Emergicare Manassas

Emergicare staff sending off their boxtruck to Haitian relief

This was one of those gifts that keep giving.
First of all, some county personnel will be happy because we kept getting written up for having the truck out in the parking lot.
Second, the local Medical Missions is happy to send down some of their valuable medical supplies in it.
Third, some good-hearted Haitians in Cap-Haitien will be happy, because their 2 other trucks were from the 60′s (this is an old ’94 model). Then all the needed relief supplies that they deliver will make many more people happy.
Fourth, it makes us at Emergicare happy to be a part of such a good work.

Allergies are the big problem now. We’ve seen it frequently. People are up all night coughing,  with inflammation in nostrils, coughing all night, itching in eyes, nose and throat. Some have difficulty breathing and wheezing.

The other day, we treated 7 patients. Typically, we treat allergic rhinitis with either long-acting or short acting injections. We do everything we can to get people back to work, and keep them from simply coming back in for same thing.

We are happy that the state of Virginia has adopted some public health measures to slow the proliferation of prescription narcotic abuse.  For 10 months, Emergicare has participated with the Virginia Department of Health Prescription Monitoring Program.  

This allows our physicians to

• track and report possible “doctor shoppers” who seek to abuse Schedule II-IV drugs.
• establish a more accurate patient history, and prescribe accordingly.

Emergicare will be open 2 hours late tomorrow. Open hours will be 11am -7pm on Thursday, February 11.

Sometimes we have patients who need senior care services. Today, we were happy to have Jennifer Bolles from Home Instead Senior Care  explain to us the many services that complement her company’s in-home Companion Care/Home Helper/personal care services:

• In-home Companion Care/Home Helper services
  • eg. Home Instead Senior Care
  • - not all of these offer personal care service (eg. Bathing, incontinence assistance, mobility aid), which Home Instead does
• Hospice – end-of-life care
• Palliative – for fragile people in-home, often includes working towards a cure
• Skilled medical care
• Medical Supply Stores – durable medical equipment
• Long-term care insurance
• Geriatric case managers/social workers – works with family to help identify plan of care (supposed to be neutral)
• Assisted living communities
• Independent living communities
• Rehabilitative care (short-term), often with a long-term care wing (nursing homes)
• Independent rehabilitative therapists (eg. respiratory, occupational, physical)

Doctors at Emergicare don’t mind seeing educated patients. And here’s your tax dollars at work to provide some great health information resource. MedlinePlus directs you to information to help answer health questions. MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations. MedlinePlus also contains extensive information about drugs and supplements, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive tutorials, the latest health news, and surgery videos.

• the MedlinePlus homepage (http://medlineplus.gov/)
• MedlinePlus en español (http://medlineplus.gov/spanish/)
• MedlinePlus mobile (http://m.medlineplus.gov/mlp/main/rw/web/homepage.htm)

We’ve added it to our resource page. Is there anything health-related that this website does not have?

Due to the snow, Emergicare will close on Saturday, Feb 6 and Sunday, Feb 7.

With 4 physicians at Emergicare, one could afford to go help victims of the earthquake in Haiti while the other 3 still maintained excellent care.

Dr. Woodard wrote the following:
Sunday Jan 17 – joined Helping Haitian Angels.
I saw Dr. Kevin Kollar whom I worked with in the Waynesboro, VA ER 20 years ago. He and 3 other doctors, a nurse, and a dentist from the USA invited me to join them to work in a well established clinic an hour away from Cap Hatien. I worked there only Monday the 18th and Friday the 22nd. together we saw over 1400 patients and pulled 250 teeth. it was the most fun part of the trip for me as I was seeing some very ill and injured patients one after the other with an excellent support staff. Read more

Last Saturday, as the snowstorm became fierce, Emergicare still cared for a dozen patients between 9am and noon. Usually we are open until 5pm on Saturdays, but some of the employees needed to travel home a distance, so we opted for their safety.

This is taken from our comment box located at the patient check-out desk.

1. How did I hear about Emergicare?  Workman’s comp
2. What is the best quality of Emergicare? How they really seem to care and efforts to make environment “homey.”
3. How should Emergicare improve its services? It was hard to see signs from street – you really need to know where it is to find.
4. Other thoughts? Thank you!

We rent the space, so we are limited in our signage capabilities. But here’s some helpful directions.