State Highlights: Did Efforts To Reform Calif. Prisons Lead To Deadliest Year At A County Jail?; Transgender Inmate In Connecticut Sues For Lack Of Care, Mistreatment

ProPublica/The Sacramento Bee: California Tried To Fix Its Prisons. Now County Jails Are More Deadly.
On the night of Jan. 17, 2018, Lorenzo Herrera walked into the Fresno County Jail booking area and sat down for an interview. Yes, he had a gang history, an officer wrote on his intake form. But Herrera, 19, said he did not expect problems with others inside the gang pod he’d soon call home. His parents had encouraged him to barter for books and newspapers — anything he could to preoccupy himself until his trial on burglary and assault charges. His father, Carlos Herrera, offered advice: “Just be careful, and only trust yourself.” Herrera survived the violent chaos of the Fresno County Jail for 66 days, including living through a brawl that left another inmate unconscious. Then, on an afternoon in March, jail officers found him strangled. (Pohl and Gabrielson, 4/24)

The Associated Press: Transgender Inmate Sues Corrections Over Lack Of Treatment
A transgender inmate has filed a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut prison system for denying her transitional care and for housing her with male inmates. The Hartford Courant reports that Veronica May Clark says Department of Corrections officials have denied her medical and mental health care since she began her gender transition in prison. The suit seeks proper care and $500,000 in damages. (4/23)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cuyahoga County Jail Conditions As Bad As Ever, Even As Budish Administration Boasts About Improvements, New Court Filing Says
Conditions at the Cuyahoga County jail continue to violate the rights of inmates, even as Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish and his administration say they are making changes to improve the lives of prisoners, according to a new court filing. The amended complaint filed Monday is part of a lawsuit filed in December on behalf of inmates who say conditions within the jail violate their constitutional rights. (Heisig, 4/23)

The Associated Press: San Francisco Commission OKs Shelter Near Tourist Area
Port commissioners Tuesday night unanimously approved a proposal to lease land for a 200-bed temporary homeless shelter in the popular Embarcadero tourist area as the city struggles with a severe shortage of affordable housing. Supporters cheered as the commissioners voted unanimously to lease a port-owned parking lot to the city for two years to create the SAFE Navigation Center. There would be an option for a two-year extension under certain conditions. (4/23)

New Hampshire Public Radio: Health Clinics Offer Hepatitis A Vaccines In Effort To Halt Outbreak In N.H.
In an effort to halt an ongoing hepatitis A outbreak, health clinics in Manchester, Nashua, Somersworth, and Concord are offering free vaccines to people without health insurance. Hepatitis A is transmitted by ingesting small undetected amounts of feces from someone who is infected. Communities at high-risk for the disease include people who are homeless, people using recreational drugs, and gay men. (Moon, 4/23)

Columbus Dispatch: Ohio Ranks 47th In Federal Public-Health Dollars Per Person
In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the state received about $207 million from the agency, or $17.68 per Ohioan, according to “The Impact of Chronic Underfunding on America’s Public Health System” report released Wednesday by the Trust for America’s Health. That compares with $63.28 per person in Alaska, which ranks first among the 50 states, and $17.09 per person in New Jersey, which ranks last. (Viviano, 4/24)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Lead Safe Cleveland Close To Submitting Policy Recommendations To City Council
The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition policy committee is close to finalizing its list of recommendations on prevention, screening, treatment and education to submit next week to Cleveland City Council. A volunteer group of about 40 representatives from the healthcare, education, legal, philanthropic and policy communities have been meeting weekly for the past two months to finalize the list to be sent to council May 1. (Zeltner and Dissell, 4/24)

The Star Tribune: California Company Fined $50,000 Over Medicare Marketing In Minnesota 
The state Commerce Department said it has issued a $50,000 civil penalty plus a cease-and-desist order to a California company in connection with letters to Minnesotans about Medicare health insurance options that it said were misleading. Commerce said Tuesday that a company called eHealthInsurance Services Inc. purchased the domain name “Medicare.com” and mailed more than 600,000 letters that used the website address and offered services for picking a new insurance plan. (Snowbeck, 4/23)

