Physicians

If you haven't visited Carroll Hospital Center recently, you might want to know that the emergency department has relocated toward the front of the hospital, saving you the drive around the parking lot. Three years ago the hospital underwent an $80 million renovation, during which the space formerly occupied by the emergency department was transformed into an award-winning outpatient center. The ED doubled in size, and added televisions to every room in the 30,000-square-foot space. A five-story tower was built with the latest medical technology and efficient layouts.

Dr. Omar A. Khan of Havre de Grace recently was honored by the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation for his commitment to education in family medicine. He was selected to receive the 2007 Pfizer Teacher Development Award based on his scholastic achievement, leadership qualities and dedication to family medicine. The award, supported by the Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiatives, recognizes community-based physicians who teach family medicine on a part-time basis. Khan teaches at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Christiana Care Health System, Delaware.

Dr. Ernesto Molfino, a general surgeon, died of a heart attack Sunday while playing soccer with a recreation league team at Schooley Mill Park in Highland. The Ellicott City resident was 64. Born in Lima, Peru, where he received his medical education, he moved to the United States and did his surgical residency in Detroit. He then moved to Baltimore and practiced at the old Lutheran Hospital in West Baltimore. He also did a shock trauma fellowship with Dr. R. Adams Cowley at University of Maryland Medical Center.

Childbirth course lasts six weeks Upper Chesapeake Health will offer a six-week course in prepared childbirth from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays Oct. 1 to Nov. 19 and Thursdays Oct. 25 to Dec. 13 in Chesapeake Conference Center I. Weekend classes will be offered from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 6-7 and 20-21. The cost is $50 for couples delivering at Upper Chesapeake and $80 for those delivering elsewhere. Registration: 800-515-0044. Information offered on bariatric surgery Upper Chesapeake Health is offering a free informational class, Bariatric Surgery: New Course for Life, at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Havre de Grace Room at Harford Memorial Hospital.

In a recent letter to shareholders, Dr. Thomas Hall shared a favored maxim: "Good things come to those who wait."The waiting does seem over for the company he runs, Medical Advisory Systems Inc., thanks largely to the explosion of the Internet and people's hunger for information about the aches and ills they suffer.Calvert County-based Medical Advisory Systems grabbed hold of both trends late last year when it agreed to provide Web site operator America's Doctor with physicians to conduct free, private, real-time "chats" online.

Igen International Inc. said this week that a federal court has refused to lift or amend a court injunction barring Roche Holding AG from selling diagnostic products based on Igen technology to physicians' offices and laboratories.The U.S. District Court in Greenbelt granted Gaithersburg-based Igen's request for the injunction in July 1998.The injunction was issued until a lawsuit over Boehringer Mannheim GmbH's sales to physicians' offices is settled, Igen said.Publicly held Igen sued Boehringer in 1997 for breach of contract, saying Boehringer's sales to physicians' offices violated an agreement in 1992 limiting sales to hospitals, blood banks and clinical-reference laboratories.

THE FIRST Nobel Peace Prize, in 1901, was shared by the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross. How fitting that the last prize of the century goes to another organization with a related mission, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).After a decade of Nobel Peace Prizes for pursuing worthy political objectives, this one goes to an organization that does good in desperate circumstances.Other nongovernment aid organizations go where the need and suffering are. Many are equally worthy of honor.

A physicians' group says it plans to file a federal lawsuit seeking changes in the federal government's food pyramid because they say it is racially biased.The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, in a news conference today in Washington, will argue that federal dietary guidelines are "ignoring the needs of minority Americans" because most minorities have difficulty digesting dairy products yet are advised to eat them as part of a healthy diet."We're not suggesting that the government should not supply cow's milk or meat.

Robert P. Kowal, president and chief executive officer of Greater Baltimore Medical Center, announced yesterday that he will retire this year after 15 years as head of the Towson hospital.Kowal is credited with helping make GBMC a leader in a trend among suburban hospitals to develop the type of complex and ambitious programs that had been largely reserved for academic medical centers. Among the programs started or greatly expanded under his tenure were the cancer center, neurosurgery, genetic research and laparoscopic surgery.

A hospital's emergency waiting room is a dismal enough place when you're in your hometown. But when something goes wrong on a trip, it can be especially daunting to wait for hours in an unfamiliar place to see an unfamiliar doctor.Recognizing that -- and seeing a chance to turn a profit in an unexplored corner of the health-care business -- a handful of services now dispatch doctors on hotel-room house calls for travelers.Travelers in the United States who face life-threatening circumstances, such as heart-attack symptoms, are still better off calling 911. But room-service doctors could be a simpler alternative for travelers suffering from sore throats, infections, stomach ailments and other smaller woes.

