Due to power outage, non-essential services in the ambulatory care setting, specialty, and family health care clinics will be closing for the afternoon beginning at 1p.m.
The following remain open: Urgent Care, Family Beginnings, the special care nursery, and extended observation services. To support these areas, selected services in pharmacy, lab, and radiology will also be open.
Patients with appointments scheduled for this afternoon at Capital Hill Campus are in the process of being called. We urge those patients who have not been contacted by their clinic to call to confirm the status of their appointment.
Capitol Hill Campus will be open tomorrow morning, December 23, for regular business hours.
James Hereford, Executive Vice President of the Group Practice Division of Group Health
New leadership will oversee all medical practices
Group Health has selected James Hereford to be executive vice president of the Group Practice Division, which encompasses Group Health’s 26 Medical Centers in Washington and North Idaho.
Hereford is a 17-year veteran of Group Health and is currently executive vice president for Strategic Services & Quality, where he has overseen advances in Group Health’s electronic medical records and targeting care quality goals.
He will be replacing Peter Morgan, who recently announced his retirement as executive vice president of the Group Practice Division, effective January 1. (more…)
Every two years, 2,000 senior Group Health patients check in with the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study. The joint project between Group Health Research Institute and the University of Washington (UW) focuses on finding ways to delay or prevent dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and declines in memory and thinking. It aims to deepen understanding of how the body—especially the brain—ages. More…
On November 20, 2009, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) announced new guidelines for cervical cancer screening, to be published in the December issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. The changes recommended by ACOG lean toward less screening overall, minimizing the harms of treating lesions that pose no long-term health risk.
While there will be no immediate changes to Group Health’s Cervical Cancer Prevention Guideline, the guideline will be formally reviewed in 2010. At that time the guideline team will conduct a careful independent review of the evidence, with consideration of nationally recognized guidelines such as those of ACOG.
The differences between ACOG’s new guidelines and Group Health’s existing guidelines are small but significant:
Initiation of screening
ACOG now recommends that screening begin at age 21 and deletes the recommendation to start 3 years after onset of sexual activity.
Group Health currently recommends that screening start 3 years after a woman’s first sexual encounter or by age 21.
Screening intervals
ACOG now recommends screening every 2 years from ages 21–29, then every 3 years until age 65–70.
Group Health currently recommends screening yearly until two consecutive normal Pap smear results have been obtained, then every 2–3 years until age 65.
Cessation of screening
The ACOG and Group Health recommendations for stopping screening are the same.
