We wear lanyards, clip-on’s or sticky labels. This day, our names show affiliations with the California Hospital Association, the Central California Sikh community and a West Coast petroleum association. Like swarms of worker bees, we festoon the honeycomb of the Capitol building in Sacramento, clustering in the tiny offices of assembly members and senators, spitting [...]

First the good news: The mental health crisis center that reopened last May is a success – praised by clients and their families and welcomed by hospitals in Fresno County, particularly Community Regional Medical Center, as it’s helped ease the logjam of behaviorally challenged patients coming to emergency departments. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors [...]

He’s been a jockey. A tenor. A physician. And most certainly a witty raconteur. “I’m 6’4” and 265 pounds, but I’m adjustable – I could be your Jack Russell terrier.” To encounter Ronan Tynan is to meet no small measure of a man – with or without his two prosthetic legs. My wife and I [...]

Praise in public, criticize in private. I totally believe in that philosophy (though it was rarely evidenced in my 30 years in the newspaper business). So I’m a tad puzzled that a wonderful atta-boy delivered to Clovis government leadership by a prominent author and health care futurist was so way “between the lines” as to [...]

Doctors made house calls and were paid in cash. Doctors offices expected cash — not insurance cards or “bill me.” Doctors smoked cigarettes during and after examinations, and dentists would steal a smoke between patients – and use air from cleaning tools to expand their gloves. Needles were reusable – after you a got a [...]

When it comes to well-informed scolds, I put my money on longtime Sacramento newspaper columnist Dan Walters. He delivered a nice punch to the solar plexus the other day in a Bee opinion piece on licensing — creating rules without reasons. His point: Do we need to license lawyers? Yeah, probably. Real estate agents, maybe. [...]