Physicians committed to health care reform I'd like to thank Ellen Goodman for an insightful column and for recognizing that physicians want to spend more time with patients but are practicing medicine within the confines of a broken system ("Can medicine again be a calling?" June 19). In his recent address to the American Medical Association, President Obama also recognized physicians' dedication to patient care and vowed to listen to and work with physicians to achieve meaningful health reform this year.

Liability limits save access to care Proven medical liability reforms, including a cap on noneconomic damages, are working to keep Maryland physicians caring for patients while still allowing injured patients access to the court system. In fact, as the column from the president of the Maryland trial lawyers association suggests, about the only people complaining are trial lawyers ("Time to treat malpractice victims fairly," Feb. 27). In states without such reforms, many cases result in runaway jury awards for noneconomic damages.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Dr. Javeed Siddiqui, an infectious-disease physician, was on the job at University of California Davis Medical Center when his iPhone rang with an urgent call. A colleague's niece was in distress, her right eye swollen from a dog bite. Siddiqui asked the girl's father to send a digital photo of the 8-year-old's wounded eye directly to the doctor's iPhone. He viewed the injury and issued a soothing diagnosis: no need for an emergency-room visit. Antibiotics, which he prescribed by phone, would do the job. Over the next few days, Siddiqui monitored the injury via photos sent to his cell phone.

Let physicians provide counsel patients need While the article "Dispensing advice" (Nov 17) is accurate in reporting that many Marylanders have complex medical issues that require drug use and interaction counseling, the solution to the problem is not to add another counselor to the treatment equation. Further fragmentation of health care serves nobody. To borrow a tried and true phrase, "Too many cooks will ruin the broth." Primary-care physicians always have and always will see counseling as part of their responsibility to patients.

Shirley Davis struggled with diabetes for 30 years before she understood how to keep it under control. Doctors, she said, told her to watch her weight, improve her diet and sent her home with a prescription for insulin. The visits were brief and the follow-up minimal. Davis, 74, ignored doctors' advice and her diabetes advanced. Then, she began seeing pharmacist Jeffrey Brewer. Part prescription manager, educator and coach, Brewer collaborated with Davis' doctors on her care, taught her the relationship between insulin and blood sugar and convinced her to avoid her weakness - lemon meringue pie. "Hardheaded old people like me think we know more than young people sometimes, but he got through to me in a nice, but stern way," she said.

Don't doctors deserve a choice on abortion? The acerbic editorial "Bush rules" (Nov. 11) ironically accuses the Bush administration of attacking "personal rights" and then lambastes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for proposing a regulation to protect the civil rights of health care professionals. The Baltimore Sun protests "extending the right to refuse to participate in an abortion to include an array of health care workers." Which medical professionals does the paper deem unworthy of civil rights so that they should be forced to violate their conscience and the Hippocratic Oath?

Diana Moore learned the news through the neighborhood grapevine. Her family's primary-care physician of seven years would no longer accept Moore, her husband and daughter as patients - unless the family paid a $4,500 annual fee. The physicians at Charter Internal Medicine in Columbia are overhauling the practice, ditching the insurance-dependent model and instead charging a flat yearly fee in exchange for the promise of 24-hour access to doctors, unhurried...

Pam Wahbe and her family have a primary-care physician. But lately they've been skipping the traditional doctor's office for minor ailments and instead using a walk-in clinic at a Towson CVS drugstore. "Going to the doctor takes a lot of time," says Wahbe, who has been using the store's MinuteClinic for a couple of years. "You have to wait until they're open, and then you have to call. And then you have to wait until they call you back. By the time you get in there, you've wasted at least half a day."

Activists blazed trail toward equal rights Lawrence E. Harrison is right that Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy marks a new period in the black cultural experience ("The last gasps of black victimology?" Commentary, Aug. 10). However, his attempt to paint the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and other activists as simply complainers who play the race card is unfounded. The fact that such leaders rise up to speak in defense of the oppressed is appropriate. That's what real leaders do. Black Americans have been the victims of incredibly unfair treatment, and we, to this day, continue to be affected by the legacy of slavery and discrimination that scars the opening portion of American history.

When his colleague departed in December, family doctor Charles Bennett thought he would soon find a new partner for his private practice in Lusby. But he has had no luck for the past eight months. "I'm still trying to find someone, but I don't think it will get any better in the foreseeable future," said Bennett, whose Calvert County practice employs four staff members. "The process is very time-consuming, and I am already very busy as it is." Bennett's troubles stem from the fact that the United States faces a serious shortage of family physicians, especially in rural and poorer communities.