Seattle/LocalHealthGuide

Families looking for a nursing home can now compare different facilities for quality using a free online service provided by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The Web site, Nursing Home Compare, gives quality ratings ranging from a low of one star to a high of five stars.
Five stars means the facility is “much [...]

Dr. Carolyn Clancy

Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, writes a regular advice column for consumers to help them navigate the health-care system.
In this column, Dr Clancy talks about what steps you should take when you’re told you have a disease or medical condition.
She describes five basic steps that [...]

A Seattle home-care agency whose 114-home care workers help about 200 elderly and disabled area residents live independently is closing down, Seattle Times staff reporter Maureen O’Hagan reports in todays’ paper. 
The agency, which is run by the community service organization Solid Ground, will lay off the workers Dec. 31, the paper reports.
Solid Ground, which is [...]

When family budgets are tight, people often cut corners that can hurt their health. In her regular column, Dr Carolyn Clancy, director of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, warns that such short cuts can be risky and gives suggestions on how best to save money while at the same time preserving your health.

Keeping [...]

When a patient in an intensive care unit is too sick to communicate, it is often the family that must make critical decisions about the patient’s care.
This may mean deciding with the medical team whether to proceed with a difficult operation, for example, or to withdraw life support.
This a situation that many of us are [...]

Many of the Seattle and King County’s health problems arise from the social conditions in poor neighborhoods, where housing is substandard, jobs are hard to find, families are fragmented and where stores don’t offer products necessary for a healthy diet, Dr. David Williams, a professor of public health at Harvard University told attendees at a town [...]

The Washington Public Health Association is holding an “Equity” town hall meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 8, where health experts and local government officials will discuss how social inequities affect health in Seattle.
Poor housing, inadequate education, low-paying jobs and other social factors are associated with poor health, research suggests. In Seattle, for instance, a resident of [...]

The King County Council will vote next Monday on a plan that will use $50 million a year of sales tax revenues to fund programs that will direct people with mental illness and drug dependency to treatment programs and social services instead of jails and hospitals.

Among the goals of the County’s Mental Illness and Drug [...]