABC 10 Plus app there, you’ll find the latest newscast and headlines. You can stay up to date on the weather and see all the great work and stories we tell here at ABC 10. Thank you again for watching
And stay healthy.
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