Monthly Matters:

• Please join us to honor Dr. Chuck Kilo
• GreenField Physician Profile: Mal McAninch, MD
• New Controlled Substance Contract at GreenField
• Consider reaching us via TriMet Bus or MAX
• Family Matters: Raising our Daughters
• Office Notes

GreenField Health’s Health Matters

February 2010

Please join us to honor Dr. Chuck Kilo

As you know, GreenField’s Dr. Chuck Kilo will soon be transitioning to become the Chief Medical Officer at Oregon Health & Science University. His last day seeing patients at GreenField is March 12th. This transition is exciting for Chuck and for the GreenField team as it is recognition of the hard work of our team since our inception in 2001. Chuck is not so much leaving GreenField as he is taking on a larger platform for driving change in healthcare. On the other hand, it is the relationships that we cherish, and ending those direct doctor-patient relationships is always a challenge. Nonetheless, we strongly believe that the relationship exists between all GreenField physicians and staff and our patients – the clinic-patient relationship is vital to us.

We would like to invite you to join us at one of two open house celebrations. An RSVP is not necessary; simply stop by and enjoy a bite to eat, a personal chat with Chuck, GreenField’s staff, and our physicians, including a personal introduction to your new GreenField physician if necessary.

Monday, March 8th
5:00 – 7:00 PM
At our NE Broadway location

Tuesday, March 9th
5:00 – 7:00 PM
At our Barnes Road location

Chuck will always remain a part of GreenField, and will in fact continue to participate in GreenField’s governance. We all congratulate Chuck and wish him the best of luck in his new role.

GreenField Physician Profile: Mal McAninch, MD

This month we are profiling GreenField’s Dr. Mal McAninch, an internist at our Barnes Road clinic. Mal joined GreenField in the fall of 2008; however he had a part in GreenField’s inception in 2000 when Mal, Dr. David Shute, Dr. Chuck Kilo and others got together to discuss more optimal design of primary care services. So for Mal, joining GreenField was a bit like “coming home.”

Mal has had a rich history in medicine. After completing his residency at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, he worked in Elma, Washington before joining The Metropolitan Clinic in Portland. Mal also worked in the residency training program at Good Samaritan Hospital, at OMPRO (now Accumentra Health), and as associate medical director with the InterHospital Physicians Association. Most recently, Mal was a medical director for the Legacy Primary Care clinics before finally returning “home” to GreenField.

Mal and his wife Janeen have two children, son Ryan and daughter Megan, and they all serve as active volunteers with Medical Teams International (MTI, formerly Northwest Medical Teams.) In December, Mal, Janeen, Megan, and a team of MTI volunteers traveled to Uganda for what would be Mal and Janeen’s second trip to the region and Megan’s sixth! MTI staffs a clinic in the Ugandan UNHCR Nakivale Refugee Camp with over 40,000 Congolese refugees. During Mal’s 2-week stay, he saw patients ranging from 10 days old to 78 years old - “very old for Uganda” – and treated malaria, diarrheal illnesses, upper and lower respiratory infections, injuries and other infections. On their busiest day, Mal and 3 other medical providers treated 411 patients.

Medical Teams International has also had a very active role in Haiti following the devastating earthquake. Mal has been hearing from some of the MTI volunteers in Haiti and he says that “everyone is saying Haiti is so much worse than anything they have seen before… and these are people who have seen a lot.” Chances are that Mal may make a trip to Haiti sometime during this next year to lend a helping hand and as always the GreenField team will be here to support him in his efforts.

Mal and his wife enjoy traveling, hiking, skiing and spending time up on Mt. Hood.

For more information about Medical Teams International and to learn how you can help please visit: www.medicalteams.org .

New Controlled Substance Contract at GreenField

A few classes of the medications that we prescribe are monitored and controlled at the federal level by the Drug Enforcement Agency. These medications, which include narcotics used to treat pain, stimulants for Attention Deficit Disorder and benzodiazepines for anxiety, are monitored because they have the potential to cause serious side effects and can be addictive.

In order to better inform our patients of the risks of these medications and to improve efficiency in refilling the medications, we have instituted a Controlled Substance Contract. This contract reviews our standard protocol for prescribing and refilling the medications as well as their risks and benefits. We will be inviting our patients to come in to the office to review and sign these contracts when appropriate. Thank you for your assistance as we implement this contract throughout the practice.

Consider reaching us via TriMet Bus or MAX

Our “green team” would like to encourage and remind all of us, staff and patients alike, to consider taking public transportation to our GreenField clinics.

