The Waiting Room As if we needed another reminder of just how messed up the health care system can be. Well, Peter Nicks’ gripping observation of the emergency room at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., is an unsparing diagnosis. In 80 austere minutes, Nicks’ hand is nearly invisible as he lets a frazzled team of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals try to attend to an always-full waiting room. Some patients are heartrending cases—a young man comes in for emergency surgery on a testicular tumor after being drummed out of another hospital for lack of insurance. Then there are the familiar junkies who eat up the attending staff’s precious time just to recover from the previous evening’s bender. But most common are the middle-aged people wrecked by a lousy economy and with no other place to turn for medical care, clutching their sides as they wait hours and hours and hours. On the caregiving side, nurses like Cynthia Y. Johnson try to manage seemingly interminable shifts with grace and wit. Douglas White, a young resident physician, cares deeply—perhaps too much so—for his patients; when a trauma victim dies on the operating table, Nicks’ camera lingers on White. It’s the first patient he’s lost, a bracing experience and one he’ll no doubt encounter many more times in his career. And then it’s time for the next patient. —Benjamin R. Freed Screens Tuesday, June 19 at 8:45 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre 2 and Wednesday, June 20 at 2:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre 1.

Today, the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice released their annual HIV/AIDS report card and their findings showed improvements, but also suggested that D.C. officials could be doing more to help reduce the number of cases.

Since 2005, DC Appleseed—a local think tank—has issued an annual report documenting the progress that the D.C. government has made in fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to this year’s report card, there were 718 new HIV cases reported last year. Although this is an improvement, DC Appleseed Executive Director Walter Smith says that that number is “still too many,” and that there’s more D.C. officials can be doing to lower that number. “It is a reminder that we still have a long way to go to end the epidemic,” Smith said in a press release. “D.C. government, service providers, and the community need to work together as partners now more than ever.”

Some of the things Mayor Gray and D.C. officials can be doing to improve these numbers even more, the report says, is to do a better job educating public school students about HIV/AIDS, improving the relationships with medical service providers, and to implement federal health care reform measures, like the Affordable Care Act, for HIV/AIDS-diagnosed D.C. residents.

Here’s some more specific information from the DC Appleseed web site:

  • Three years after the passage of the Healthy Schools Act, DC Appleseed finds that glaring inadequacies remain with respect to HIV/AIDS education in the District. While DCPS has made substantial progress, DC Public Charter Schools and OSSE have fallen short in their responsibility and compliance with the law.
  • There has not been effective communication between the District and HIV/AIDS service providers – causing confusion and concern at a time of many leadership and structural changes taking place in the District. However, DC Appleseed is encouraged by the recent interim appointments of Dr. García and Michael Kharfen. In the short time since their appointments, they have started taking steps to improve communication and relationships with HIV/AIDS service providers and the community.
  • After four years in development, HAHSTA must finally make the long-awaited DC Public Health Information System (formerly referred to as Maven) operational for HIV. This comprehensive integrated database system has promised to replace the myriad of databases that HIV/AIDS service providers currently must use for reporting, thus greatly simplifying and improving data collection, analysis, and reporting.
  • DC Appleseed offers recommendations for the District’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act to help address the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, including the ability to compare plans’ drug formularies and provider networks.

And you can read the full report card below:

HIVReportCard.pdf

Filed Under: AIDS, dc appleseed, HIV, mayor vince gray,