Emergency Medicine Specialist Likes Being “in the middle of things”

By Karl Sonkin, KP Media Relations Specialist                                                                                                                                      

Santa Rosa’s Dr. Joshua Weil is proud to be on board with the crew of Kaiser Permanente doctors, nurses, and staff who are providing medical care for sailing teams, spectators and venue workers at the America’s Cup, underway now in San Francisco.

Kaiser Permanente is the official Medical Services Provider and Health Care Partner of the 34th America’s Cup. The region’s largest health-care provider has set up two fully-equipped medical sites-- one at Pier 29, in the middle of the America’s Cup Park and another on the Marina Green.

“I like being in the middle of things,” says Dr. Weil, standing in Kaiser Permanente’s 1,800-square-foot   medical site at Pier 29.  The bright, rigid-walled structure reminds visitors of a modern emergency department, with gurneys, lights, privacy curtains, cabinets of medical supplies, diagnostic equipment, and computers.

“We’ve brought our expert medicine to a three-month San Francisco event as part of Kaiser Permanente’s mission to improve the health of  the communities in which we live, work and play,” said Dr. Weil.

Everyone at the premier sailing event, regardless of whether or not they are Kaiser Permanente members, can get free first aid, urgent and emergency medical care if they need it, for anything from a mild case of sunburn  to broken bones. And everyone treated at the clinics will benefit from the 21stcentury health information technology Kaiser Permanente has invested in over the past dozen years.  Kaiser Permanente is working closely with the fire department in San Francisco, and people who visit the clinics and need immediate hospital care will be transported by city paramedics.

And if the person needing care is a Kaiser Permanente member in Northern California, “we have their entire medical record available on the computers here,” says Dr. Weil.

A fully implemented electronic health record means that all 7,000 Kaiser Permanente physicians and specialists can access health records, images and test results – even those records, images and test results in the America’s Cup clinics – and can be called in to consult on cases even though they are miles away.

Dr. Weil says he’s proud that the medical sites show off Kaiser Permanente’s advanced technology, and he says visitors, including non-Kaiser doctors and nurses and paramedics are impressed.

“Earlier this month, we had a patient who’d fractured her ankle. The on-scene doctor at Pier 29 was able to set up a video consultation with a specialist at Kaiser Permanente’s San Jose Medical Center. It’s another feature of Kaiser Permanente’s connectivity and integration,” said Dr. Weil.

An emergency medicine specialist and Assistant-Physician-in-Chief at Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Rosa Medical Center, Dr. Weil lives in Santa Rosa with his wife and three children. He jokes he doesn’t get much of a chance to do much sailing there, but being part of the America’s Cup allows him to see some of the world’s fastest sailing vessels at the same time he is delivering some of the region’s most comprehensive and technologically advanced health care.

And being “in the middle of things,” he says, means physicians can see patterns of events they might not see when they’re inside a hospital emergency department.

“When I work in the Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Emergency Department, people come in for care and we often don’t know where they were hurt.  It feels very different to be here in the crowd. We’re right in the middle of the community of people we’re serving.”