Health
Roughly 27,000 letters went to Bay Area families notifying them that Covered California planned to end their coverage because they didn’t submit timely documents proving legal residence in the state.
Amid a growing debate about the location of medical marijuana collectives in Richmond, the City Council plans to hold talks on expanding zones where dispensaries are allowed to operate.
The fate of Doctors Medical Center remained in doubt after five hours of heated arguments at the Richmond City Council meeting Tuesday, which adjourned at 11:30 p.m. The council postponed until Oct. 21 any resolution regarding whether to provide funds to help save the failing hospital, but several members expressed a willingness to reverse their previous positions and allocate some funds to the hospital. The session featured displays of temper and insults hurled among council members as 41 public witnesses…
Local non-profit organization Pogo Park and the Richmond Police Department has won a national award for their collaborative work in transforming and improving the Elm Playlot on 8th St. and Elm Ave., becoming one of 11 winners out of 560 applicants nationwide.
The troubles at the Hacienda housing project were made public in February. The Richmond Housing Authority promised a tenant relocation in April. The initial application was sent in May. It’s now October—and mice still crawl at residents’ feet and cracks still spider up the walls. “I thought this place was coming down on my head during that Napa quake,” said Clarence Malbrough, a 16-year resident of the notorious Iron Triangle apartment complex on Roosevelt Ave. Residents and city council have…
A senate bill allocating $3 million to Doctor’s Medical Center in San Pablo is intended to keep the hospital in operation but will likely not last beyond March, 2015. Uninsured and low-income patients may be forced elsewhere while officials struggle to find solutions to keep the DMC’s life support running.
Many times a day, in Bay Area operating rooms like those at Kaiser Permanente Oakland, nurses lay out a set of surgical tools from which doctors can choose. Surgeons often pick one or two instruments from the bunch, leaving the rest to be discarded. Rather than clog local landfills, those unused surgical tools now can make their way to Roots Community Health Center in Oakland or Brighter Beginnings Family Health Clinic in Richmond — thanks to MedShare, a nonprofit with…
On Wednesday, Covered California, the state’s public health exchange, plans to end coverage for thousands of Bay Area residents who didn’t submit timely documents proving that they’re legal residents of the state. More than a quarter of the termination notices—or roughly 27,000 letters about the impending cutoff—went to Bay Area families out of the 98,000 notices sent statewide in early September. But in the East Bay, immigration specialists say language barriers and email glitches may complicate this week’s deadline, and…
Two years after Richmond voters overwhelmingly rejected a soda tax, health advocates in Berkeley and San Francisco are drawing lessons from Richmond’s Measure N defeat to try to pass similar taxes on sugary drinks on Nov. 4.