State Highlights: Grand Canyon Tourists Possibly Exposed To High Levels Of Radiation For Years; Tennessee Nurse Charged In Patient’s Death Pleads Not Guilty

CNN: For Nearly 2 Decades, Grand Canyon Tourists Were Exposed To Radiation Beyond The Federal Limit, Safety Manager Says
Uranium ore stored at the Grand Canyon National Park museum may have exposed visitors and workers to elevated levels of radiation, according to the park's safety, health and wellness manager. Elston Stephenson told CNN that he began asking officials from the National Park Service and Department of the Interior last summer to warn workers and tourists they had possibly been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. After his requests were ignored, he said he sent an email to all park staff at the Grand Canyon on February 4. (Boyette and Moshtaghian, 2/20)

The Washington Post: Nurse Charged In Fatal Drug-Swap Error Pleads Not Guilty
A Tennessee nurse charged with reckless homicide after a medication error killed a patient pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in a Nashville courtroom packed with other nurses who came in scrubs to show their support. The error happened at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in December 2017 when RaDonda Vaught injected 75-year-old Charlene Murphey with the paralytic vecuronium instead of the sedative Versed. (Loller, 2/20)

ProPublica: New Jersey Said 10 Years Ago It Would Rank Its Most Contaminated Sites. It Never Did.
A decade after legislators mandated that the Department of Environmental Protection rank every contaminated site in order of urgency and severity, the agency has yet to act. The rankings were supposed to ensure that the most dangerous sites remained a priority even as the state gave private companies — and effectively private developers — a bigger role in the cleanup process. (Buford, 2/21)

The Associated Press: Maryland Doctor Accused Of Sex Misconduct Loses License
A Maryland allergy doctor has lost his license over what the state Board of Physicians determined was immoral and sexual misconduct with three teenage girls. The Baltimore Sun reports the board says it began investigating Surender K. Vaswani in 2017 and made a final determination in January after reviewing the girl’s allegations. (2/21)

Seattle Times: UW Medicine Mistakenly Exposed Information On Nearly 1 Million Patients 
The medical files of nearly 1 million patients of University of Washington Medicine were visible on the internet for at least three weeks in December, UW Medicine said Wednesday. The files, which were exposed Dec. 4 because of “an internal human error,” were records the hospital system uses to document when it shares patient information, for instance with public-health authorities or law enforcement. (Fields and Gutman, 2/20)

The Associated Press: Baltimore Mayor Names City’s Next Health Commissioner
Baltimore’s mayor has named an African American pediatrician as the city’s next health commissioner. Dr. Letitia Dzirasa will take over the role next month, overseeing a department with some 800 employees and a $150 million annual budget. Dzirasa earned a doctorate of medicine from Meharry Medical College in Tennessee. She did her residency at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She most recently worked as a “health innovation officer” at a Baltimore-based software company she founded with her husband. (2/20)

The Baltimore Sun: Baltimore Names Dr. Letitia Dzirasa, A Pediatrician, As New Health Commissioner
Dr. Letitia Dzirasa, a Johns Hopkins-trained Baltimore pediatrician with experience in high-tech information systems and community-based health care, will take over as the city’s health commissioner on March 11. Mayor Catherine Pugh announced Wednesday that Dzirasa will succeed Dr. Leana Wen, who left the Baltimore Health Department in September after four years to head Planned Parenthood. (Cohn, 2/20)

Arizona Republic: Arizona Student Caitlin Secrist Can't Get Copies Of Medical Records
Caitlin Secrist can't eat, can't work, can barely go to school online and is in constant pain from a severe illness. Now, the 21-year-old college student could die because she can't get copies of her own medical records. The files are locked away in a repossessed electronic-records system while creditors of bankrupt Florence Hospital at Anthem and Gilbert Hospital bicker over who should pay for access to them. (Sanders, 2/20)

Nola.com: Possible Layouts Emerge For Charity Hospital Redevelopment 
Developers leading the project to repurpose Charity Hospital into a mixed-use development have begun community outreach efforts that they expect will continue throughout the project expected to last until at least the end of 2021. The development team 1532 Tulane Partners, comprising New Orleans-based CCNO Development Inc. and El Ad U.S. Holdings, began that outreach at an LSU Board of Supervisors real estate committee meeting Monday night (Feb. 18). The committee took public comments and project architect Mark Heck of New Orleans-based Williams Architects gave the audience an overview of how they plan to use the 1 million-square-foot building. (Litten, 2/20)

KCUR: Overland Park ER Doc Who Won $29 Million In Whistleblower Suit Fights To Keep The Whole Amount 
A physician who won one of the biggest jury awards in Missouri last year in a whistleblower case over emergency room staffing is going back to court after a judge slashed his award by more than half. Dr. Raymond Brovont had worked in the regular emergency room and the pediatric emergency room at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. Technically, his employer was an emergency-room staffing company called EmCare. After he raised concerns that only one physician was being used at night to cover both ERs – a policy he believed endangered patient safety — Brovont was fired. (Margolies, 2/20)

Texas Tribune: Republicans Join Texas Death Penalty Bill After Supreme Court Ruling
On Wednesday, state Reps. James White and Jeff Leach became joint authors to Rep. Senfronia Thompson’s House Bill 1139, which would establish a pretrial procedure to determine if a capital murder defendant is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. White chairs the House Corrections Committee, and Leach leads the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee. (McCullough, 2/20)

California Healthline: Teachers Strike In US Cities To Demand More School Nurses, Better Pay
As teachers across the country walk out of their classrooms, hit the picket lines and demand higher pay, they’re keeping school nurses in mind — asking for more of them or, at the very least, better pay for them. Oakland, Calif., teachers plan to strike Thursday if they can’t hammer out a deal with the district that includes a “living wage” and more nurses and counselors. Last week in Denver, thousands of educators and school nurses went on strike and marched to the state Capitol asking for a significant raise — and got it. (Ibarra, 2/20)

The Baltimore Sun: Bon Secours Joins Effort To Build, Sustain Affordable Housing Projects 
Bon Secours Mercy Health System has joined five other hospital systems and a set of nonprofit groups to bring more affordable housing to communities including Baltimore. The hospitals are working with the Center for Community Investment at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonprofit group that works for social change, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which focuses on health care. The groups support the idea that housing promotes stable, healthy communities. (Cohn, 2/21)

The Star Tribune: University Of Minnesota Survey Links Regular Pot Use To Lower Grades 
College students who use marijuana regularly have lower grades — whether or not they think it affects them, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of Minnesota student survey data. Mean grade-point averages dropped from 3.33 to 3.01, comparing male students who didn’t use marijuana at all with students who used it daily. The comparable gap for female students was 3.4 to 3.18 Researchers at Boynton Health, the student health service at the University of Minnesota, conducted the analysis after seeing a significant increase in marijuana use in initial data from a 2018 student survey. (Olson, 2/21)