State Highlights: Exodus Of Cardiologists Disrupts Oregon Research Hospital Transplant Program; 320,000 Minnesotans Warily Prepare To Switch Medicare Plans

The Oregonian: Heart Transplant Surgeon Leaves OHSU In Fifth Resignation For Suspended Program 
Oregon Health & Science University is losing another cardiac specialist – the fifth resignation in a month and the first since the Portland research hospital suspended its heart transplant program. The heart transplant team is made up of surgeons who perform the transplants and cardiologists who take care of the patients afterward. Dr. Jai Raman is one of three surgeons on the team. He follows all four cardiologists -- one who left earlier this summer and three more will be done by the end of September. Those departures prompted OHSU to suspend the heart transplant program indefinitely last week, as well as order a review of the program by outside consultants. (Harbarger, 9/14)

The Star Tribune: Many Minnesota Seniors Bracing For Seismic Medicare Shift 
Anxiety, frustration and hints of exasperation are all in the mix as more than a quarter-million Minnesota seniors face the prospect of selecting new Medicare health plans in the coming months. An estimated 320,000 Minnesotans with Medicare Cost health plans must switch to a new policy because a federal law is eliminating the coverage next year across much of the state. (Snowbeck, 9/17)

KCUR: Kansas Nursing Homes Cited For Failings That Can Increase Risk Of Infection, Deadly Sepsis 
Sepsis hits nearly two million people in the U.S. a year and kills more than a quarter million. It’s a particular problem in nursing homes, where the aging, confused and immobile are especially susceptible. In Kansas, scores of nursing homes have received federal citations since 2015 for practices that can put residents at a higher risk of sepsis. A Kaiser Health News compilation of those warnings to nursing home operators shows eight Kansas nursing homes earned the most serious level of citations. (Llopis-Jepsen, 9/14)

Dallas Morning News: Dallas' Health Nonprofits Have A New Tool In Their Fight To Increase Food Access
In the fight to increase food access in Dallas, area health nonprofits have a new weapon that will help them identify where Dallas faces the most urgent needs. The City of Dallas Community Food Assessment, an interactive map that highlights key data like the concentration of diseases such as obesity and diabetes, was presented Friday at the seventh annual Dallas Hunger Summit, where dozens of area nutrition nonprofits gathered to listen to what Dallas’ hospital health systems and other health groups are doing to serve Dallas’ neediest. (Manuel, 9/15)

Tampa Bay Times: Locked In Legal Battle, Rick Scott’s Office And Health Vendor Trade Charges
Gov. Rick Scott's office and a health care provider are locked in a dispute over public records and whether the vendor would end its legal battles against Scott's office if the state would extend its contract. Scott's office says yes. The vendor's lawyer says no. The relevant email traffic is below. (Bosquet, 9/14)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Need Your Birth Certificate? Be Prepared To Wait.
People across the country who need housing, jobs, or government services need proof of their identities. That often starts with a birth certificate. ...But the Pennsylvania Department of Health faces a backlog of requests and anticipates next year will be its busiest. More people will be requesting birth certificates to get IDs that meet federal security requirements post-Sept. 11, 2001. (Bond, 9/14)

Georgia Health News: Where People Live Longer — And Where They Don’t
Life expectancy at an English Avenue neighborhood address, in a low-income section of Atlanta, is 63.6 years. But less than 10 miles away, an address in the affluent Margaret Mitchell area of Atlanta, named after the famous writer, has a life expectancy of 87.2 years. Such startling variations commonly appear in new data that break down life expectancy at birth — the average number of years a person can expect to live — for most of the census tracts in the United States, for the period from 2010 to 2015. (Miller, 9/15)

Sacramento Bee: Undocumented Immigrants Seek Health Care Less, Study Finds
A new study challenges the political notion that undocumented immigrants are a burden on the U.S. health care system — in fact, they’re much less likely to seek medical care at all, the study found. The four-year study, from Drexel University in Philadelphia and published in the journal Medical Care, relies on a California health survey and finds undocumented immigrants are using health care services at a lower rate than they did 15 years ago. (Sheeler, 9/15)

Houston Chronicle: West Nile Case Reported In Sugar Land 
The Fort Bend County Health and Human Services Department notified Dr. Joe Anzaldua, who serves as the city's medical director and health authority, that a person who lives in Sugar Land recently tested positive for West Nile Virus at a local hospital. Due to HIPAA considerations, additional details are not available, including where the adult was exposed to West Nile. (9/14)

San Jose Mercury News: Stanford Doctors Lead National Effort For Gun Safety
On Monday, angry and frustrated by gun violence, health care professionals at Stanford Medical Center and 40 other leading medical centers will hold simultaneous rallies to treat firearm violence as a public health crisis. It’s a non-partisan action co-founded by Stanford’s Professor of Medicine Dr. Dean Winslow and fourth year medical student Sarabeth Spitzer. (Krieger, 9/15)

