I love email. Really. It has allowed me to communicate much more effectively with my patients. And the ability to have that kind of relationship with the people we see is very important to me. However, I have recently been feeling overwhelmed by email communication. I am also aware that email is not a secure way of discussing confidential information. Email considerations. If you are a …
Farewell by Liz Ren
My suspicions about this wonderful clinic rang true in my experience: this is a team that is devoted to an individual’s recovery, in ways that are meticulous, creative and collaborative. The providers here at Gateway are spirited about their work and their field, which yields high quality treatment that is both compassionate and thoughtful. I’m so grateful to have been …
Google Reviews – How-to [2022]
Some of our patients have asked how they can best express their appreciation for the work we do. One of the best ways is to write a review about Gateway Psychiatric. This is not only gratifying (if honest) but it also helps make us visible when other patients or families are seeking care. We have now updated this post with …
Treatment History Records Retrieval
As many of you may know, either as a patient in our clinic or by reviewing the information on our website, we pride ourselves in our comprehensive and thorough assessment process. We use the information gathered during this phase to understand the problems that are bringing someone to see us and to develop an individualized treatment plan based on her/his …
Bipolar Depression Treatment
Dr. Peter Forster and Dr. Kelsey Schraufnagel gave a very well attended presentation for an international audience of participants hosted by the International Bipolar Foundation on June 24th. Listeners from India, Taiwan, France, Ireland and all over the United States received an update on the state of the art in the treatment of bipolar depression. Doctor Forster updated the audience about medication …
Refills
“Why do you only give me a month’s supply of medication when you approve refills?” This is a pretty common question and I thought a blog post might be a good way of discussing the issues. After all a refill is a quick thing to handle, right? You call a number and press a few numbers, go onto your iPhone …
Liz Ren – Welcome
I’m very excited to announce that a new psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner, Liz Ren, will be joining our staff in April. I think you can get a sense of her enthusiasm and perhaps her intelligence and excellent qualifications from the paragraphs that she wrote for me about why she is excited to be joining Gateway… “Gateway is the …
Fee Changes
It is time to update our fee list. The last time we revised our fees was in November of 2013. In preparation for this task we reviewed data on health care costs in the Bay Area from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and we compared our fees to average fees in San Francisco for the same services (CPT codes) using …
What happened to the website?
Some of you may have gone to our website this past weekend and been surprised to learn that the site was “dangerous.” Although some of the ideas that we talk about here might be viewed that way, the reason this happened had to do with the challenges of maintaining SSL encryption and the highest level of security. Basically, for 3 …
Bipolar Depression Update
On Thursday at noon Dr. Peter Forster, our clinical director, will be giving a presentation to the UCSF Department of Psychiatry Mood Disorder Grand Rounds on the topic of “Bipolar Depression: An Update.” He will be reviewing the recent literature on new treatment options and will summarize some of the talk findings in a future blog post.