Longer Reads: Thanksgiving (Long) Weekend Edition

Stat: Catholic Hospital System Ascension Is Moonlighting As A Private Equity Firm
The nation’s largest Catholic hospital system, a sprawling behemoth of more than 140 hospitals called Ascension, is quietly building an unprecedented and strikingly unusual $1 billion private equity operation, using its wealth to invest like a Wall Street firm, a STAT investigation has found. Rather than passively investing in private equity funds, the practice of several major nonprofit hospitals, Ascension has over the past six years actively made investment decisions to play the private equity game itself, for profit. (Cohrs, 11/16)

The Intercept: How Hospitals Became Vaults That Hid Evidence Of Covid’s Toll
An investigation by The Intercept reveals that in the first months of the pandemic, only a small number of the more than 6,000 hospitals in the U.S. let journalists inside — and when access was permitted, it was usually limited to a short time span. The upshot is that most hospitals, citing safety and privacy concerns, turned themselves into vaults that hid the strongest evidence of the virus’s lethality. Doors were shut so firmly that an award-winning documentarian even gave up on his effort to film in the U.S. and instead made his documentary about a country where he could get access to Covid patients: China. When it began in the U.S., the pandemic was a mass casualty event with few pictures of the casualties. (Maas, 11/13)

The Atlantic: What Happened To America’s Biggest Pandemic Success Story?
Is Vermont the envy of America no more? The state long hailed for its pandemic response is experiencing one of the most intense COVID-19 surges in the country. Cases are twice as high as they’ve been at any other point. Hospitalizations are up sharply as well, confounding hopes that Vermont’s best-in-the-nation vaccination rate would protect its people from the Delta wave. The resurgence of the coronavirus—cases are rising again nationally after a sustained decline—has demoralized much of the country, but nowhere is that frustration more keenly felt than in the state that seemed to be doing everything right. (Berman, 11/24)

Bloomberg: The Messenger RNA Pioneers Everyone Ignored
Hungarian biochemist Katalin Kariko is on the awards circuit. She’s been feted by the World Health Organization, painted onto the side of a building in Budapest and even made Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year. Together with her longtime research partner Drew Weissman, she won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award — an honor that in many cases has preceded a Nobel Prize. It’s all quite a turnaround for Kariko, who struggled for years to get research funding. She dedicated her career to the study of messenger RNA, long seen as too delicate and hard to handle to be of much use. (Kresge, 11/23)

Bloomberg: What Is In The Covid Vaccine? Why Pfizer Won’t Share Its Formula
Two of the most powerful figures in the fight against the pandemic faced off in July during a closed-door virtual summit on how to get more vaccines to the world’s poorest people. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, called out a “shocking imbalance” in the supply of vaccines. He said it was unacceptable that manufacturers pursuing the highest prices had overwhelmingly supplied rich countries—and now were pushing booster shots for the same wealthy few—according to a half-dozen people who were listening. “Honestly I’m not seeing the commitment I would expect from you,” Tedros told the vaccine developers on the call. (Baker and Silver, 11/14)

The Atlantic: What Medicine’s Own COVID Long-Haulers Have Faced
Despite their medical qualifications, health professionals with long COVID have been dismissed in the same way as other patients. (Yong, 11/24)

ProPublica: A Patient In A Psychiatric Ward Was Seen On Video Possibly Being Sexually Assaulted. No One Reported It.
Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago kept quiet about a possible sexual assault of one patient by another in its psychiatric unit. Only after ProPublica asked questions did Illinois’ public health officials alert law enforcement. (Eldeib and Briscoe, 11/23)

The New York Times: 'They See Us As The Enemy': Schools Nurses Face Pandemic Rage
When a junior high school student in western Oregon tested positive for the coronavirus last month, Sherry McIntyre, a school nurse, quarantined two dozen of the student’s football teammates. The players had spent time together in the locker room unmasked, and, according to local guidelines, they could not return to school for at least 10 days. Some parents took the news poorly. They told Ms. McIntyre that she should lose her nursing license or accused her of violating their children’s educational rights. Another nurse in the district faced similar ire when she quarantined the volleyball team. This fall, after facing repeated hostility from parents, they started locking their office doors. “They call us and tell us we’re ruining their children’s athletic career,” Ms. McIntyre said. “They see us as the enemy.” (Anthes, 11/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Telehealth Rollbacks Leave Patients Stranded, Some Doctors Say
Mental-health patients are at particular risk if their care regimens are disrupted, said Nicole Christian-Brathwaite, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts. “You really shouldn’t change clinicians midstream,” she said. The Biden administration in August committed more than $19 million to strengthen telemedicine services in rural and underserved areas. Advocates are pressing for more. They want all states to maintain and expand licensure flexibilities for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic and to reinstate any licensing allowances that have expired. (Armour and Whelan, 11/22)

Boston Globe: A VC Explains Why He Sees A Golden Age In Health Care Innovation
One sign you’re living through a golden age is that there’s a lot of gold being tossed around. Michael Greeley, a venture capitalist at Boston-based Flare Capital Partners, asserts that the Boston area is indeed experiencing such a bounty of ideas when it comes to health care innovation. The amount of money being invested in companies trying to create cancer drugs, apps to treat addiction, and new kinds of health care plans is setting records. According to the data provider CB Insights, roughly $100 billion has been invested in health care-related companies so far this year — topping the record $80 billion that went into the sector in 2020. (Greeley offers his perspective on the latest investment activity on his blog, On the Flying Bridge.) (Kirsner, 11/23)