Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Nurses In New Jersey Reach A Deal With Hospital To End 4-Month Strike
Nj.com: Bitter Strike Over As Nurses, N.J. Hospital Reach Tentative Agreement After 120+ Days
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital announced Friday that it has tentatively reached a new collective bargaining agreement with the United Steel Workers 4-200, which represents the 1,700 nurses who went on strike Aug. 4. The agreement comes after months of bitter negotiations, with the nurses demanding better pay, benefits — and above all — enforceable nurse-to-patient ratios similar to what California mandates by law. (Kent, 12/2)
Hawaii News Now: Hundreds Of Kapiolani Medical Center Nurses Picket As Contract Expires
More than 600 nurses at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children are working without a contact starting Friday. And even though they’re not going on strike, they will let management and the public know that they’re unhappy with the situation. The union held an informational picket line Friday morning on Punahou Street fronting the medical center. (Gutierrez, 12/1)
Tampa Bay Times: Nurses Rally Outside HCA West Florida’s Tampa Office
Nurses spoke out about alleged mismanagement at their hospitals, including 16 facilities HCA operates along the Gulf Coast in Southwest Florida, ahead of union contract expirations next year, according to a press release. HCA facilities will begin bargaining on new union contracts in 2024, which nurses say is an opportunity to address workplace issues. (Woo, 12/1)
Also —
Crain's Chicago Business: Northwestern University Medical Residents Plan To Unionize
Nearly 1,300 resident physicians and fellows at Northwestern University are planning to unionize as they seek to improve working conditions in the training programs at its affiliated healthcare facilities. The group of physicians across Northwestern's McGaw Medical Center filed their intent to join the Committee of Interns & Residents, a division of the Service Employees International Union, with the National Labor Relations Board and have requested voluntary recognition of the union from Northwestern management, according to a statement today. (Davis, 12/1)
The New York Times: Why Doctors And Pharmacists Are In Revolt
Dr. John Wust does not come off as a labor agitator. A longtime obstetrician-gynecologist from Louisiana with a penchant for bow ties, Dr. Wust spent the first 15 years of his career as a partner in a small business — that is, running his own practice with colleagues. Long after he took a position at Allina Health, a large nonprofit health care system based in Minnesota, in 2009, he did not see himself as the kind of employee who might benefit from collective bargaining. (Scheiber, 12/3)
Fox News: Physical Therapist Practices Are Losing Staff, Report Says: ‘Earning Potential Not As Great’
Outpatient physical therapist (PT) practices are experiencing severe staff shortages, with the highest vacancy rates at 17%, according to a recent report by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), a nonprofit group based in Virginia. The report is based on survey responses from 133 outpatient physical therapy practices across the U.S., which include 2,615 clinics and some 11,000 full-time employees, ranging from support staff to PTs. The survey was conducted between May 25 and June 16. (Sudhakar, 12/3)
In other news about health care personnel —
NPR: Some Doctors Are Ditching The Scale, Saying Focusing On Weight Drives Misdiagnoses
About five years ago, Sarah Barak badly tore a ligament in her thumb and needed surgery to get it reattached. But when she went in for the operation, she got some unsolicited advice: The surgeon said she should lose weight, suggesting that her size and her injured thumb were connected. "He was making the argument that my posture was affecting my arm pain and that my posture was made worse by my size, all of which could be true," Barak says. "But I still had a disconnected thumb, and even if I lost 100 pounds, the thumb would not have been reattached on its own." (O'Neill, 12/2)
Axios: Concierge Doctors Bring House Calls Back In Tampa Bay
Matthew Beil looks out at the city of St. Pete from his 26th-story apartment. "Entourage" is playing on his TV as he pulls two Fiji waters out of the fridge. The intrigue: He's not entertaining a friend. He's at a doctor's appointment. State of play: Beil is a patient of Khalid Saeed, aka the Tampa Bay Concierge Doctor, one of thousands of doctors practicing concierge medicine around the country in an industry merging old fashioned house calls with new telemedicine technology. (San Felice, 12/4)
KFF Health News: Doctors On (Video) Call: Rural Medics Get Long-Distance Help In Treating Man Gored By Bison
Rural medics who rescued rancher Jim Lutter after he was gored by a bison didn’t have much experience handling such severe wounds. But the medics did have a doctor looking over their shoulders inside the ambulance as they rushed Lutter to a hospital. The emergency medicine physician sat 140 miles away in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, office building. She participated in the treatment via a video system recently installed in the ambulance. (Zionts, 12/4)
