State Highlights: In Ill., Feds Investigate Cook Co. Health System Security Lapse; Survey Grades Patient Safety At San Francisco Hospitals

The Chicago Tribune: Feds investigating Cook County Health And Hospitals System Exposure Of Patient Data
The federal government is investigating a security lapse that exposed the personal information of more than 700 patients at Cook County Health and Hospitals System this year. (Schenckner, 11/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: How Safe Is Your Hospital? Survey Grades SF-Area Medical Centers
About 1,000 patients die in the United States each day because of preventable hospital errors, according to the Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization that compiles an annual survey on hospital performance. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety. ... We wanted to see how local hospitals compare on safety issues, so we chose those in a 25-mile radius of downtown San Francisco. Of 26 hospitals, seven received A's, seven earned B's, another seven got C's and five were marked D's. (Moffitt, 11/14)

Boston Globe: Beth Israel Deaconess To Build 10-Story Patient Building
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center plans to construct a new 10-story patient care building, its largest such project in more than 20 years. The building in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area would house private patient rooms, operating rooms, and imaging facilities, and it would include a rooftop landing pad for medical helicopters, according to a letter hospital officials filed with the Boston Planning & Development Agency. The building would have 345,000 square feet of space and would be located on the western end of the hospital campus. (Dayal McCluskey, 11/14)

The Associated Press: Appeals Court Won't Reconsider Planned Parenthood Defunding
A federal appeals court said Monday it won't reconsider a ruling that Arkansas can block Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, setting up a potential showdown over defunding efforts by conservative states over videos secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request by three Planned Parenthood Great Plains patients to reconsider a three-judge panel's decision upholding the state's defunding decision. (DeMillo, 11/13)

Boston Globe: Catholics Split Over Petition Drives At Churches
A controversy is brewing at local churches between Catholics whose faith guides their politics and those who favor a wall between church and state, after the archbishop of Boston said late last month that political signature drives are permissible on church property. Mary Collins, who has attended Marlborough’s Immaculate Conception Parish for 15 years, said she was “startled” when it was announced last Sunday that some parishioners would gather signatures in the church lobby after Mass for a measure that would prohibit funding abortions with state dollars. (Fox, Capelouto and Guerra, 11/13)

Texas Tribune: Health Clinic Provides Free Abortions To 85 Women Affected By Hurricane Harvey
Whole Woman's Health provided free abortions to 85 women affected by Hurricane Harvey, the clinic said Monday. The procedures, which took place at the clinic's Austin and San Antonio locations, were offered for free to Harvey victims during September. A dozen other women received free consultations through the clinic but did not have abortions performed. (Platoff, 11/13)

NPR: AARP Foundation Sues Nursing Home To Stop Illegal Evictions
A California judge could decide Tuesday if Gloria Single will be reunited with her husband, Bill. She's 83 years old. He's 93. The two have been married for 30 years. They lived in the same nursing home until last March, when Gloria Single was evicted without warning. Her situation isn't unique. Nationwide, eviction is the leading complaint about nursing homes. In California last year, more than 1,500 nursing home residents complained that they were discharged involuntarily. That's an increase of 73 percent since 2011. (Jaffe, 11/13)

The Associated Press: CA Doctor's License Suspended After 2 Patient Deaths
The board's ruling says one of the patients experienced respiratory arrest after waking up from breast augmentation surgery in 2013 and died after being taken to a hospital. It says another patient's 2013 death was "likely due to 'trauma' caused by the surgical procedure." Yoho's attorney, Albert Garcia, said that the women died from fat embolisms but he decided to settle with the medical board. (11/13)

The Associated Press: Man: Psychiatric Hospital Staff Tormented, Kicked Brother
A man who says his brother was abused repeatedly by staff at Connecticut's only maximum-security psychiatric hospital urged lawmakers on Monday to look more deeply into the case and make changes at the state-run facility. Al Shehadi said he came forward to give a name to the victim at the center of internal and criminal investigations, to tell his brother's story and to "encourage this committee to continue to investigate what happened." (11/13)

Fresno Bee: They Went To A Plastic Surgeon To Improve Their Looks, But Wound Up Dead
The state medical board has ordered a 30-day suspension for a Visalia plastic surgeon accused of gross negligence and incompetence in the treatment of four patients, including two women who died in 2013. Dr. Robert Alan Yoho, who has had offices in Pasadena and Visalia, cannot practice medicine from Nov. 19 through Dec. 16 under the disciplinary order by the Medical Board of California. The suspension was part of a five-year probation the board imposed. (Anderson, 11/13)

Los Angeles Times: San Diego's Fancy $2-Million Public Restroom Raises Eyebrows Amid Hepatitis Outbreak
The city of San Diego helped install an aesthetically pleasing structure on its signature waterfront in 2014, designed by an artist to invoke "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," the popular 1970 novella about a seagull who wanted to be special. Its function? A restroom. Its cost? Two million dollars. (Cook, 11/13)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati-Based Chemed Pays $75M To Settle Medicare Lawsuit
Chemed has paid the U.S. government a record $75 million to settle lawsuits claiming the hospice care provider submitted false claims to Medicare. The settlement resolves allegations that between 2002 and 2013 Chemed subsidiary Vitas knowingly submitted or caused to be submitted false claims to Medicare for services to hospice patients who were not terminally ill. (Coolidge, 11/13)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento County Could Place Homeless People In 15 Rentals Rather Than Central Shelter
After months of developing plans for a San Francisco-style “full service” homeless shelter housing 75 men and women under one roof, Sacramento County staff are recommending – at least in the short-term – a plan to put those homeless people in 15 rental homes scattered across the county. (Fletcher, 11/14)

KQED: A Food Community Unites To Pay Local Farmers And Feed Fire Evacuees Nourishing, Home-Cooked Meals
On the first Friday after the North Bay fires swept through Sonoma County, displacing an estimated 100,000 people, Tim Page drove from San Francisco to the Salvation Army in Sonoma County with 2,000 fresh, chef-made breakfasts, courtesy of SF Fights Fire, stacked in the back of his company van. The trip was the first of many made over the next two weeks by Page and his employees at F.E.E.D. Sonoma, a micro-regional produce aggregation and distribution food hub in Sebastopol that functions as a conduit between dozens of small, organic farms and chefs and restaurants across the Bay Area. (Clark, 11/13)

KQED: Benicia Still Looking for Answers from Valero Six Months After Refinery Outage
When a massive refinery outage sent flames, black smoke and toxic gas shooting into the sky from Valero’s Benicia plant last spring, the city’s mayor said the local government had little information about what was going on. Days later Mayor Elizabeth Patterson called for the city to develop regulations that would give Benicia more oversight over the oil giant it hosts. She proposed regulations similar to those in Contra Costa County, home to several refineries, that require oil refining facilities to undergo safety audits and share their risk management plans. ... But six months after one the Bay Area’s worst refinery malfunctions in the last five years, the refinery oversight measure has not moved through the City Council. (Goldberg, 11/14)