Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
2 Wyoming Hospitals Cut Birth Services To Pay For Traveling Nurses
Wyoming Public Radio: Traveling Nurses Are Expensive, So Two Wyoming Hospitals Cut Pregnancy Services
Elise Mascorro gave birth to her baby in Rawlins this past February. "My experience was amazing. I've never really been someone who liked doctor's offices or would, like, want to go. And I actually enjoyed going to the doctors," she said laughing. This was Mascorro's first child and she had trouble with her pregnancies in the past. So, she appreciated having an OB/GYN nearby, helping her out. But in the past couple of weeks, the Memorial Hospital of Carbon County in Rawlins announced they will no longer be providing labor and child delivery services in June. That was the second hospital to make the decision within a month. South Lincoln Hospital District in Kemmerer also cut those services. (Kudelska, 5/20)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Fighting To Find Nurses, Mercy Experiments With Uber’s ‘Gig Worker’ Model
For a 150-year-old St. Louis hospital system, the answer to staffing shortages may be a labor model popularized by Silicon Valley startups. Since late last year, Chesterfield-based Mercy has been piloting a program in Springfield where both staff nurses and “gig worker” nurses can sign up for shifts through an app. Now the health system is expanding it across all of Mercy. “Millennials, and those even younger, are starting to look at work in a different way,” said Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer Betty Jo Rocchio. “They probably were earlier, and we missed the signs, in nursing.” (Merrilees, 5/22)
In other health care industry news —
North Carolina Health News: Sheriffs Want Out Of Transporting Of Psych Patients
When two sheriff’s deputies showed up at the hospital room of John Noel’s husband, Chris, he thought he was being arrested. No one had told him they were coming. The deputies handcuffed Chris and escorted him to the back seat of a patrol car, according to Noel. Driving away from the hospital, Chris asked the officers if they were taking him to prison. They ignored his questions... The officers were taking Chris from the emergency department at Duke Regional Hospital in Durham to Holly Hill Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Raleigh under an involuntary commitment order. (Knopf, 5/23)
New Hampshire Public Radio: Some N.H. Treatment Facilities Rethink Restraint And Trauma
New Hampshire residential treatment facilities used restraint on children at least 100 times per month between 2016 and 2021. Some months saw more than 300 restraint incidents. State officials are trying to get that number down to zero. And experts say the way to get there is through something called “trauma-informed care”: an approach that focuses less on punishment, and more on understanding why a child might act a certain way in stressful situations and preventing them from repeating behavior that could harm themselves or others. Many children in residential treatment facilities have experienced abuse, neglect or other significant traumas. The vast majority are involved in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems. (Fam, 5/23)
Stat: How Businesses Turned Health Records From GE Into A Lucrative Asset
It was supposed to be a routine client meeting. Instead, one of GE Healthcare’s largest customers dropped a bombshell: It had taken data GE considered confidential — millions of patient medical records stripped of identifying information — and linked it to a massive trove of insurance claims, vacuuming up financial details tied to the patients’ medical problems, prescriptions, and doctor’s visits. The revelations by Quintiles, a global drug research company, set off a cascade of concerns within GE, according to a confidential memo obtained by STAT. Executives worried GE was “at risk of privacy violations” and called for an internal legal review. The unsettling part was how precisely the patients were flagged in another dataset, with near perfect accuracy, the memo said. (Ross, 5/23)
In research news —
St. Louis Public Radio: Missouri S&T Research Could Improve Laser Treatment Of Tumors
Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have found a way to measure the effectiveness of light energy which will help to better use lasers in treating tumors. Missouri S&T physics professor Alexy Yamilov, along with a team of researchers led by Yale University, published an article in the journal Nature Physics outlining their research. The team shows how to determine the maximum amount of light energy that can be focused at certain depths of materials. The findings can be used by light-based medical technology firms developing new methods to better assess how much energy they can use, and if the technique will work: “It tells them how the energy is going to be distributed inside, and under the best conditions, so they can estimate whether it will be safe to do this,” Yamilov said. (Ahl, 5/23)
Stat: Role Of Genetics Researchers In White Supremacist Ideology Debated
The 18-year-old gunman suspected of carrying out a racist attack that killed 10 and injured three people in Buffalo, N.Y., last weekend left no questions about why he drove 200 miles to a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood and opened fire. A 180-page document he allegedly posted online detailed the white supremacist ideologies that motivated his plan to target and murder Black Americans. But for the genetics researchers who discovered their work cited in the screed as justification for the bloodshed, there are only questions — how did this happen? Could we have done more to prevent it? And what needs to change to stop it from happening again? (Molteni, 5/23)