Are you frustrated by the parking garage at our Barnes Road location? If so, you are not alone. There are TriMet buses that stop right on the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center campus, and even though parking is ample at our Broadway location, there are TriMet buses that travel along NE Broadway too, which may be important to know this Spring and Summer as construction along NE Broadway and the Broadway Bridge is under way and may impact your travel plans.

In addition, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center offers a free shuttle service for patients, visitors and employees commuting via TriMet or MAX from the Sunset Transit Center which is located at 10470 SW Barnes Road. Their free shuttle service offers wheelchair accessible vans which run between the transit center and the hospital campus approximately every 20 minutes Monday through Friday during our GreenField clinic hours.

For more information and trip planning details please visit: www.trimet.org 

Family Matters: Raising our Daughters

This is the second in a six part series on Successful Parenting written by GreenField friend Kathy Masarie, MD. Kathy is a pediatrician who focuses on parenting and who recently authored the books: Raising Our Daughters and Raising Our Sons. She can be found at www.family-empower.com.

Empowering our girls to be assertive, clear and strong is critical to their well-being. Girls are bombarded with media and cultural messages to be beautiful, sexy, thin, and accommodating to men. As girls enter the adolescent years, they have a tendency to lose their voice, self-identity and feelings of connection and competence. They can become sullen and distant. Parents can feel confused, inept, and disconnected, not realizing how universal these problems are. Parents who are aware of these trends can do a lot to ensure that their daughters are strong and proud of whom they are, able to honor their inner voices and confident enough to make choices based on their own convictions. Girls who are helped by their parents to learn resiliency and hardiness will be more able to persevere through the difficulties of adolescence and to create fulfilling and joyful lives.

Modeling assertiveness and strength
It is important for mothers to remember that they are especially vital role models for their girls, with up to 99% of young girls in a recent Girls Inc. survey replying that their mothers were their heroines and their guides to planning their own lives. Mothers model for their daughters the struggles involved in balancing a woman’s life and her dreams. The best way for mothers to encourage their daughters to be assertive, clear, and strong is to find it within themselves to be that way too! Expect respect for yourself and for your daughter. Girls who are respected and listened to, allowed to experiment with various roles and activities and learn from their own mistakes are more able to trust themselves and feel empowered.

Create safe relational hardiness zones
Girls need us to create safe relational hardiness zones, such as home, school, neighborhood, community organizations and clubs where they feel known, can be themselves, and have a sense of personal control. Girls can be helped to find their voices by creating a nurturing support group of peers, attending a school environment that is safe, caring and sensitive to issues of gender equity, and having numerous adults in their lives who are interested in their ideas and concerns.

When we reach out for help within our community, we expose our children to other families and adults who will in turn enrich their lives. The fact remains that it does “take a village to raise a child.” And, our girls need close relationships with other adults, as there will be things they will not and cannot tell you, but will desperately need to tell someone. The advice a girl gets from a mature, caring mentor will differ markedly from that which she gets from her peers. A Coming of Age ceremony, where caring adults contribute to a quilt or a book, can formalize mentoring relationships in your daughter’s life.

Hardiness
It is helpful to awaken girls to the biases they will face in our patriarchal society, where males dominate in our media, history classes, political leadership, video games and corporate world. It is hard for a girl to believe she “can be anything” if she can’t see it! “Take Your Child to Work Day,” Women’s History Month activities, Girls Career Conferences, and job shadowing opportunities are all helpful tools to show your daughter that many options exist for women, and to show her how far women have come in the past century. You can help protect your daughter from negative media portrayals of women, by having discussions about TV shows and movies you watch together. Self-Defense classes can teach her to also use her voice, among other ways, to protect herself. It is an excellent mother-daughter empowering activity.

Self Esteem
How a girl defines herself highly influences her motivations, attitudes and behaviors. Girls with healthy self-esteem tend to handle conflicts and resist negative pressures better, enjoy life more, and are generally optimistic and realistic. Girls who have low opinions of themselves will find challenges to be a source of major anxiety and frustration.

Self-esteem can be seen as a measure of how much a person really believes that they are whole, lovable, capable and magnificent at their core, in spite of what they do, achieve or how they look. A girl feels lovable when she is accepted for exactly who she is and the qualities that make her unique. She feels capable by finding meaningful work. School is an excellent vehicle to meaningful work for some girls. Volunteering helps girls to experience making a contribution to their community and to the welfare of others. Clubs and sports or other exercise help girls to explore and appreciate their bodies, functionally, rather than as an “ornament.”

Supporting your daughter’s developing self-esteem can mean simply choosing your messages carefully when you speak with her, showing her that she has worth in spite of her behaviors, encouraging her to believe in herself, raising her to be capable and accountable for her own life choices, and modeling healthy self-esteem yourself.