Pioneer Press: Minnesota: Misleading Medicare Letters Coming From Calif. Company
The Minnesota Department of Commerce has fined a California-based health insurance agency for mailing more than 600,000 misleading letters to elderly Minnesotans, the department announced Tuesday. Gold River, Calif.-based eHealthInsurance Services purchased the web domain name “Medicare.com” and, using that name, mailed letters to Minnesotans warning that certain Medicare plans were being discontinued and offering services to obtain a new plan. The Medicare program’s correct website address is www.medicare.gov. (Salisbury, 4/23)

Sacramento Bee: Tiny Hospital On CA Coast Seeks Lifeline From Sacramento Giants
Faced with continuing operational losses, the board of Mendocino Coast District Hospital has asked five hospital operators, including Sutter Health and Adventist Health, to take a look at buying or partnering with a facility that serves 23,500 residents along a 70-mile stretch of California’s North Coast. (Anderson, 4/24)

California Healthline: The Homeless Are Dying In Record Numbers On The Streets Of L.A.
A record number of homeless people — 918 last year alone — are dying across Los Angeles County, on bus benches, hillsides, railroad tracks and sidewalks. Deaths have jumped 76% in the past five years, outpacing the growth of the homeless population, according to a KHN analysis of the coroner’s data.Health officials and experts have not pinpointed a single cause for the sharp increase in deaths, but they say rising substance abuse may be a major reason. (Gorman and Rowan, 4/23)

Columbus Dispatch: Patient Restraint, Fire Safety Issues Found At Mount Carmel St. Ann's Hospital
State health inspectors found that three patients placed in non-violent restraints at Mount Carmel St. Ann’s hospital didn’t receive proper checks from a registered nurse and the hospital had conditions that violated national fire safety codes. The in-depth survey was conducted in mid-March by the Ohio Department of Health on behalf of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Wagner, 4/23)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Mental Health Workers Injured In Baton Rouge, Weeks After Fatal Attack On Nurse: Report 
Health care workers were attacked by two different patients in separate incidents at the same Baton Rouge mental health facility on Monday (April 22), just weeks after a nurse’s death was ruled a homicide following an attack by a mental health patient at a different Baton Rouge medical facility, WAFB reports. A total of six employees were injured in Monday’s attacks at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center’s Tau Center, which treats mental health and addiction, the TV station reports. Two patients face charges. Authorities were called to the facility at 10 a.m. in the first attack, during which two hospital workers were punched by the same patient, WAFB reports. Police responded two hours later to the same facility after a patient fought with four employees who received minor injuries. (Lane, 4/23)

Arizona Republic: Hot-Car Deaths: How To Prevent Them, And How Arizona Law Protects You
Under a state law passed in 2017, anyone who believes a child or animal in a hot vehicle is in "imminent danger" of suffering injury or death can break a window to get them out without fear of a lawsuit. But that legal protection doesn't kick in automatically: You must first call law enforcement or animal control. (Polletta, 4/23)

Georgia Health News: Metro Atlanta Still Struggling With Air Pollution, Report Says
Metro Atlanta shows mixed results on air pollution in the American Lung Association’s latest report, released Wednesday. The area had fewer days of bad ozone pollution – the main factor in smog – but still ranked 25th among cities for the worst ozone, according to the Lung Association’s 2019 State of the Air report. (Miller, 4/24)

Kansas City Star: Missouri Pediatric Surgeon’s License Revoked For Child Porn
The Missouri medical board revoked the license of pediatric surgeon Guy Rosenschein last week — more than two years after he was arrested in New Mexico on child pornography charges. Rosenschein had been licensed in Missouri since 2000 and worked in Joplin and at the University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia until 2013. (Marso, 4/24)