Sir Charles Bell first described the anatomy and function of the facial nerve in the 1800s. No wonder the eponymous Bell palsy bears his name (apparently we are no longer to refer to it as Bell’s palsy). The term Bell palsy is not synonymous with Continue reading →

A recent BMJ study is an eye-opener about problems interpreting knee MRI’s in older adults. The bottom-line? A picture may not be worth a thousand words.

Let’s look briefly at Continue reading →

If an august, gray-haired professor delivered your medical school lecture on syphilis, or if you had to suffer the pontifications of a wise-acre resident on the I.D. service during internship, you may recall that syphilis was formerly known as “The Great Imitator.” Continue reading →

Usually the death of a crow does not merit a front page news story. But the crow found down July 12 in Dixon, in Solano County, succumbed to West Nile virus and this fact garnered the poor bird much attention. With summer upon us, it is once again Continue reading →

The Medical Directors of Partnership HealthPlan of California, serving 200,000 members in 6 counties north of the San Francisco Bay, post items we think will be of interest to our primary care provider network.  Our goals are to identify information that is clinically useful, based on good scientific evidence, data and expert opinion, and to present it in a conversational, accessible way that will improve quality of care for our patients to provide optimum value and cost-effectiveness in health care decision-making.

If you would like to suggest a topic or resource, please send an email to the blog editor, Richard Fleming:  rfleming@partnershiphp.org

We would like to extend a special thank you to the primary care clinicians in our network, for providing respectful, caring, high quality care to our members.  We share your commitment to your patients, many of whom are among the most vulnerable members of our community.

Sincerely,

Robert Moore, MD MPH, Chief Medical Officer

Richard Fleming, MD, Regional Medical Director, Solano and Yolo Counties

Marshall Kubota, MD, Regional Medical Director, Sonoma, Marin and Mendocino counties

Mark Glickstein, MD Associate Medical Director

Partnership HealthPlan of California

360 Campus Lane, Suite 100, Fairfield, CA 94534

www.partnershiphp.org