This was the month that 18-year-old Jessica Huse and her friends were supposed to be starting college and embarking on the next exciting chapters of their lives — and then using cell phones and Facebook messages to share their experiences, hopes and fears.

But Huse's plans were put on hold when she suffered a serious brain injury during a car crash last month, which occurred as the spring graduate of San Jose's Valley Christian High School was driving to church. So dozens of her friends gathered Sunday in a cafeteria at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, hoping to share a powerful message with the young San Jose woman whose upbeat personality and spiritual outlook led many to describe her as a perfect listener.

"We love you, Jessica," said one after another, before joining hands in a prayer and recording brief videos that they hope will stimulate her recovery.

The gathering was the idea of several people, including Lisa Huse, who has spent only a few hours away from the hospital since her daughter was injured on Aug. 2, and one of Jessica Huse's best friends, 18-year-old Sarah Brant, who was going to be Huse's roommate at California State University-Sacramento this year.

Along with good wishes, Brant said, Huse's friends have been making videos about things they did together, like going to the beach and visiting Los Angeles on a class trip.

They are posting the videos online, and Lisa Huse plans to play them for her daughter every Sunday in what she calls "friend therapy," part of an effort to spark recognition of familiar voices, images and songs.

Since the accident, the young woman has been in a state that's more conscious than coma, but seemingly without complete awareness of her surroundings. There are moments where she appears responsive, her mother said, but those moments can be fleeting.

"We really need her to wake up and be fully aware," explained Lisa Huse, a real estate agent who said she has not worked since the accident. She and her ex-husband, Don Huse, have taken turns keeping watch by their daughter's hospital bed, while friends and co-workers have donated money to help with their expenses.

Jessica Huse had attended a Saturday night sleepover with girlfriends and was headed for church the next morning, when she made a left turn onto Blossom Hill Road and was broadsided by another car. Huse was the only one seriously injured; her family has said she probably didn't see the other car.

Since then, her fractured pelvis and other injuries have been healing, but doctors say further recovery may take a long time.

Huse's mother said her insurance carrier has proposed moving the young woman into longer-term therapy at an outside facility, but her family is hoping she can remain at VMC's brain injury unit, where they feel she is receiving more attention and care.

Brant, who also visits Huse almost every day, postponed her plans to start college after it became clear her friend would not be able to join her.

"I haven't gone this long without being able to talk with her in my whole life," said Brant, explaining that they met when they were 4. "Jessica is just the kid that everyone loves," Brant added. "She's a good advice-giver."

Huse's other closest friend, 18-year-old Trish Taylor-Perryman, started classes at San Francisco State last month.

"I always want to call her up" and tell her about things that happen at school, said Taylor-Perryman. "I already miss her a lot."

Instead, Taylor-Perryman and Brant said they are writing frequent letters that they hope Huse will be able to read one day.

"These kids had their plans. Some of them had to leave town for school and be away from their friend. It really bothered some of them," said Myron Falkowski, a history teacher at Valley Christian who led the prayer on Sunday. He reassured the assembled teens: "Love is a tremendous force. It's irresistible."

If you're interested in donating money to help with Jessica Huse's medical expenses, checks may be sent to Jessica Huse, c/o Rhonda Taylor, P.O. Box 7381, San Jose, CA 95150.

By Brandon Bailey
bbailey@mercurynews.com

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Santa Clara Valley Medical Center will break ground today on a 168-bed hospital wing, scheduled to be completed in 2012.

It will be one of the first hospital buildings in the nation to become a leader in energy and environmental design.

Because of its "green" status, the building will use less energy and save the hospital nearly $500,000 a year.

The new building is funded by Measure A, a bond measure approved by voters to help the hospital upgrade its buildings to meet state mandated seismic safety requirements.

— San Jose Mercury News

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A new facility that opened in Gilroy this morning will allow sexual assault victims in southern Santa Clara County to undergo interviews and exams related to their assaults close to home rather than having to travel to San Jose.

Santa Clara County's Sexual Assault Response Team, or SART, has opened a second office in Gilroy, where team members welcomed elected officials and other guests at an open house this morning. The SART program already has one office at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.

At these offices, specially trained nurse examiners and law enforcement officers lead victims of recent sexual assaults through an interview and exam process that can be invasive and traumatic.

Victim advocates are also on hand to provide support during this process.

The SART offices contain specialized medical equipment to assist with collecting physical evidence in the hours following a sexual assault.

Opening a second location for such exams called for obtaining another set of equipment, said Joy Alexiou, spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System. The new office is located in Valley Health Center's Gilroy clinic on Camino Arroyo.

Previously, victims and investigators in southern Santa Clara County, as well as San Benito County, had to drive to San Jose to conduct the initial exams. Santa Clara County officials have noted that the drive can take 45 minutes from the county's southern reaches, and up to two hours in bad traffic.

The trip is a burden for an already traumatized victim, as well as for police and sheriff's deputies investigating an assault.

The new office is the result of collaboration between several agencies including Valley Health, the sheriff's offices of Santa Clara and San Benito counties, and police departments from Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Hollister.

Alexiou said the SART program is "a pretty rare thing," designed to help victims provide evidence to prosecute rape cases while minimizing the trauma they feel during the process.

