Calling In Reinforcements: Military Teams Arrive At Los Angeles Hospitals
In other news affecting health care personnel: Monument Health hospitals open doors to visitors; Massachusetts doctors weigh in on an increase in cases; and a call to raise pay for home health workers. Also, Dr. Joseph J. Costa, head of Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center ICU, dies at 56 of COVID-19.
Los Angeles Times:
Coronavirus: Military Medical Teams Arrive At Two L.A. County Hospitals
Medical professionals from the military have arrived in Los Angeles County to reinforce the ranks of two hospitals. The Department of Defense sent the Air Force teams last week to Los Angeles County-USC and Harbor-UCLA medical centers, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. ... Ferguson said state authorities requested the support through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (Sheridan, 7/27)
AP:
Monument Health Hospitals Allowing Visitors Again
All five Monument Health hospitals are allowing visitors once again. Opening the hospitals to visitors beginning Monday is part of a phased-in approach for the health care provider which began allowing one visitor per patient at the John T. Vucurevich Cancer Care Institute in Rapid City [South Dakota] last Monday. As for the hospitals, bedside visiting and accompanying someone for emergency care, surgery or other procedures is now permitted, KOTA-TV reported. (7/27)
Boston Globe:
Doctors Uneasy About Uptick In State Coronavirus Cases
The reported rate of positive COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts has crept up over the past week, heightening an uneasiness among some doctors who fear that they might be seeing a return of the virus that has spread so quickly around the nation this summer. In e-mails, phone conversations, and on social media, the doctors say they’re seeing emergency rooms getting busier with feverish patients and more imaging tests coming back with distinctive signs of coronavirus infection. It’s too soon to say whether their anecdotal observations, along with the recent uptick in state data, are the tip of an emerging iceberg or simply a temporary blip. (Lazar and Moore, 7/27)
Kaiser Health News and Politifact HealthCheck:
Biden Is Right. Pay For Home Health Workers Is Paltry.
In a speech this month, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, offered the third installment of a four-part economic plan being rolled out in advance of the Democratic National Convention in August.
This set of proposals focused on caregivers — whether for children, older adults or people with disabilities — and is about “easing the squeeze on working families who are raising their kids and caring for aging loved ones at the same time,” Biden said. His campaign’s sweeping set of initiatives, which represent a $775 billion expenditure in a variety of programs, aims to get significant traction among middle-class voters, whose struggles with caregiving issues have been exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic. (Stapleton, 7/28)
In obituaries —
The Washington Post:
Joseph Costa, ICU Doctor At Mercy Medical Center, Dies Of Coronavirus
A physician who headed the intensive care at Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center has died of the novel coronavirus, a hospital spokesman said Monday. Dr. Joseph J. Costa, who was chief of the hospital’s Critical Care Division, died about 4:45 a.m. Saturday in the same ICU he supervised. He was attended by his partner of 28 years and about 20 staff members, who placed their hands on him as he died. Costa was 56. (Kunkle, 7/27)
