By Peace­Health Peace­Health St. Joseph Med­ical Cen­ter locat­ed in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton, has earned a dis­tin­guished three-star rat­ing from The Soci­ety of Tho­racic Sur­geons for its patient care and out­comes in car­dio­tho­racic surgery. The three-star rat­ing, which denotes the high­est cat­e­go­ry of qual­i­ty, places Peace­Health St. Joseph Med­ical Cen­ter among the elite for car­dio­tho­racic surgery in  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Louise Dus­trude The threat to Hos­pice of the North­west has been cov­ered exten­sive­ly in the press, most recent­ly in the Jour­nal. Briefly, this nation­al-award-win­n­ing hos­pice orga­ni­za­tion is under threat of being sold to a for-prof­it invest­ment firm, and its scope of oper­a­tions reduced sub­stan­tial­ly. At the same time, the risks of close human con­tact  Con­tin­ue Reading

By San Juan Coun­ty A pos­i­tive COVID-19 test result has been report­ed for a Lopez Island res­i­dent. This is the 39th case in San Juan Coun­ty. The ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion indi­cates that trans­mis­sion was like­ly due to off-island trav­el. The recent surge in cas­es across the coun­try pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to refresh our­selves on how to  Con­tin­ue Reading

By San Juan Coun­ty Anoth­er pos­i­tive COVID-19 test result has been report­ed for an Orcas Island res­i­dent. This is the 38th case report­ed in San Juan Coun­ty. The case has occurred in a close house­hold con­tact of a recent Orcas Island case. Ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions show that the four most recent cas­es on Orcas Island are  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health The Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health released the lat­est statewide sit­u­a­tion report on COVID-19 trans­mis­sion, which shows a gen­er­al rise in the inten­si­ty of the epi­dem­ic in both west­ern and east­ern Wash­ing­ton. Report find­ings include:

By San Juan Coun­ty One new pos­i­tive COVID-19 test result has been report­ed in San Juan Coun­ty, for an Orcas Island res­i­dent. This is the 37th case report­ed in San Juan Coun­ty. Based on com­pre­hen­sive inter­views, it appears there is a con­nec­tion between this test result and a pre­vi­ous­ly con­firmed case. Test­ing and mon­i­tor­ing are  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Com­pass Health Com­pass Health’s Build­ing Com­mu­ni­ties of Hope Gala raised more than $165,000 in sup­port of the organization’s child, youth and fam­i­ly behav­ioral health ser­vices dur­ing a vir­tu­al event held on World Men­tal Health Day, Sat­ur­day, Oct. 10.  Funds exceed­ed Com­pass Health’s goals by $15,000, as more than 250 com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers gath­ered vir­tu­al­ly to cel­e­brate  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health The Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health con­tin­ues to make progress with our COVID-19 vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion plan­ning efforts. This week, DOH is encour­ag­ing health­care providers to pre­pare to enroll as approved COVID-19 vac­cine providers, and we sent an offi­cial let­ter to them with infor­ma­tion on how to enroll. Provider enroll­ment is  Con­tin­ue Reading

By San Juan Coun­ty As we head into win­ter, sore throats, stuffy noses and fevers become far more com­mon. This year, the risk of COVID height­ens our aware­ness and con­cern. We’ve always been asked to stay home when sick, but what does that mean?

By San Juan Coun­ty One new pos­i­tive COVID-19 test result has been report­ed in San Juan Coun­ty, for an Orcas Island res­i­dent who is a close house­hold con­tact of the Orcas res­i­dent report­ed as pos­i­tive on Oct. 26. This is the 36th case report­ed in San Juan Coun­ty. Giv­en the close house­hold prox­im­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual  Con­tin­ue Reading

The next San Juan Coun­ty Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict No. 1 reg­u­lar board meet­ing is at 5:30 p.m., today, Wednes­day, Oct. 28. This meet­ing is ful­ly online due to COVID-19, and mem­bers of the pub­lic may join by dial­ing 509–473‑0276 and enter­ing 279 885 068#. Note that the phone num­ber has changed from pre­vi­ous board meet­ings. Doc­u­ments  Con­tin­ue Reading

By San Juan Coun­ty Two new pos­i­tive COVID-19 test results have been report­ed in San Juan Coun­ty; one for an Orcas Island res­i­dent, and one for a res­i­dent of San Juan Island. Both cas­es appear to have come from off-island con­tact with infect­ed indi­vid­u­als. These are the 34th and 35th cas­es in San Juan Coun­ty.  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health The Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health con­tin­ues to make progress with our COVID-19 vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion plan­ning efforts. Today we post­ed our inter­im vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion plan. Now, as one com­po­nent of a larg­er engage­ment strat­e­gy, the depart­ment is seek­ing addi­tion­al feed­back to help us under­stand the best ways to equi­tably dis­trib­ute the  Con­tin­ue Reading

By Peace Island Med­ical Cen­ter Octo­ber is Nation­al Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month and women at Peace­Health Peace Island Med­ical Cen­ter can uti­lize the ben­e­fits of three-dimen­­sion­al tech­nol­o­gy as part of their mam­mog­ra­phy screen­ing and breast health prac­tices. Dig­i­tal screen­ing mam­mog­ra­phy com­ple­ments the grow­ing port­fo­lio of diag­nos­tic imag­ing ser­vices, which include state-of-the-art CT scan­ning, X‑ray, echocar­dio­g­ra­phy  Con­tin­ue Reading

Liv­ing Med­ical Arts PLLC in Fri­day Har­bor is grow­ing. We are expand­ing our staff and cur­rent­ly look­ing for an office assis­tant. The posi­tion is year-round, approx­i­mate­ly 30 day-time hours per week, with some ben­e­fits and in-house train­ing. The right “can-do” per­son who thrives in a fast-paced office envi­ron­ment will have ample oppor­tu­ni­ty for growth. Those  Con­tin­ue Reading

Island Senior is a reg­u­lar col­umn on the San Juan Update writ­ten by Peg­gy Sue McRae… The con­cept of “blue zones” grew out of a demo­graph­ic study iden­ti­fy­ing Sar­di­na, Italy as a region with a high con­cen­tra­tion of cen­te­nar­i­ans. Researchers who drew con­cen­tric blue cir­cles on maps high­light­ing vil­lages of extreme longevi­ty began to refer to  Con­tin­ue Reading