Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Nurses Will Strike At Stanford Hospital, Starting Today
Bay Area News Group: Stanford Nurses Announce Strike
A union representing nurses at Stanford Hospital and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital announced that it will begin a strike Monday, in advance of a formal bargaining session on Tuesday with hospital representatives. According to a statement Sunday evening, about 93 percent of eligible nurses authorized the strike, which the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (CRONA) will use to set up a picket line and hold a 9 a.m. Monday press conference outside Stanford Hospital along Welch Road at Pasteur Drive. (Kelly, 4/24)
Stat: Travel Nurses Remain Pricey, And It’s Weighing On Hospital Profits
An underwhelming first quarter at the country’s biggest hospital chain shows the pandemic’s stranglehold on labor costs is proving to be more stubborn than many had expected. Investor-owned HCA Healthcare knocked down its full-year revenue and profit expectations on Friday, a move that sent shares tumbling and triggered a flurry of questions from analysts about its travel nurse spending. The Nashville-based hospital chain is a stock market darling that tends to dwarf its peers profit-wise, so its results don’t bode well for the rest of the sector. (Bannow, 4/22)
The Boston Globe: Hospitals Seek To Solve Their Own Staffing Shortages
At Newton-Wellesley Hospital, there has long been a shortage of surgical technologists, the people responsible for setting up operating rooms and equipment. The pandemic only made it more difficult to recruit for those positions. Now, the hospital has begun a program with Newton’s Lasell University to offer free training and a job for people interested in becoming surgical technologists. “If you create a culture of investing in your staff, [people] feel valued and invested in and choose to stay,” said Errol Norwitz, the hospital’s president. “That’s the kind of culture I’m trying to create here.” (Bartlett, 4/22)
In other news about health care workers —
Stateline: With Implicit Bias Hurting Patients, Some States Train Doctors
In a groundbreaking study, Dr. Lisa Cooper, a leading researcher on racial health disparities at Johns Hopkins University, found that nearly all 40 participating Baltimore-area primary care doctors said they regarded their White and their Black patients the same. But that’s not what her testing on their unconscious attitudes revealed. Those tests, conducted a decade ago, showed that two-thirds of the physicians preferred White patients over Black. About the same percentage perceived White patients as more cooperative, while they perceived Black patients as more mistrustful and reluctant to comply with medical guidance. (Ollove, 4/21)
The Boston Globe: A ‘Scary Man,’ Or Someone Like Your Uncle? Mass. Requires Doctors To Undergo Implicit Bias Training In An Effort To Address Health Care Inequities
Not long ago Dr. Khama Ennis was chatting with an emergency-medicine colleague about incidents in the ER. The colleague recounted his struggle managing an aggressive patient. He described the person as “a big huge Black guy.” “The hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Ennis, who is Black, recalled in an interview. She wondered how the patient’s skin color could be relevant to his violent behavior, although it had clearly contributed to her colleague’s fear. Ennis, an emergency doctor and president of the medical staff at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, described this incident in a presentation to the Massachusetts Medical Society on combating racism in medicine. To her surprise and delight, a videotape of her hourlong presentation is now among the courses that doctors can take to fulfill a new requirement to receive or renew their medical licenses. (Freyer, 4/22)
KHN: Physicians Are Uneasy As Colorado Collects Providers’ Diversity Data
Shaunti Meyer, a certified nurse-midwife and medical director at STRIDE Community Health Center in Colorado, doesn’t usually disclose her sexual orientation to patients. But at times it feels appropriate. After telling a transgender patient that she is a lesbian, Meyer learned the woman had recently taken four other trans women, all estranged from their birth families, under her wing. They were living together as a family, and, one by one, each came to see Meyer at the Aurora clinic where she practices. Some were at the beginning of their journeys as transgender women, she said, and they felt comfortable with her as a provider, believing she understood their needs and could communicate well with them. (Hawryluk, 4/25)
Also —
KHN: Journalists Cover The Gamut, From Rising Insulin Costs To Delays In Autism Care For Children
KHN Midwest correspondent Bram Sable-Smith shared a firsthand perspective on ballooning insulin costs on “Tradeoffs” on April 21. ... KHN’s Colleen DeGuzman profiled the last abortion clinic in the Rio Grande Valley on KUT and “Texas Standard” on April 21. (4/23)
