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- Written by: Lake County News reports
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – If you didn't get up early Saturday morning to see the full lunar eclipse, here's a memorable shot of it.
Timothy Moen, who lives in Riviera West in Kelseyville, shot this picture of the eclipse just before sunrise on Saturday from behind the Ely Stage Stop Museum on Soda Bay Road.
Moen bills himself as an “advanced amateur” photographer.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The incident occurred just before 2:30 a.m. at 15135 Lakeshore Drive, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Acting Watch Commander Dominic Ramirez said Officer Travis Lenz had spotted the motorhome sitting in the middle of the roadway, with a male subject pushing it backwards.
Lenz pulled up to see what was happening, and after he got out of his patrol car, the motorhome rolled backward and hit it, Ramirez said.
Ramirez said Lenz was fine, but his vehicle had moderate damage as a result, with damaged fenders and its door pinned shut.
“The vehicle is out of commission for right now,” Ramirez said.
A CHP officer arrested the motorhome’s driver, 43-year-old Jill Marie Robbins of Clearlake Oaks, on misdemeanor charges of use of a controlled substance, driving while on a suspended license and driving under the influence, according to jail records.
Lenz arrested Robbins’ passenger and the subject who had been pushing the motorhome, 24-year-old Christopher Hoffman of Redding, for a parole violation. Jail records showed that Hoffman was being held on a no-bail hold.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
Through its “Start Smart” driving curriculum, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) is hoping to help teens develop into responsible drivers as they embark on their driving future.
“Many teens are eager to get their driver license when they turn 16 and may not realize the huge responsibility that comes with that privilege,” said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow.
Every year, thousands of collisions occur in California involving teen drivers.
According to the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS), from 2007 through 2009, there were more than 31,000 fatal and injury crashes involving at least one teen driver between the ages of 15 and 19. Those same collisions resulted in 743 people killed and more than 48,000 injuries.
However, it’s worth noting that over the course of those three years, fatal and injury collisions involving teens decreased by approximately 30 percent and 22 percent, respectively.
In Lake County during that same time period, there were 118 fatal and injury crashes involving teen drivers between the ages of 15 and 19, with seven fatalities and 139 injuries, according to SWITRS data.
“Through continued education we can keep the momentum going in the right direction,” said Commissioner Farrow. “We invite new teen drivers, parents and guardians to attend a ‘Start Smart’ class in their community to better prepare them for the road.”
CHP personnel will conduct “Start Smart” presentations throughout the state at venues ranging from youth events to community activities. The target audience for the two-hour presentations is teens, 15 through 19 years old, and their parents or guardians.
The Clear Lake CHP office has held the trainings for local teens as part of its efforts to protect young drivers.
“Start Smart” driving classes are designed to provide an interactive safe driving awareness class which will illustrate how poor choices behind the wheel of a car can affect the lives of numerous people.
“Start Smart” also focuses on responsibilities of newly licensed drivers, their parents and guardians, and collision avoidance techniques.
Funding for the program is provided by a grant awarded by the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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- Written by: Tom Philpott
And some VA facilities might be “gaming” appointment dates so they appear to comply with a rule that veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, begin treatment within 14 days of seeking care.
Those were just two of many complaints leveled at VA officials who oversee the department’s burgeoning mental health care program during a hearing Nov. 30 of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
The most disturbing testimony came from Michelle Washington, coordinator of PTSD services and evidence-based psychotherapy at the VA medical center in Wilmington, Delaware.
She said staff shortages are impacting patient care as needed therapy for severe PTSD cases gets delayed by weeks or months, and scheduled appointments are sacrificed to management’s higher goal of boosting new patient enrollment figures.
“Due to chronic short staffing at my facility, and the inability to manage my patient appointments based on their individual needs, I am frequently frustrated in my ability to provide that care,” Washington said.
The evidence-based psychotherapy she uses for severe or complex PTSD cases, said Washington, involves 10 to 12 consecutive weekly sessions during which patients “re-experience” the trauma and address “erroneous beliefs” about the event so they “better process” trauma memory.
But scheduling patients for a series of weekly appointments “is very difficult at my facility,” Washington said.
Patients wait as long as six weeks for their first appointment. While waiting, some patients lose their motivation for treatment while others see their PTSD worsen.
“Also, because scheduling clerks are under great pressure to bring new veterans in within 14 days, they may take one of my PTSD patient’s regular appointments for a new patient appointment, which hurts the effectiveness of my patient’s treatment,” said Washington.
The Wilmington center appears on paper to schedule appointments for PTSD patients within the mandated 14 days.
But the first visit often will involve paperwork and patient history and no therapy, allowing statistical records to indicate treatment has begun.
“As long as scheduling continues to be driven by clerks pressured by management to make the numbers look good, and as long as mental health providers have little or no say about where and when to best serve their patients,” Washington said, “this will keep happening.”
She also described a “pervasive shortage of primary care providers” that results in patients being referred erroneously to mental health care for lack of an initial comprehensive care assessment to diagnosis properly conditions that require medical care and not a mental health provider.
John Roberts, executive vice president for mental health at the Wounded Warrior Project, said many veterans still can’t get timely mental health appointments because staff hires aren’t keeping pace with the needs of veterans, particularly those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Why, after 10 years, do warriors have to struggle to get effective care for the signature wound in this war,” Roberts asked. “Why isn’t the under secretary for health … moving beyond measuring baseline access to initial mental health evaluations to systematically tracking access to sustained follow up care? If leaders spent more time speaking with the veterans, and their own clinicians, they would realize that the problems with VA mental health system run far deeper than even their data suggests.”
VA mental health care staffs have increased by 48 percent since 2006 while the number of veterans using mental health service has climbed 34 percent to reach 1.2 million in fiscal 2010.
Roberts urged VA to enhance mental health by using its authority to refer patients to civilian providers when VA resources don’t allow timely care, and by expanding peer support programs so that PTSD patients get mentoring and encouragement from veterans successfully treated.
The veterans affairs committee held its last hearing on mental health staff shortages in July with testimony of two veterans with PTSD who had attempted suicide and still couldn’t get denied timely appointments.
At the time Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), committee chairman, directed VA to survey some frontline mental health care providers to determine whether they had sufficient resources to give timely care.
At the Nov. 30 hearing Murray announced that the results “were not good.”
Forty percent of providers said they could not schedule an appointment in their clinic within the VA-mandated 14-day window and 70 percent said they did not have adequate staff or space to deliver timely care.
Yet VA officials in July told Congress that 95 percent of veterans were getting appointments within the 14-day window.
Murray asked Mary Schohn, director of VA mental health operations, to explain the “disconnect.”
Schohn conceded that Dr. Washington from Wilmington might have hit on the reason “that patients are not having access to the evidenced-based therapies in the way that we expect they should be.”
The query of VA mental health care providers did indicate, Schohn said, that “there’s access to the system but not necessarily access to the specific therapies in the time they should occur. And we are working on ensuring that that happens.”
Schohn said clarifying guidance on the 14-day rule has gone out to hospitals and clinics, and site visits are planned “to find ways to solve the issues that Dr. Washington presented here today.”
Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), the committee’s ranking Republican, noted that VA’s mental health budget jumped by 25 percent in 2011 to $5.7 billion. He demanded that Schohn provide a full accounting of how that was spent.
Schohn conceded some “variability” in access to care across the VA system. But overall VA leads the private sector, and any other health system in the world, in delivering quality mental health care.
“I am personally concerned when I hear these stories about that not happening,” she said.
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