State Highlights: A Look At How Calif. Regulators Of PG&E Failed To Stop Wildfires; Jail Leaders In Missouri Allow Inmates To Go Without Hygienic Products

The Wall Street Journal: ‘Safety Is Not A Glamorous Thing’: How PG&E Regulators Failed To Stop Wildfire Crisis
In 2015, the California regulator overseeing PG&E Corp. opened an inquiry into whether the state’s largest utility put enough priority on safety. Since then, a federal jury has found PG&E guilty of violating safety regulations for natural-gas pipelines and a federal judge later placed it on criminal probation. Its electrical equipment has sparked more than a fire a day on average since 2014—more than 400 last year—including wildfires that killed more than 100 people. It filed for bankruptcy protection this year, citing $30 billion in fire-related liabilities, and started blacking out millions of customers to try to avoid sparking blazes during strong winds. On Friday, it agreed to pay $13.5 billion to wildfire victims in a settlement deal. (Blunt and Gold, 12/8)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Missouri Jail Goes Weeks Without Shampoo And Other Personal Hygiene Products For Inmates 
A concerned parent of an inmate recently told the Post-Dispatch that the jail has been out of basic supplies such as shampoo and feminine hygiene products for weeks. ...Unlike about 30 other states, Missouri has no statewide jail standards. Local authorities determine what’s best. That can mean big differences in jail conditions across the state. And while county jails that house federal inmates are supposed to get an added set of eyes from the U.S. Marshals Service, testimony in the November trial of a man convicted of sexually assaulting a fellow federal inmate at the nearby Dunklin County Jail indicated that jailers lied about routine safety checks and allowed inmates to cover the windows of their cells without scrutiny. (Bogan, 12/8)

Sacramento Bee: How Medical Credit Cards Burden CA Dental Patients With Debt
Across California, patients like Williams are wading into years of debt because of high-interest credit cards used to finance dental treatment. They have succumbed to requests by dentists to put their high-priced services on a controversial segment of the health care industry: companies that offer loans for “out-of-pocket” medical care. (Tobias, 12/9)

The Advocate: Man Stabs Nurse In Face With Fork; Third Reported Attack On Healthcare Professional This Week
In the past two weeks in Baton Rouge, there were three attacks on medical professionals by patients in their care that resulted in arrests. The latest happened Thursday night, when a Baton Rouge man was arrested after he struck a nurse in the face with a plastic fork, breaking the nurse's skin, the arrest report says. CJ Grigsby III, 20, got into an argument with his nurse over eating his meal in his room, according to the arrest report. Grigsby then struck the nurse with the fork twice and punched him in the arm. (DeRobertis, 12/6)

Tampa Bay Times: Florida's Baker Act Often Cuts Parents Out Of The Process When Children Are Committed
Florida’s Baker Act directs police officers and some mental health professionals to hospitalize the mentally ill, but it was never intended to be used on children with autism or children who act out in class. The 48-year-old law even says those with developmental disabilities should not be committed unless they’re also mentally ill and a danger to themselves or others. But more and more kids who do not meet the criteria are being taken from schools to crisis centers for up to 72 hours and more. Across Florida, the number of children involuntarily transported each year to a mental health center has doubled in the last 15 years to about 36,000, or 100 a day, according to the Baker Act Reporting Center at the University of South Florida. (Anton and Pendygraft, 12/8)

Texas Tribune: How Many People Are Homeless In Texas? At Least 25,000.
Agencies across the country count the number of people experiencing homelessness at the end of each January. In Texas this year, organizations and volunteers counted 25,848 people experiencing homelessness. (Adeline and Garnham, 12/9)

Miami Herald: Flu Season Off To A Fast Start In Florida. Flu Shot Advised
This year’s flu season has had its fastest start in Florida, and among other southern states and Puerto Rico, in 15 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“Seasonal influenza activity in the United States has been elevated for four weeks and continues to increase,” the CDC reported on Nov. 30 at the end of week 48 of the year. Florida is one of the leading flu season states where “activity increased and remained above levels observed at this time in previous seasons,” according to the Florida Department of Health. (Cohen, 12/7)

Sacramento Bee: In Sacramento, An Insurer Disrupts Health Care Model To Save High-Risk Medi-Cal Patients
In the Sacramento region, Anthem Blue Cross is disrupting the typical U.S. health care model to improve health outcomes for high-risk patients. Doctor-led teams go to patient homes to remove social barriers, treat patients and coordinate care. (Hodenfield and Anderson, 12/6)

Sacramento Bee: How Many Californians Own Guns? Does Gun Control Stop Them?
California may have some of the nation’s most restrictive gun control laws, from bans on assault rifle sales to mandatory background checks for ammunition sales, but that isn’t stopping Golden State residents from buying firearms. A quarter of Californians live in a house with a gun, according to a new survey. (Sheeler, 12/6)

Boston Globe: Boston’s School Bathrooms Are A Big Mess
Filthy, unsanitary, and often lacking basics like toilet paper and hot water, the bathrooms of the city’s public schools are, far too frequently, in appalling condition. It is not a conventional measure of success or failure in the city’s schools, but it is a telling one: What does it say to the children of the schools that they are expected, as they strive to learn, to put up with such facilities? Or avoid them at all cost — and great discomfort? (Vazquez Toness, 12/7)

