Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Overpowered Hospitals Desperate For More Nurses
AP: Nurses Wanted: Swamped Hospitals Scramble For Pandemic Help
U.S. hospitals slammed with COVID-19 patients are trying to lure nurses and doctors out of retirement, recruiting students and new graduates who have yet to earn their licenses and offering eye-popping salaries in a desperate bid to ease staffing shortages. With the virus surging from coast to coast, the number of patients in the hospital with the virus has more than doubled over the past month to a record high of nearly 100,000, pushing medical centers and health care workers to the breaking point. Nurses are increasingly burned out and getting sick on the job, and the stress on the nation’s medical system prompted a dire warning from the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Schulte and Forliti, 12/3)
The New York Times: As Hospitals Fill, Travel Nurses Race To Virus Hot Spots
As the coronavirus cut a devastating path around the country, Laura Liffiton, 32, found herself racing along behind. She arrived in New York City in April, on one of the worst days of the pandemic, for a stint as a nurse in the overrun intensive-care unit of a crowded hospital. After her contract there ended, she flew in July to another hot spot with an urgent need for nurses: a hospital in Arizona where four of her patients died of the coronavirus on her first day. In October, Ms. Liffiton traveled on, to Green Bay, Wis., just as the virus was surging uncontrollably throughout the Midwest. (Bosman, 12/2)
Houston Chronicle: Harris County To Launch National Search For Public Health Director To Replace Shah
Harris County Commissioners Court this week launched an “expedited” national search for a new public health director, a week after Dr. Umair Shah announced he had accepted a job in Washington state. Commissioners Court on Tuesday unanimously appointed Harris County Public Health Deputy Director Gwen Sims as interim director at a prorated annual salary of $260,000. Since she is not a physician, Sims will need to appoint a doctor as the county’s health authority. (Despart, 12/2)
Cincinnati Enquirer: COVID-19: Rising Resident, Worker Cases Put Strain On Nursing Homes
Nursing home patients and their caregivers are caught in spiraling COVID-19 infections and deaths as the novel coronavirus pandemic rages across America. In Ohio, it's no different, with vulnerable patients and their nurses and nurse aides facing a pandemic of historic proportions. The plight of nursing homes was highlighted Tuesday, when a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel group recommended that some of the first vaccines for COVID-19 go to nursing home residents as well as front-line health care workers. (Demio and Behrens, 12/2)
KHN: NYC Hospital Workers, Knowing How Bad It Can Get, Brace For COVID 2nd Wave
No single municipality in the country suffered more in the first wave of the pandemic than New York City, which saw more than 24,000 deaths, mainly in the spring. Medical staff in New York know precisely how difficult and dangerous overwhelmed hospitals can be and are braced warily as infections begin to rise again. Around the New York metropolitan area, public health leaders and health care workers say they’re watching the trend lines, as intensive care units fill up in other parts of the United States and around the world. They say it gives them flashbacks to last spring, when ambulance sirens were omnipresent and the region was the country’s coronavirus epicenter. (Mogul, 12/3)
