Women’s health is the focus of new alliance

The Carolyn J. Stone Center for Women’s Health was just the start. Sonoma Valley Hospital and other care providers in the Valley are looking at a number of ways to improve health care for local women and children – from the technical to the educational.
The hospital recently joined with the Sonoma Valley Health Center, Sonoma Plaza Pediatrics, Dr. Paul Amara, a local OB/GYN, and Dr. Charles Elboim to form the Women’s and Children’s Health Alliance of the Sonoma Valley.
The group met for the first time at the end of January to look at focusing and coordinating efforts. “We certainly are collaborating on any initiatives that we can do together,” said Patricia Talbot, CEO of the Sonoma Valley Community Health Center. She said they agreed that one of the first things to focus on will be increasing breast-feeding, which makes a critical difference for infant health.
The various participants in the alliance offer different services and they’ll look at how to work together over the coming year. The health clinic has a large OB/prenatal care program and its clientele accounts for 71 percent of all deliveries at the hospital. The clinic saw a total of 6,500 users last year, of which 3,980 were women, most of them between the ages of 20 and 34. The second largest group was women between ages 45 and 64.
The clinic offers contraceptive and family-planning counseling for people through the Medi-Cal and California Family PACT program, a program for the uninsured. Staff refer women to the hospital for their mammograms and then track the women and call them when their next mammogram is due. Pap smears are tracked and patients called the same way. And the clinic offers a program called “Every Woman Counts,” which provides free mammograms and pap smears to eligible women.
“It’s all about prevention,” said Talbot.
That means early pre-natal care, making sure women get yearly pap smears and mammograms and working with older people to pay attention to bone and heart health and exercise. Education is key. Talbot said she’d like to see a wellness program with education courses year-round, among other initiatives.
The hospital hired Celeste Phillips as a consultant several months ago. Phillips has been working to improve maternity care through family-centered practice for more than 40 years and has consulted with some 700 hospitals. She laid out a clear strategic plan of how and why the hospital needs to develop better women’s health services.
Her argument was both that it’s important for quality patient care and that it is important for the hospital as a business. Integrated women’s services could be an important way that the hospital distinguishes itself from other North Bay hospitals.
Women are widely recognized as “the gatekeepers of health care,” as they make some 70 percent of health care decisions for their families. Over the summer, the hospital did eight focus groups with women of all ages, including Kaiser patients.
“We asked them, ‘Teach us what you need in terms of healthcare,’” said Patricia Brooks, director of integrative medicine and outpatient women’s health and wellness services at the hospital. “They did a fantastic job. They told us what they need and what they don’t need
High on the list is having a female OB/GYN in the Valley. They also expressed support for a local “health navigator” – someone to guide a woman to the right doctors and resources, get appointments and help her navigate the complicated insurance system after her diagnosis. “It’s a very up and coming role because the health system has become unnavigable – it’s so complex,” said Brooks, who currently fields calls in that vein.
Local women were also interested in digital mammography and more educational programs on topics like stress management and weight management.
“Some things we thought were really going to matter to the community didn’t,” said Brooks. For instance, there wasn’t a lot of interest in support groups, and there seemed to be little sense in investing in a research library because many of the people in the group said they go online for health information at sites like health.nih.gov, which is backed by the federal National Institutes of Health.
“One of the things that we are going to try to focus on, early on, is breast health,” said Brooks. Part of that is screening women at high risk for breast cancer. Dr. Elboim recently received a grant to look at whether it is possible to identify genetic risk factors for breast cancer earlier in the process. He’ll be able to offer some services through the grant, such as genetic counseling and follow-up for some patients, and he’ll do continuing medical education with various local doctors.
Hospital staff will be presenting a business plan to the hospital board this month. The hospital wants to recruit a female OB/GYN to the area by fall. Brooks is currently looking at a structure that would allow the hospital to hire that doctor and set her up in practice at the Carolyn J. Stone Center, possibly in conjunction with the community health center.