The Star Tribune: Disabled Minnesota Residents Often Live In Costly Isolation
Rather than helping develop care plans that would allow them to live in their own homes or apartments, counties across the state continue to steer thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities into facilities that promote dependency and isolation. State spending on group homes, for Minnesotans with disabilities who receive a coveted form of assistance known as a Medicaid “waiver,” now totals about $1.5 billion a year. That represents about two-thirds of total spending on waivers for people with disabilities — and is more than the combined state spending on agriculture, higher education and pollution control. (Serres and Howatt, 12/8)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Adenovirus Hits Three Wisconsin Universities; Investigation Underway
State health officials are investigating an outbreak of a common respiratory virus that has appeared on three college campuses across Wisconsin. Adenovirus, an infection that causes respiratory symptoms ranging from cold and flu-like symptoms to bronchitis and pneumonia, has been confirmed at the University of Wisconsin campuses in Madison, La Crosse and Oshkosh. (Shastri, 23/6)

WABE: Despite Poor Rankings, Report Finds Georgia Making Strides In Care For Mothers, Babies
Georgia continues to rank among the states with the highest rates of maternal mortality, low birth rate, preterm birth and infant mortality. The findings are part of a report released Thursday by Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia. (Moffatt, 12/6)

ProPublica: Recreational Marijuana Becomes Legal In Illinois On Jan. 1. Here’s How Communities Across The State Are Dealing With The New Law.
This week in our state: weed and taxes! With less than one month left of 2019, and with recreational marijuana set to become legal on Jan. 1, officials in cities and towns across the state are wrestling with the issue and determining where they’ll stand. Some of the biggest news on the issue this week occurred in Evanston, where the City Council voted Monday to use sales tax revenues from marijuana to fund a local reparations program, according to the Chicago Tribune. (Jaffe, 12/6)

Kaiser Health News: ‘Warm’ Hotlines Deliver Help Before Mental Health Crisis Heats Up
A lonely and anxious Rebecca Massie first called the Mental Health Association of San Francisco “warmline” during the 2015 winter holidays. “It was a wonderful call,” said Massie, now 38 and a mental health advocate. “I was laughing by the end, and I got in the holiday spirit.”Massie, a San Francisco resident, later used the line multiple times when she needed additional support, then began to volunteer there. (Stephens, 12/9)

The CT Mirror: DOC Medical Staff Erred In Treatment Of Pregnant Inmate, Internal Probe Says
A pregnant inmate had complained of pain numerous times to staff at York Correctional Institution during the week before she gave birth in her cell last year, but medical workers did not perform an assessment that would have determined she was in labor, nor did they tell a doctor about her abdominal pain or send her to an emergency room, according to a report unsealed Friday by a federal judge. (Lyons and Carlesso, 12/6)

The Baltimore Sun: University Of Maryland School Of Medicine, Partners Launch Autism Centers For Adults 
People with autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities often have few places to go for diagnosis and treatment when they are no longer children. The University of Maryland School of Medicine and others plan to announce Friday that they have created a set of centers specifically for adults. With $500,000 in state funding to launch, the school, the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance will operate two centers to provide evaluation, care and treatment for disorders that also include epilepsy, intellectual disability and tuberous sclerosis complex. (Cohn, 12/6)

The CT Mirror: Colleges 'Swamped' By Students' Mental Health Needs, But Services Vary Greatly
At Connecticut College, almost a third of students get mental health services in a given year and half of all students get that help at some point before they graduate. At Trinity College, close to half of the student body comes into the counseling center in a given year.By contrast, at Manchester Community College, very few mental health services are available. (Megan, 12/9)

St. Louis Public Radio: St. Louis-Area Counties Housed Hundreds Of Homeless Veterans In 2019
The St. Louis Area Regional Commission on Homelessness found homes for hundreds of veterans this year. Now, the local homeless agencies that comprise the commission are using what they’ve learned to improve how they serve the region. The commission, a partnership between St. Louis-area counties in Missouri and Illinois, aimed to house every homeless veteran in the region this year. By Nov. 11, it helped find homes for 93% of the 217 vets it found homeless in February. (Petrin, 12/8)

Georgia Health News: Cancer Treatment Centers To Pay $5 Million Into State Indigent Fund
Cancer Treatment Centers of America has agreed to pay more than $5 million into a state fund for indigent care as part of the organization’s expansion of its Newnan facility. There’s no apparent explanation for the payment in the Nov. 22 agreement between CTCA and the state’s Department of Community Health. But CTCA had been accused by hospital groups of not meeting its obligation to provide care to Medicaid and indigent patients since the facility opened in 2012. (Miller, 12/6)

The Associated Press: Prosecutors Say Alaska Dentist Rode Hoverboard At Procedure
An Alaska dentist accused of fraud and unnecessarily sedating patients also performed a procedure while riding a wheeled, motorized vehicle known as a hoverboard, authorities said. Prosecutors charged 34-year-old Seth Lookhart with felony Medicaid fraud and reckless endangerment. A former patient testified Wednesday at his trial that she was angered when an investigator showed her an unauthorized 2016 video of Lookhart extracting one of her teeth while she was sedated and he was riding the hoverboard. (12/6)