Hospital Staffers Worry Over Their Safety After Shooting In Portland

Fierce Healthcare: Another Hospital Shooting Stokes Fears Over Hospital Safety
[Last] week, a visitor opened fire at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Portland, killing a security guard and injuring a nurse. Following increases in both aggression towards nurses and mass shootings, stakeholders are debating whether new tech or old solutions can make a difference. Texas-based University Medical Center announced this month that it has deployed an AI-based gun detection system. Protesting nurses in Colorado, meanwhile, say protections against guns are far lower on their safety to-do list, below things like improved nurse-to-patient ratios. (Burky, 7/28)

In other health care industry news —

AP: Merger Talks End Between Large Health Care Systems In Minnesota, South Dakota
A merger that would have created one of the largest health service companies in the Upper Midwest has been scrapped. Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services and Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health announced Thursday that they would not proceed with the merger they had been discussing since late last year. It would have created a system with more than 50 hospitals and about 78,000 employees. (7/28)

AP: Legal Approval Puts Takeover Of Augusta University Hospitals A Step Closer 
A plan for an Atlanta-area hospital system to take over Augusta University’s hospitals complies with state law and may proceed, Georgia’s attorney general ruled Thursday. Marietta-based Wellstar Health System would take over the 478-bed Augusta University Medical Center and 154-bed Children’s Hospital of Georgia, as well as the rights to build a 100-bed hospital in Grovetown, in the growing Columbia County suburbs of Augusta. (Amy, 7/28)

Fierce Healthcare: Half Of Female Doctors With Children Pass Up Career Advancement
Women physicians often delay starting a family, in part due to career-related pressures and the hours required for medical training and residency programs. The competing priorities of parenthood and career may account for higher rates of infertility among women physicians than women in the general population, according to a study in JAMA Network Open. Researchers with Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine surveyed 1,056 cisgender women from March to August 2022, with 98% of respondents living and working in the United States. (Diamond, 7/28)

NBC News: New Jersey Woman Posed As A Doctor For More Than A Year And Wrote Prescriptions, Prosecutors Say
A New Jersey woman who posed as a doctor, treated patients and prescribed medications has been arrested, prosecutors in Ocean County said Thursday. Toms River resident Maria F. Macburnie, 62, also known as Marife L. Macburnie, was charged with practicing medicine without a license, forgery, health care fraud, and distributing a dangerous substance, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said in a statement. (Romero, 7/29)

KFF Health News: Be Aware: Someone Could Steal Your Medical Records And Bill You For Their Care
After HCA Healthcare announced this month that the personal identification data of roughly 11 million HCA patients in 20 states had been exposed in a breach, people may be justifiably concerned that their own medical data and identities could be stolen. Consumers should realize that such “medical identity” fraud can happen in several ways, from a large-scale breach to individual theft of someone’s data. (Andrews, 7/31)

Also —

The Washington Post: HHS Says It's Not The Ugliest Building In D.C., No Matter What People Say
Few D.C. buildings are judged more harshly than the health agency’s 803,555-square-foot headquarters. (Diamond, and Latson, 7/29)