Sacramento Bee: UC, Nurses’ Union Have Tentative Deal
After almost two years of negotiations, the California Nurses Association announced Saturday that it has a tentative contract agreement with the University of California that would boost pay 15 percent over five years. ...If approved by union members, the new contract would cover 14,000 registered nurses working at five UC medical centers, 10 student health centers and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory through October 2020, the press release said. (Dickman, 9/15)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Doctor Didn’t Offer A Flu Shot? It Might Depend On Time Of Day
As the day wears on, even the most efficient physician can fall behind schedule. One possible result, according to a new University of Pennsylvania study: Fewer patients get flu shots. That finding came from a review of 96,000 patient records at 11 primary-care clinics in the Penn Medicine health system, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open. (Avril, 9/14)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Lead Crisis: 1 Health Staffer Fired, 1 Quits, 2 Disciplined
One Milwaukee Health Department staffer was fired, one resigned and two others were disciplined in recent months as the city struggles with its ongoing lead crisis. ...The investigations focused on mismanagement of the city's program aimed at preventing lead poisoning among Milwaukee children. (Spicuzza and Bice, 9/14)

Columbus Dispatch: Unique Partnership Connects Seniors To Services So They Can Remain In Their Homes
In this case, fire departments deal daily with seniors who reach out to them for a variety of needs outside of emergency medical services. NCR, as the largest nonprofit provider of affordable housing, knows how or where to go to solve many of senior’s problems. ...NCR provides the fire departments with a service coordinator, who works out of the fire station and leads the efforts to solve seniors’ issues. (Stankiewicz, 9/16)

Kansas City Star: Baby Jack Palmer Among Youngest To Get Heart-Lung Transplant
“Baby Jack” triumphantly returned home to Kansas City recently as a marvel of modern medicine and moxie, after becoming one of the youngest people to ever have a heart-lung transplant. There is no medical textbook for this and no telling what his future will bring. (Marso, 9/16)

Arizona Republic: ADA: Domestic-Violence Shelters Struggle When People Have Disabilities
Deaf and hard-of-hearing survivors of domestic violence used to leave A New Leaf's shelters after a day or two,frustrated by a lack of qualified interpreters and the ensuing communication problems. ...Disability-rights advocates say organizations with good intentions but little funding often are unequipped to serve survivors who use wheelchairs, are blind or deaf, or have service animals. (Polletta, 9/16)

The Washington Post: A Family Battles A Terrible Diagnosis For An 11 Year Old
You’ve had a bad feeling all summer, a nagging in your gut that something’s wrong. She looks thinner, but she just turned 11 and kids that age get taller, thin out. Yet . . . why is she so pale in July? Why is she tired all the time? Your husband said it was because she’d been staying up too late on her iPad, so you limited her screen time. That didn’t help. She keeps falling asleep smack in the middle of bright summer days. You notice she isn’t enjoying her summer. She’s irritable, picking frequent fights with her younger sister. “It’s just hormones,” you tell yourself. “Eleven is a difficult age.” (Dooley, 9/16)

The New York Times: 2-Year-Old Boy With Deadly Cancer Gets An Early Christmas From His Neighbors
Five weeks ago, Brody Allen’s parents were told that their 2-year-old son’s rare form of brain cancer meant he had two months to live. The boy’s family realized that he probably wouldn’t be able to enjoy one more Christmas. So they decided to celebrate early, putting up a tree and decorations, and their Ohio neighborhood followed suit. (Garcia, 9/15)

Arizona Republic: Advocacy Group Wants Records Of Arizona State Hospital Patient Death
The Arizona Center for Disability Law's federal lawsuit, filed this week, names both the Arizona State Hospital and the Arizona Department of Health Services as defendants, because the Arizona State Hospital, which is an inpatient psychiatric treatment facility, is under the state Health Department's jurisdiction. The group, which among other things, investigates abuse and neglect of Arizona individuals with mental illness, says the hospital violated federal law when it refused to provide "reasonable" unaccompanied access to its facilities, patients and records. (Innes, 9/14)

Kansas City Star: Former U.S. Attorney Grissom Backs Cannabis Legalization
Former U.S. Attorney for Kansas Barry Grissom said Saturday that the federal classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, along with heroin, is “absurd” and he said advocates of marijuana legalization were patriots because they are standing up for individual liberty. As a federal prosecutor, Grissom said, “I soon became a true believer that enforcement of cannabis laws was immoral.” (Campbell, 9/15)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ‘Unknown Drug Substance’ At Georgia Smoke Shop Sickens Detective
A man is in custody after authorities executed a search warrant on a smoke shop in Pickens County, which let to law enforcement officers and emergency response personnel to encounter an “unknown drug substance,” sending five to the hospital, authorities said. A detective was immediately taken to the hospital after he came in contact with the substance, found Friday during a morning search of A-1 Smoke Shop in Jasper, officials said in a Facebook post on the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office’s page. (Habersham and Hansen, 9/15)