On Change

IF JANUARY BROUGHT you a new millennium, Happy New Millennium. If it brought you the last year of the old one, Happy New Year. Whatever your calendar, you know that another year will bring a lot of change. (Please see  The President's Message)

We'll visit you only six times a year, not ten. Our pages will look friendlier, not as dense, as before. We'll bring you more ideas from outside our membership, but we also want to hear more of your ideas. In addition to short (250 words or less) letters to the editor, we want your thoughts on local medical problems and achievements. Send us abstracts of the problems you see and your suggestions for feasible solutions, or abstracts of the achievements you want us to recognize.

If you think the Editorial Committee should do something, ask - and volunteer to help. We'll carry that kind of news smilingly. Just phone or fax or send US mail or e-mail to the destinations on the masthead. Consider, though, that what you send should be pertinent at least a couple of months down the road. That's how long it takes to get from your desk to our pages.

The medical family changes constantly and the house in which it lives must change with it. As the house changes, the neighborhood changes. (See The Changing Neighborhood.)

Sacramento Medicine has changed over time to meet the needs and styles of our new family. Through it all, the Editorial Committee has amazed everyone with its eagerness to volunteer countless hours to identify issues and get and prepare informative and interesting stories. We hope to build on that and on the willingness of SEDMS members to share their views with us. We hope to bring a local perspective to several major subjects this year and to examine new proposals to solve local problems of community and personal health, from preventing and managing ill health better to making physicians' services more affordable, more accessible, and better.

Medicine has become more efficient and more effective, but less accessible. Can local physicians make changes that will help deliver local medical services more efficiently and more affordably without sacrificing effectiveness and accessibility? Can we make and control changes that help the patients who want but cannot afford our care, as well as those who want and can afford our care? How well we do that will determine how happy our new year will be. With your help, Sacramento Medicine will work to make this a Very Happy New Year.

Ed_Rudin@macnexus.org