Wednesday 06/09/2021
My temp on arising was 98.9 (1º above normal). This is getting annoying. I don’t feel particularly ill. Am I ill? Should I worry?
I’m particularly concerned because tomorrow is the first day in 14 months I plan to go to the Shustek Center for a full day of volunteer work for CHM. Well, it’s really only 10am to 4pm, with a break for lunch; on the other hand there’s a half hour commute drive each end. Anyway, I don’t want to run out of gas hand have to quit early.
So I kept my morning walk short and had a couple of naps. And went to bed early (temp then 99.0).
The meeting of the Resident Association exec committee was more complicated than usual. Rich (who moved in about the same time I did) has been promoting the idea we should have more medical personnel on site than we do.
What we have is a nursing staff who are primarily occupied with the SN and AL sections. There is a Wellness Office in the tower where during business hours a nurse can always be found to consult with IL residents.
Rich points to the fact that until 2018 we had two PAMF doctors who spent part of their hours on-site. That was actually mentioned in CHM’s online marketing materials. When Rich pointed that out to Rhonda, those mentions disappeared promptly.
As Rhonda explained to the Ex.Com. today, first, the two PAMF doctors only treated PAMF patients. If you were a Kaiser client, for example, they didn’t/couldn’t bill you. But then Sutter Health bought up PAMF. They ran the numbers and said, ok, if you want one of our doctors on-site it will cost you $500K/year.
We still have a doctor as our Medical Director, who makes regular rounds in SN and is available to AL, and who supervises the Director of Nursing. But for IL, all you get is free transport to appointments outside.
Which is — I checked today — exactly what my CH contract specifies I’ll get. Nursing on call for first-aid, free transport to appointments. Emergencies, call 911, or the nurse will call for you.
However, we once had more. And Larry Basso (a distant relative of Dennis), who is part of Rich’s committee, remembers the CHM founder, Dr. Russell Lee, and today emphasized that tight integration with PAMF was part of Lee’s vision.
So what Rich and company wanted was RA permission to conduct — well it wasn’t clear what. Not a survey but some kind of information gathering to determine what medical presence our residents expect and want. He has mentioned having a Nurse Practitioner on staff, but that wasn’t said today.
After the committee left the Ex.Com. members discussed it and decided the petitioners needed to be a lot more specific. Pres. Carol is going to draft a response.
Part of the pressure for this is that coincidentally staff announced a preliminary fee schedule for optional nursing services. Turns out us old farts have been calling on the nurses for lots of non-illness things such as: help putting in eye drops; help putting on compression socks; care of surgical wounds. There has not been a clear demarcation of what services are free and what are billed, and for how much.
This has been causing quite a bit of talk as one might imagine.
Anyway early to bed.
Codgerville 