The Texas Sharpshooter
There’s an old tale about a Texas “Sharpshooter” that pulls his pistol out of his holster and shoots at the broad side of a barn pretty much at random without aiming. Then he goes up to the barn with a paintbrush and draws a circle around the bullet holes and says: “See, I have perfect aim”. That’s kinda how a lot [...]
Behavioral Health Licensing Rulemaking Update
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts- we’re in the beginning phases of overhauling our regulations for licensing behavioral health facilities. This’ll be a long process- and the finish line is in mid-2013. We’re starting with a set of what we’ll call “straw-man” language that we can use as a way to start the discussions. We’ve delivered the initial language for [...]
Smoke Free AZ Turns 5
It’s hard to believe- but our Smoke Free Arizona program turned 5 this month. Voters approved the Act back in November of ’06 by a few percentage points. The Initiative language gave us a super-short turn-around time (just like medical marijuana)… and we turned the key on the program by May of ’07. Implementation of the Initiative was smooth from the [...]
State By State Injury Report
People get hurt because of unsafe acts and unsafe conditions. It’s always easier to deal with unsafe conditions- because you can often make a system change and have an impact. Changing unsafe acts (behaviors) is a lot harder. Anyway- a new report came out this week called The Facts Hurt: A State by State Injury Prevention Policy Report. The report [...]
“It’s a Wrap”
It’s been a busy week for our medical marijuana team. Our 2-week dispensary application period ended a couple of hours ago… as did the hearing regarding adding new debilitating medical conditions. We received 484 dispensary applications over the last 2 weeks. As you know, we have 126 Community Health Analysis Areas (CHAAs) and a maximum of 126 possible dispensaries (one [...]
Premier EMS Agency Program
About 500,000 times a year in Arizona a call goes out from someone that finds themselves in a medical crisis. Our pre-hospital and hospital providers step up to the plate to answer that call. All Arizonans are proud and appreciative of what you do for our citizens, friends, co-workers and families. You make a difference! On paper, one EMS agency [...]