Patient Care News Archive

07.01.08
The Obstetrics Program of the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, already a leader in the field, received very welcome news from the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) yesterday when they announced that our program qualified for Better Performance Candidacy in UHC’s Obstetric Clinical Benchmarking project. UCSF was one of two institutions so designated out of 30 hospitals.
As a Better Performer, our program has been invited to share its successes and knowledge at the Obstetrics Knowledge Transfer Meeting (KTM) with the other participants in this study who are looking for ways to improve their current processes. The KTM will take place in Chicago in October 2008. In advance, UHC has requested that UCSF host a site visit with UHC benchmarking staff members to validate the Better Performer designation. This would take place later this month or in early September.
As one of the first hospitals in the western United States to give women the option of delivering in an alternative birth center, UCSF has a long established commitment to safe, comfortable, family-centered births. UCSF prenatal providers include obstetricians, family practice physicians, certified nurse midwives, and nurse practitioners. For women with high-risk pregnancies, UCSF obstetricians and perinatologists provide the most advanced management techniques and consultations.
Our Center for Newborns and Mothers offers women and their families the ability to experience labor, delivery, and recovery in the same comfortable room, many offering spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay. Our post-partum rooms are private and comfortable. We are proud to report a cesarean section rate of 22.8% and a successful VBAC rate (vaginal birth after C-section) of 72%. While the San Francisco birthrate continues to drop, the UCSF Center for Newborns and Mothers has seen an increase in the number of births over the last three years.

05.01.08
The Gynecologic Cancer Foundation has developed a Women's Cancer Network. The mission of the Women's Cancer Network is to keep women informed and to enable them to be their own health advocates. The WCN was developed as an interactive web site dedicated to informing women around the world about gynecologic cancer. The goal is to assist women who have developed cancer, as well as their families, to understand more about the disease, learn about treatment options, and gain access to new or experimental therapies. Women's Cancer Network is an invaluable on-line educational tool for your patients, family and friends.
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04.07.08
UCSF Nurse Mary M. Rubin is the first nurse practitioner to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology. Rubin works at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center as a nurse practitioner in the Dysplasia Clinic and coordinates gynecological oncology/dysplasia research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She has 35 years of experience as a nurse practitioner, colposcopist, educator and researcher and was selected for her contributions to colposcopy and the educational tools she developed to improve patient care. She also has been credited with opening the door for hundreds of advanced practice clinicians to provide comprehensive care to patients with lower genital tract disease.
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03.12.08
Neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, MD, director of the UCSF Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic and author of The Female Brain, was interviewed by ABC about "momnesia" or post-partum forgetfulness that scientists are saying is a medical condition. The interview aired on ABC World News Now and on Good Morning America.
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03.01.08
San Francisco ranked 3rd best city in the nation to have a baby by Fit Pregnancy. If it takes a village to raise a child, what kind of place does it take to have a baby? When Fit Pregnancy set out to find the best cities in America to have a baby, we looked at everything from doctors and hospitals to doulas, midwives, breastfeeding success rates, birth and health risk, stroller-friendly trails and parks, affordability, and a whole lot more. San Francisco was rated the 3rd best place in the entire country to have a baby.
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02.25.08
HepB Free Project joins with UCSF staff to offer prevention strategies to community. The HepB Free Project is housed in the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The program is a citywide effort to eradicate hepatitis B from the City of San Francisco by providing free screening efforts and affordable vaccination. Janet Zola, coordinator of the Project, approached UCSF’s top leadership to join hands in the HepB eradication effort.
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01.29.08
The UCSF Center of Excellence in Women’s Health (CoE) will sponsor various events throughout the month of February – heart month. The CoE and the Asian Heart and Vascular Center will offer a free health screening for cardiovascular health and hepatitis B to women and families on Saturday, Feb. 2, from 9 a.m. to noon at the UCSF Hepatitis B Screening and Vaccination Clinic, 2330 Post St.
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01.10.08
Sleep apnea is linked to cognitive impairment in older women. Older women with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) –– the restriction or interruption of breathing during sleep –– are more likely to show cognitive impairment than women without SDB, according to a study led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and University of California, San Francisco.
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12.16.07
Can you speak up when a doctor dismisses your concerns? Are you able to disagree with treatments your physicians propose? Could you lobby for an innovative procedure if your doctor says that you have run out of options? Before your doctor examines you, do you say, "May I ask if you have washed your hands to prevent infection?" Being assertive in the doctor's office or hospital may make the difference between life and death.
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12.11.07
CBS 5 reports: "Radiologists who specialize in mammograms often do the best job of identifying when a biopsy is required." -- UCSF Researcher Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman and Dr. Laura Esserman, Director of the Breast Care Center at UCSF, are interviewed. View more

