Dear Friends,

I hope this gorgeous Spring weather finds you and your loved ones well. As we head into June and the end of our current lease we have decided to sign a three year extension on our office space. We still believe the benefits of being in the hospital building (primarily easy access to imaging, additional lab services and many of our specialist colleagues) outweigh the big con – parking. The garages have become even more crowded over the past year so please plan accordingly and when possible give yourself a 10-15 minute buffer for parking.

Looking ahead at the future of the practice, we continue to be increasingly interested in preventative and longevity medicine. One area of technology we have become very interested in is cancer screening. We are most excited about a test called Galleri which uses a simple blood draw to screen for cancer signals from 50+ different malignancies, the majority of which currently have no other screening modalities available. The test is most sensitive to DNA signals from liver/bile duct, head and neck/esophageal cancers, pancreatic, ovarian and colorectal malignancies. In some cases, Galleri testing has been able to detect cancer signals even before tumors are visible on imaging studies. Catching these and other malignancies at an early stage can often turn a fatal disease into a treatable one.

Here is some more information about Galleri testing.

Galleri is not currently covered by insurance so it comes with an out of pocket price tag of about $950 and general guidelines recommended starting at age 50 or earlier if you have specific risk factors or a strong family history of cancer. Please let us know if you have any questions or would like more information.

As we near the end of Kazumi’s tenure in our office we will be hosting two afternoon open house gatherings if you would like to come into the office and say goodbye in person. These will be on Friday, June 21 and Friday, July 12, from 12 pm – 2 pm. Many of you have asked Kazumi about her new home so she asked I share this wikipedia link to Nagano City with you. She would also love to stay in touch and can be reached at Kschoen@drbiemer.com.  While she leaves behind big shoes to fill we are actively recruiting her replacement and hope to have a new staff member up and running before we have to officially say goodbye to Kazumi. 

We wish you all a wonderful summer and please reach out with any questions or concerns in the coming months.

All the best,

Julia, Dr. Biemer and crew