RESOURCES FOR RAISING OUR DAUGHTERS:

1. Reviving Ophelia, Saving the Selves of Our Adolescent Girls, by Mary Pipher (Random House, 1994)
2. The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding our Families, by Mary Pipher (Penguin Books, 1996)
3. Positive Discipline: A Warm, Practical, Step-by-Step Sourcebook for Parents and Teachers, by Jane Nelson EdD (Ballantine, 1987)/ Positive Discipline for Teenagers: Empowering Your Teen and Yourself Through Kind and Firm Parenting by Jane Nelson EdD and Lynn Lott (Prima, 2000)
4. Putting Family First: Strategies for Reclaiming Family Life in a Hurry-Up World, by William Doherty and Barbara Carlson (Owl Books, 2002)
5. Best Friends, Worst Enemies, by Michael Thompson (Ballantine Books, 2001) for elementary and Queen Bees and WannaBes by Rosalind Wiseman (Crown, 2002) for middle/high school
6. Growing a Girl Seven Strategies for Raising a Strong, Spirited Daughter, by Barbara MacKoff (Dell Publishing, 1996)
7. Things Will Be Better for My Daughter, by Mindy Bingham (Penguin, 1994)
8. Celebrating Girls: Nurturing and Empowering Our Daughters, by Virginia Beane Rutter (Conari Press, 1996)
9. For All Our Daughters: How Mentoring Helps Young Women and Girls Master the Art of Growing Up by Peggy Echinovera (Chandler House Press, 1998)
10. Mother Daughter Wisdom: Creating a Legacy of Physical and Emotional Health by Christiane Northrup (Bantan Books, 2005)
Also really great books:
11. How to Say It to Girls: Communicating with Your Growing Daughter by Nancy Gruver (Prentice Hall Press, 2004)
12. Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter by Joe Kelly (Broadway Books, 2002)
13. Ophelia’s Mom: Loving and Letting Go of Your Adolescent Daughter by Nina Shandler (Random House, 2001)

Office Notes

• Is your information current? Please take a moment to login to our patient portal and update your information. If you see anything in your record that needs to be updated or is incorrect please let us know. Also, please take a moment to update your Authorization to Use & Disclose Confidential Health Information/ Others Involved in Healthcare form with us. This form lets you designate specific people with whom you would like your medical information shared. You can visit this link to update all of your information, and download and print this very important form: https://securemail.greenfieldhealth.com/portal/I+am+a+patient/default.aspx .
  
• Online Bill Pay- We have heard from several of you regarding the use and ease of our new online bill pay system. At this time, the system does require you to sign in twice, once to our patient portal, and then to the online bill pay system. In addition, the first time that you attempt to login to the online bill pay system, you will be asked to register and set up your personal account. You will need to set up a user name and password for this site.
  
  We have been in touch with Kryptiq regarding this issue and have been told that they are working hard to create a new version where you will simply have to login once- to GreenField’s patient portal- to pay your bill. We will keep you apprised of any and all changes to our online bill pay system, but for now you will need to log in to both our patient portal and then Kryptiq’s Online Bill Pay system to pay your bill with us. We appreciate your feedback and your patience while we strive to make this system work better for you.
  

As we begin to see the beautiful signs of spring, we thank you again for inviting us along on your healthcare journey. As always, please let us know if there is anything that we can do for you.

Sincerely,

Your GreenField Team

Alisyn Shaw, CMA, your Health Coordinator
Angie Ashburn, CMA, your Health Coordinator
Carrie Destefano, CMA, your Health Coordinator
Chuck Kilo, MD
Connie Turner, MA, your Health Coordinator
Cynthia Ferrier, MD
Danika Pellicano, NCMA, your Health Coordinator
David Hays, MD
David Shute, MD
Elizabeth Hays, MD
Kate Griggs, your Administrative Assistant
Kim Walgraeve, your Marketing Manager
Kristin Walker, your Program and Executive Assistant
Malcolm McAninch, MD
Marsha Box, MA, your Health Coordinator
Meena Mital, MD
Paula Koeller, MD
Samantha Charles, your Clinic Administrator
Steve Rallison, your COO

GreenField Health at Barnes Road
9427 SW Barnes Road, Suite 590
Portland, OR 97225

GreenField Health at NE Broadway
2606 NE Broadway, Suite C
Portland, OR 97232

Phone: 503.292.9560
Fax: 503.292.9510
Web: http://www.GreenFieldHealth.com

questions, concerns, comments always appreciated:
questions@GreenFieldHealth.com

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