Family Doctor

Aside from God, who has been endorsed by both major political parties, the big issue in the presidential campaign is health care. Every time we turn on the TV, we see either an ad from the Republicans telling us how horrible Al Gore's health-care plan is, or an ad from the Democrats telling us how horrible George W. Bush's plan is. So to summarize what we, as voters, have learned from this campaign: If Gore is elected: Health care will be controlled by...

Nearly 5,500 calls came in to the Towson office of Dr. Sarah F. Whiteford in the month of October - more than twice the usual number. And even with extra staff manning the phones, about 1,000 patients grew tired of waiting and hung up. It's a flu season like the office has never experienced. And despite the nearly overwhelming volume, Whitefordand other primary doctors saythe phone has become their most essential tool in not only managing the first pandemic in decades but tamping down the widespread anxiety about the swine flu virus that has killed 13 people in the state.

Dr. Peter Uggowitzer, who practices with the North Carroll Family Physicians at the Cedarbrook Center in Hampstead, has been appointed to the medical staff at Carroll County General Hospital.A graduate of McGill University School of Medicine in Montreal, he completed a family residency program at the University of Maryland and was chief resident in family practice there in 1989.From 1990 to 1993 he practiced medicine in Campbellford, Ontario, where he served as vice president of Campbellford Hospital's medical staff and chief of the hospital's critical care medicine and emergency services departments.

In the attic of his parents' Cleveland home, psychiatrist David Hellerstein -- son of a pediatrician mother and a cardiologist father -- discovered old books and papers documenting a remarkable story. Traced back over five generations was a family of physicians, beginning with Dr. Marcus Rosenwasser, who opened his Cleveland practice in 1868, continuing with Marcus' nephew Dr. Gustave Feil, stepfather to Dr. Harold Cohen Feil (David's maternal grandfather) whose wife, Nellie, was Marcus' great-niece.

Like many medical students, I proudly wear Obama T-shirts and yearn to reform medicine. While watching the president speak, I envision myself working in primary care, on the vanguard of health care reform. Then, a little later, reality hits. With the number of senior citizens rapidly growing, by 2020 we will likely lack 200,000 physicians. So why do only 2 percent of medical students choose family medicine? Medical students undervalue family medicine residencies in comparison to programs such as dermatology.

WASHINGTON--- Ashocking report from the National Association of Public Hospitals says that the average emergency-room wait for a bed in America's public hospitals is more than five and a half hours! In some cases, it may be several days.Moreover, the report says, these hospitals, often regarded as the foundation of our nation's health system, are deteriorating in other ways. Unless they get help, ''there will be a substantial curtailment of safety-net services in many urban areas.''It's easy for most Americans to say: ''That's too bad, but it doesn't really affect me. I don't have to go to a public hospital for care.

Dr. Donald W. Mintzer, a retired Hamilton family physician, died Feb. 1 of Alzheimer's disease complications at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland. He was 86. Born in Somers Point, N.J., and raised in nearby Ocean City, he was a 1938 graduate of Ocean City High School and worked as a lifeguard. Family members said he decided to pursue a medical career after he nearly died of complications from an appendectomy at age 9. He moved to Maryland in 1939 and earned a pre-med Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Brandon stares ahead, listless, his eyes tinged with pink. His family doctor has found swollen glands and, peeking inside the 2-year-old's ears, claims to see Simba.No response."You're too sick to care, aren't you, sweetie?" Dr. Alex Rocha asks the sad towhead. He turns to Brandon's mother, Dawn Goodman: "He's got tonsillitis," the doctor says.A few minutes later, Dr. Rocha is talking to an 80-year-old farmer about the arthritis in his leg and stops to examine his sandpaper hands."Look at these mitts," he tells Howard Leister, who recently painted 12,000 feet of white fence.

WASHINGTON -- The nation has a severe shortage of general physicians and a surplus of specialists, a trend that must be reversed soon if major repairs are going to be made to the ailing health-care system, a federal advisory panel has warned in a report to be made public soon.The study is expected to be taken seriously by the Clinton administration, because it has set health-care reform as an early goal, because the head of the panel, Dr. David Satcher, is said to be on the short list for the job of secretary of health and human services in the new administration, and because Democrats and Republicans have indicated that health-care reform will be at the top of the priority list for Congress next year.

For a child with asthma, triggers to another episode lurk in everyday things. Cold weather. Respiratory infection. Common allergens like animal dander and dust. Even laughing, for some, can cause an episode of asthma.When asthmatic bronchitis strikes 16-month-old Ryan Groft, "his lungs get tied in knots," says his mother, Diane Groft. "The bronchial airways go into spasms. The air is trying to pass through the lungs, but there's this gross stuff, mucous, that produces high-pitched wheezing."