TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

Recent Stories

1. CVS acquiring troubled Faast Pharmacy

   BY KELLIE SCHMITT Californian staff writer

   Monday, May 21 2012 11:00 PM

   Bakersfield’s Faast Pharmacy is going out of business and will be acquired by the big chain CVS, it was confirmed Monday.

   The news came just a month after California pharmacy regulators slapped owner Lisa Faast with $100,000 in penalties and put her on three years’ probation.

   Wednesday will be Faast Pharmacy’s last day in operation after serving the Rosedale area since 2006. After that the store will close and patients’ prescription files and records will be transferred to CVS’ nearby location at9628 Rosedale Highway.

   Pharmacist Faast will not join CVS, though many of her employees will, said CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis.

   Faast did not return repeated calls Monday.

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2. Inmates drive up Kern's dire STD rates

   The numbers look shocking: Kern County has the highest number of chlamydia cases in California, according to the state's most recent health rankings.

3. Parents: Dental Board investigators headed to Bakersfield

   State dental board officials will come to town in early June to investigate long-simmering allegations that a Bakersfield dentist mistreated children while they were strapped to a papoose, or stabilizing board, several local parents say.

4. Firm gifts $200,000 to burn center

   Law firm Chain, Cohn, Stiles has donated $200,000 to name the Grossman Burn Center ICU at San Joaquin Community Hospital.

5. Just what the doctor ordered, but why so slow?

   When there's a problem, just say so and fix it.If that were the county's regular M.O., perhaps it wouldn't have taken so long to make some painfully obvious corrections in how medications are doled out to children at the A. Miriam Jamison Center for abused and neglected kids.

6. Kern Health Systems to tap reserves for local health care improvements

   Kern Health Systems has been criticized for years for holding onto excess reserves that have grown to more than $98 million.

7. Lois Henry: FAIL: the Lung Association's air quality ratings

   To all you people out there with your hair on fire because the American Lung Association ahhhgain gave our air an "F," please, douse yourselves and think for a minute.
9. 

   Local family gives Memorial $2 million in honor of daughter

   Lauren Small loved riding horses, even when cancer ravaged her small body, and forced surgeons to amputate part of her leg.
10. 

    Memorial opens county's first pediatric intensive care unit

    When Elizabeth Contreras brought her daughter to Bakersfield Memorial Hospital last week for severe diabetes symptoms, she worried the 3-year-old would be transferred to Madera.

11. Clinica Sierra Vista lands $555,000 sex-ed grant

    The state has awarded Clinica Sierra Vista a $555,000-per-year sexual education grant in an effort to reduce Kern County's staggeringly high teen birth and sexually transmitted disease rates.

12. Air officials try to counter bad report card

    No one likes getting a bad grade, even if it's for air quality.

13. LOIS HENRY: The ex-radical who heads air board's key panel

    Change may be the only constant in the real world but that doesn't seem to include the Scientific Review Panel.

14. New wellness magazine revealed on Californian radio

    The Californian Friday rolls out a brand new magazine -- b Well -- Bakersfield's Wellness Magazine.