10.08.07
UCSF will begin offering its world-class fertility services in Marin County this month to enable North Bay and East Bay patients to receive consultations and screenings, as well as the daily tests required for some fertility care, closer to home. The agreement for the satellite office, which was formalized October 1, involved Marin Reproductive Medical Associates, in Greenbrae, whose practice will now be incorporated into UCSF services. The practice will be open to new UCSF patients on October 22 and will include in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility services, as well as counseling about reproductive options for patients who have been diagnosed with cancer.
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09.26.07
A UCSF research team has developed a simple tool that can improve the effectiveness of communication between doctors and patients about prescribed medications and result in dramatic improvements in health and safety. The new communication tool involves a computer-generated weekly calendar with color images of the medication to be taken each day, combined with instructions written in English and in a patient's native language if the patient does not speak English. The researchers call it a VMS, for visual medication schedule.
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06.07.07
When UCSF urogynecologist Sharon Knight, MD, agreed to take part in a humanitarian mission to what the United Nations has called the poorest country on Earth, she expected that the medical treatment she delivered to the women of Niger would change their lives for the better. What she didn’t expect were the things she would learn from treating the medical condition known as fistula, which had caused the women to become alienated from society and from themselves. “These women have nothing and nowhere to go, not even home,” recalled Knight, who treats patients at UCSF’s Women’s Continence Center (WCC). “Just to see them laugh and smile was an amazing thing,” she said. “I really learned something about the capacity of the human spirit.”
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03.04.07
Health, fitness and beauty are important for women of all ages. Wendy Katzman, a physical therapist at UCSF Women’s Health, is reveling in her new role as a model and spokesperson for Dove's pro-age campaign. A full-time working mother of two, Katzman endorses the campaign’s quest to show that beauty has no age limit, and to encourage and inspire women of all ages. In December 2005, Katzman went to New York, where she worked with legendary portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz for Dove's pro-age ad, which is pictured here.
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05.08.06
It's one of the darkest secrets in medicine: the numbers of men, women and children who are victims of domestic violence. They come into doctors' offices with various complaints, such as headaches, depression, and anxiety. Some women suffer chronic pelvic pain and vaginal bleeding. Among children and teens, symptoms can manifest as sleep disturbances, clinginess, hyper-vigilance, aggression, school troubles, or drug use. Alarmed by the scope of domestic violence and child trauma that they encountered, UCSF physicians and medical social workers in the Department of Pediatrics, and clinical psychologists in the Department of Psychiatry at SFGH founded Living in a Nonviolent Community (LINC) in 1999. The program is part of the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health.
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03.24.06
The UCSF Fetal Treatment Center held a ribbon-cutting ceremony today (March 24) to mark the official opening of its new facility on the first floor in the Ambulatory Care Center, 400 Parnassus Ave. The center, formerly located in Health Sciences West, celebrated its new facility, made possible in large part by a $500,000 federal appropriation initiated by U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and a grant from the Lucile Packard Foundation. The UCSF Fetal Treatment Center is world renowned for its expertise in treating babies with complex congenital defects while still in the womb. This is the 25th anniversary of the world's first open fetal surgery, performed under the leadership of UCSF's Dr. Michael Harrison, who pioneered the fetal treatment field.
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09.09.04
UCSF leaders are recommending a bold plan to build state-of-the-art technologically advanced patient care facilities at Mission Bay, including a UCSF Women’s Hospital, together with outpatient facilities and a new translational research center to speed the transfer of new medical knowledge to clinical practice.
This plan recognizes UCSF’s leadership in promoting women’s health through innovative clinical care, research and education, says Nancy Milliken, director of the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and vice dean of the School of Medicine. “The UCSF National CoE is advancing our research knowledge of women’s health and disease, developing comprehensive clinical services, which address a woman’s lifetime needs, and engaging individual women and communities in partnerships to improve their health.
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03.08.02
Women's Health Practices Move to Mount Zion UCSF is moving its primary care and obstetrics-gynecology practices into the revamped Women's Health Center on the Mount Zion campus.

03.05.99
UCSF: Championing Female-focused Health Care: [Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series to update the efforts of the UCSF Center of Excellence in Women's Health.] San Francisco is one of the healthiest cities in America for women, due, in no small part, to the exceptional women's health program at UCSF. A major turning point in women's health at UCSF came in 1996, when the University earned distinction as one of six vanguard programs designated by the US Department of Health and Human Services as a National Center of Excellence in Women's Health (COE). Along with the title came funding with which to plan and implement a novel model of health care.

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