State Highlights: In Minn., Nurses File Complaint About Allina Staffing; Mich. Gov.’s Testimony On Legionnaire’s Disease Outbreak Draws Scrutiny

The Star Tribune: Nurses File Complaint Over Allina Staffing
The union representing Allina Health hospital nurses filed a complaint Wednesday — one year to the day after ending a 37-day strike — over the continued assigning of patients to supervisory charge nurses. Allina leaders haven't lived up to a key provision in the contract that ended the strike, said Emily Sippola, a nurse at United Hospital in St. Paul: a commitment to meet and discuss how to prevent charge nurses from being overworked by being assigned patients. (Olson, 10/11)

The Washington Post: Michigan Governor Sticking To Story About Legionnaires’
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is sticking by his congressional testimony about when he learned about a fatal outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease during the Flint water crisis, despite a senior aide’s new disclosure that he informed the Republican governor weeks earlier. Some Democrats in Congress are pouncing on the conflict and urging the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate. (White, 10/11)

Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's Emergency Rooms Prep For Mass Shootings, Stock 'Go Bags,' Tourniquets And Revise Plans
The frequency of mass shootings has changed how Nashville's top trauma medicine experts think about whether it could happen here: It's no longer a theoretical scenario of "if." It's when. And with each event — the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, the Las Vegas shooting, the 2011 massacre that killed 77 in Norway, the 2015 attack at the Bataclan in Paris, to name just a few — the trauma teams review what happened and modify their plans. (Fletcher, 10/11)

Detroit Free Press: Beaumont, U-M-Dearborn Collaborate On A New Autism Center In Dearborn
The newly expanded 33,000-square-foot center is a collaboration between the Beaumont Center for Exceptional Families and the University of Michigan-Dearborn's Early Childhood Education Center, and includes a preschool program where children with autism can be included with typically developing children and experience what it's like to be in a mainstreamed classroom before they start kindergarten. The demand for a center like this is huge. About 50,000 people in Michigan are on the autism spectrum. It is the fastest-growing developmental disability in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now affecting as many as 1 in every 68 children. (Shamus, 10/11)

Sacramento Bee: Smoke From Northern California Wildfires Blankets Sacramento With Unhealthy Smoke
Sacramento Valley and foothills residents awoke Wednesday to the heavy smell of smoke, hazy brown skies and ashes on car windshields – the result of nearly two dozen Northern California wildfires, including the Atlas Fire, which exploded overnight in the hills west of Fairfield. ...Air meters throughout the region registered unhealthy levels of particulate matter from Vacaville and Davis in the west valley to higher foothill elevations in Grass Valley and Colfax early Wednesday. (Bizjak, Anderson and Glover, 10/11)

California Healthline: Giving Birth Is Hard Enough. Try It In The Middle Of A Wildfire.
Days before there was any sign of fire, Nicole and Ben Veum of Santa Rosa, Calif., had been waiting and waiting for their baby to arrive. Nicole’s due date came and went. Her doctor called her into the hospital — Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital — to induce labor. That was Friday. “So we were very excited at that point,” she said. “And then, day after day after day with not a whole lot of progress.” (Dembosky, 10/11)

Boston Globe: Worcester Home Health Company’s Owner Accused Of Stealing $2.7m From MassHealth
The owner of a Worcester company that provides home health care services was arrested Wednesday and charged with stealing $2.7 million from the state Medicaid program, in the latest case of alleged fraud in the home health industry. (Dayal McCluskey, 10/11)

Columbus Dispatch: Local Vietnam Veterans Share Struggles With Late-Onset PTSD
About 8 percent of people who serve in the military go on to develop PTSD, said Heather Axtell, who oversees trauma recovery in the behavioral-health service at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Chalmers P. Wylie Ambulatory Care Center on the Northeast Side. That means that about 700,000 veterans of the Vietnam War, which ended more than 40 years ago, have struggled with the disorder. (Viviano, 10/12)

Georgia Health News: Parents, Advocates Sue State, Claim Inequities In GNETS Schools
Parents of children with disabilities and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday alleging the state of Georgia has discriminated against students placed in “unequal and separate’’ schools for kids with behavioral disorders and problems. The Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support (GNETS) schools are “segregated programs,’’ housed in separate buildings or in separate wings of regular schools, the lawsuit says. (Miller, 10/11)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia Disabled Students Segregated In Inferior Schools, Suit Alleges
Georgia uses its unique network of psychoeducational schools as a “dumping ground” for unwanted students with disabilities, a new class-action lawsuit claims. The suit, filed Wednesday by several advocacy groups on behalf of three parents, accuses state officials of violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution by placing disabled children in segregated schools and classrooms operated by the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS. (Judd, 10/11)

Cincinnati Enquirer: What's Top Concern For Cincinnati Parents? Their Kids' Mental Health
In a first-of-its-kind survey this year by Beech Acres Parenting Center, nearly half of Greater Cincinnati parents, 44 percent, said “understanding kids’ mental health issues” is “very or extremely concerning” to them. More than half of respondents, or 55 percent, were “very or extremely interested” in getting training or guidance to address childhood mental-health issues. (Saker, 10/11)

Georgia Health News: West Nile Cases Down In Georgia, But Virus Still A Danger
State officials said this week that while August saw 18 cases of West Nile, there were just six cases in September. Overall, Georgia reports 37 cases of the disease this year, with five deaths. (Miller, 10/11)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia STD Rates Top 5 For Chlamydia, Syphilis, More
According to a recent report from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Georgia ranked among the top five states in America with the highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. (Pirani, 10/11)

Kaiser Health News: Dementia Patient At Center Of Spoon-Feeding Controversy Dies
An Oregon woman with Alzheimer’s disease, whose husband claimed she was kept alive with spoon-feeding against her written wishes, has died. Nora Harris, 64, died early Wednesday at the Fern Gardens senior care center in Medford, Ore. Her husband, Bill Harris, said the death marks the end of an eight-year battle with the progressive, debilitating disease, which included an unsuccessful court fight to withdraw all food and liquid. (Aleccia, 10/12)