"A lot of counties don't have anything like it," she said.

- San Jose Mercury News

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Several months ago, a 50-year-old woman arrived at a Bay Area public hospital urgent care clinic with tremendous swelling in the lower half of her body, and a cough that wouldn't go away. The doctor who examined her said it was a miracle that she hadn't had a stroke.
Her blood pressure was out of control. She had an abnormal accumulation of fluid in her lungs and was suffering from congestive heart failure. The patient had been taking high blood pressure medication, but when her hours at a local car dealership were drastically cut months before, she no longer qualified for her employer's health insurance. She couldn't afford to refill the prescription.

For the past few weeks, the news has been dominated by stories about individuals who are opposed to Congress' efforts to pass a health care reform measure. Some seem to feel "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But if you were to ask anyone who works in a public hospital, or the woman described above or the thousands more like her who come to our public hospitals each day seeking care, that person would tell you that the health care insurance system is, in fact, quite broken. We all see firsthand the toll that this national health care crisis takes on our communities.

Every day, patients come to our public hospital ERs and clinics who have no health insurance and who have gone for much longer than should be acceptable without care for serious, sometimes life-threatening health conditions. They arrive seeking treatments and tests that many of us take for granted - such as antibiotics, medications for high cholesterol or diabetes and mammograms - or for chemotherapy or radiation they need to fight a cancer diagnosis.

These problems aren't limited to the chronically uninsured. We also are treating patients who are turning to us because they have recently lost their jobs and their health insurance. And there are so many more who do have health insurance, but their deductible or out-of-pocket expenses are so high that, for all intents and purposes, they have no coverage because they can't access medical care.

Anyone who sees what we see every day would understand that the need to make changes in the health care system and insurance market is urgent. As leaders in the Bay Area public hospital systems, my colleagues and I are proud of the special role that our hospitals play and are deeply committed to continuing to be there when people need us - to provide needed primary and specialty services and the trauma and burn care upon which our communities rely. But the magnitude of the problem demands that action - serious action - be taken.

The proposals under consideration by Congress may not be perfect, but we believe they will result in a healthier America that will be less burdened with inadequate health care or crushing health care bills. No one should have to choose between paying the mortgage or getting medical treatment for themselves or their families.
So please help our U.S. senators and members of Congress to pass meaningful health care reform by letting them know that this issue is important to you. We must do something to move us toward the day when all Americans have access to such care. Doing nothing is just not an option.

Sue Currin, R.N., is the CEO of San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center. The following individuals contributed to this column: Susan Ehrlich, M.D., CEO, San Mateo Medical Center; Wright L. Lassiter III, CEO, Alameda County Medical Center; Kim Roberts, CEO, Santa Clara Valley Health & Hospital System; William Walker, M.D., director, Contra Costa Health Services.

- This article appeared on page A - 13 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

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As the nation eagerly awaits health care reform, we in the public health care community are particularly anxious about the outcome of negotiations in Washington. The method by which these reforms will be funded is an important issue yet to be resolved. One troubling proposal includes the elimination of a program critical to public hospitals known as Disproportionate Share Hospitals.

Public hospitals such as the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, or VMC, shoulder a large share of the financial burden of caring for poor and uninsured patients. The disproportionate share program was created to help keep these "safety net" hospitals afloat. Payments offset losses accrued from uninsured patients who cannot pay and inadequate Medicare and Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) reimbursements.

VMC receives approximately $100 million in disproportionate share funds annually to help ensure access to health care services for all our residents. Without this money, VMC's ability to provide vital community services such as its world-class burn and trauma centers could be compromised. Staff would be stretched more thinly, possibly creating longer emergency room waits and lag times in scheduling appointments.

A major goal in crafting health care reform is the adoption of a plan that is deficit-neutral. The thinking goes that if reforms create greater efficiencies and broader coverage, hospitals will need less support from the federal government.

Moneys previously set aside for programs like disproportionate share could then be tapped to pay for the new program.

This idea is great in theory, but we urge members of Congress to think about how this will work in practice. The proposals currently on the table will still leave some people uninsured, and they will likely end up in public hospitals. Furthermore, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates are still too low to cover the actual costs of care. Without payments to fill the gap, our safety net could soon find itself with a gaping hole that will affect services available to the entire community.

When Massachusetts enacted its comprehensive health care plan in 2006, it used disproportionate share funds to pay for an expanded insurance program. Although 97 percent of its residents are now insured, safety-net providers continue to be paid significantly less than the cost of providing care for patients covered by Medicaid and the new insurance program. An infusion of funding from the federal stimulus package helped stave off losses, but public hospitals there are still in danger if a more sustainable funding source is not found.

VMC is our county's busiest hospital and the backbone of the county's safety net system. With 574 beds in the hospital and eight clinics, VMC will handle more than 30,000 hospital patients and 877,000 doctor visits this year.

The recession has caused demand for health care services to increase sharply while public budgets at the national, state and local levels have been cut. This year, the county was forced to make $106 million in cuts to our total health care budget. The latest round of state budget cuts will impact services even further.

Safety net hospitals across the country are already struggling. Removing disproportionate share funds without first ensuring that public hospitals will be able to stay afloat could shred the safety net completely.

- KEN YEAGER is a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, and KIM ROBERTS is CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.

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