Specialty Emergency Medicine Facility South Sacramento Medical Center Emergency Services Address 6600 Bruceville Road Hospital Building, 1st Floor Sacramento CA 95823 Map & Directions Telephone Advice: (916) 688-2106 Information: (916) 688-2535 E-mail your doctor View your preventive services

I went into the practice of medicine because I could think of no better profession to match my interests in science and the humanities with my desire to work with and help people. I've never had any regrets about my decision.

When I graduated from medical school at the University of California in San Francisco, I had the option of doing residency in a variety of different settings, including academic institutions with a focus on rare diseases, and county hospitals with large numbers of patients suffering from drug and alcohol-related illnesses. I chose to do a residency in Internal Medicine at Kaiser Permanente, San Francisco, where I had done some of my medical school rotations, because I enjoyed the practical approach to medicine that I had seen at Kaiser Permanente, and because I liked working with patients who were motivated to get well and appreciative of the care they received. During my three years in Internal Medicine residency, I found that I was most interested in the sickest patients, and I decided to do two additional years of training in what was then the new field of Emergency Medicine at Valley Medical Center (now University Medical Center) in Fresno. As a result of my dual training, I obtained board certification in both Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine.

After residency, I decided to return to Kaiser Permanente to practice Emergency Medicine because I felt that Kaiser Permanente was the best place to be able to focus on patient care with the fewest distractions. I rejected practicing in the private setting because I objected to the idea of billing patients who had the misfortune to need to come to the Emergency Department. At the time that I joined Kaiser Permanente, there were no copays for Emergency Department visits or for prescriptions, and I was proud to be practicing in a setting in which I could provide the best possible care for patients without regard to their ability to pay. Although I never intended to become an administrator, soon after I joined Kaiser Permenente I was drafted into the position of Assistant Chief of the Sacramento Emergency Department and later, when the South Sacramento hospital opened, I was drafted as Chief of the South Sacramento ED, a position I held until 1990.

The highlight of my career with Kaiser Permanente has been my day to day contact with patients. I am troubled by the increasing amount of time that we physicians are forced to devote to bureaucratic matters, and by the increasing costs of medical care, including the copays for many Emergency Department visits. At the same time, I find it extremely satisfying working with patients, helping figure out what is causing their symptoms, and helping them get better. And no shift passes that I do not meet patients or families who inspire me with their courage and their grace in dealing with serious illness or injury.

In addition to my clinical work, I am involved in teaching Emergency Medicine Residents from UC Davis, where I helped found the joint UC Davis/Kaiser Emergency Medicine Residency. I am chairperson of the local research committee at South Sacramento Kaiser Permanente, and I was honored to receive a research award from Kaiser Permanente in 2003 for my work showing that teaching emergency physicians to perform ultrasounds in the Emergency Department, instead of waiting to get ultrasounds through the Medical Imaging Department, leads to high patient satisfaction, reduced costs, and improved quality of care.

I have also been involved for a number of years in the field of injury prevention. As a Vietnam combat veteran and a former expert marksman in the U.S. Marines, I was shocked to learn that every two years, more U.S. civilians are killed by guns than all the U.S. soldiers in the entire 11 year Vietnam war. I was also shocked to learn that U.S. children are killed by guns at a rate that is almost 12 times higher than in the other 25 leading industrialized countries of the world. I have been working both through Kaiser Permanente and as Injury Prevention Chairperson of the California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians (Cal/ACEP) to make patients more aware of the risks of guns in the home. Although some people feel safer having a gun in the home, research shows that guns in the home are much more likely to be used to kill or injure a household member than to protect against an attacker. As a former expert marksman, as an emergency physician, and as Cal/ACEP's Injury Prevention Chairperson, I advise that it is safest not to keep a gun in your home, and that if you do have a gun, it should be stored unloaded, locked up, with the ammunition stored separately.

Finally, I am a long time member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. We recently reformed a Sacramento Chapter of PSR, of which I am the chapter president. I invite you to check out PSR/Sacramento's website at www.sacpsr.org to see what we are doing to reduce the threat of nuclear war and other forms of militarism, to preserve the environment, and to curb the epidemic of violence in our society. Through both PSR and Cal/ACEP, I am also working to help establish a system of universal health care in California. I believe that access to high quality health care is a basic human right, regardless of one's income level. The United States is the only democratic, industrialized country which does not provide some type of health care coverage for all its citizens. I am working with others to develop a universal health care system in California that will serve as a model for the rest of the country.

That's quite a bit about me. I hope, if you ever have the need to come to the Emergency Department, that I can learn a little about you, and that I can help you with whatever problem it is that brings you in to see me.

My Credentials

Medical school	UC San Francisco Medical Center, San Francisco, CA
Residency	Valley Medical Center, Fresno, CA
Residency	Kaiser Foundation Hospital, San Francisco, CA
Board certification	Internal Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine
Board certification	Emergency Medicine, American Board of Emergency Medicine

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