Hospitals In Metro Detroit Are The Most Racially Segregated: Study
Think tank Lown Institute has looked into race-based segregation in over 2,800 American hospitals using Medicare claims and found Detroit hospitals scored the worst. Efforts to boost access to birth control, anti-trans sports bills, clean water metrics in Montana and more are also in public health news.
Crain's Detroit Businesss:
Metro Detroit Hospitals Most Racially Segregated In U.S.: Study
Metro Detroit hospitals are the most racially segregated in the country, according to a new study released Thursday by healthcare think tank Lown Institute. Researchers studied more than 2,800 hospitals in the U.S. using Medicare claims and the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey from 2020 to determine the racial makeup of patients at each hospital versus the makeup of the community in which they serve. Metro Detroit's hospitals scored the worst for racial inclusiveness at 90 percent segregated. St. Louis ranked second with a 77 percent segregation. (Walsh, 3/18)
In other health news from across the U.S. —
AP:
Lawmakers Consider Proposal To Expand Birth Control Access
Lawmakers in Rhode Island are considering a proposal to allow pharmacists to give people birth control without authorization from a doctor. Rhode Island’s House of Representatives approved a bill last week that would allow pharmacists to prescribe birth control. The measure is now under consideration in the Senate, where similar legislation has been introduced. (3/20)
New Hampshire Bulletin:
N.H. House Tables Bill Barring Trans Students From Sports
Abi Maxwell is tired of fighting perennial bills that would keep her trans daughter from playing sports with other girls, but she keeps speaking out against them for her daughter, who hopes to someday join a ski team. “My daughter is a girl, she will not grow up to ski with the boys and to ask her to is an act of bullying and exclusion,” Maxwell said at a press event ahead of a House vote on House Bill 1180.On Wednesday, House lawmakers voted, 175 to 167, in favor of tabling a bill that would put a biological definition of sex in state statute, to differentiate between the male and female sexes in athletic competitions at public schools, in prisons, and “places of intimate privacy,” like bathrooms. (Gokee, 3/18)
AP:
Xavier-Louisiana Students Can Get Early Admission To LSU Med
A national leader in the number of Black graduates accepted by medical schools has a new early acceptance agreement with one of Louisiana’s largest medical schools. LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine will admit up to 10 Xavier University of Louisiana students a year under the program, with a pair of four-year full scholarships open to those who don’t apply to any other medical school. (3/20)
Asheville Watchdog:
AG Office Ad ‘Concerns’ Mission-HCA Deal Was Rigged
The North Carolina attorney general’s office had “great concerns about how HCA was selected” as the purchaser of the Mission Health System, including that “the deck had been stacked in its favor from the beginning” by then-CEO Ronald A. Paulus and his advisor Philip D. Green, according to a 2018 internal document obtained by Asheville Watchdog. “[W]ith no outside advice other than Phil Green,” whom the investigators wrote had an undisclosed “prior business relationship with HCA,” Mission Health’s board of directors decided not to issue requests for competitive bids or to hold an auction before agreeing to sell Asheville’s flagship hospital system to HCA Healthcare for $1.5 billion, according to the document, prepared in advance of a meeting between Department of Justice lawyers and HCA representatives on Oct. 30, 2018. Instead, as Paulus “coached HCA behind the scenes on how to best present its case to the Mission Board,” the board invited only one other healthcare company — identified in other documents as Novant Health of Winston-Salem — to present a formal offer. (3/20)
Billings Gazette:
Montana's Proposed New Clean Water Metrics Create Consternation
For more than two years the groundwater around Worden and Ballantine in Eastern Montana was unsafe to drink after the water district there discovered nitrates in the water in alarmingly high levels in 2019 — high enough to be mortally dangerous to infants. It also left the Worden Ballantine Yellowstone County Water and Sewer District scrambling to find a new source of drinking water. Water treatment systems are expensive, complex and out of reach for many rural water districts. For the Worden Ballantine water district, relief finally came last year in the form of $4.74 million in federal aid that it will use to essentially build a whole new water system. Investigators were never able to find the source of the nitrate contamination, so the water district dug four new wells from which it now draws its clean water. (Rogers, 3/19)
Anchorage Daily News:
Emails Show Anchorage Spokesman Had Information About Mayor Bronson’s Fluoride Shutoff Before Denying It Occurred
Newly released public records about Mayor Dave Bronson’s decision to briefly shut off fluoridation of Anchorage’s water supply show that the mayor’s spokesman had been emailed information about the shutoff by another official before he categorically denied the incident happened. Bronson temporarily halted fluoridation of the city’s water supply during an Oct. 1 visit to Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility’s Eklutna Water Treatment Plant. City law requires Anchorage’s water supply be fluoridated. The mayor eventually said he ordered fluoride to be shut off after workers told him they were experiencing health issues related to the substance. The fluoride shutoff was first reported by the Alaska Landmine in December in an anonymously-sourced article. (Goodykoontz, 3/20)
