Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
State Highlights: In Wash., Fifth Patient Diagnosed With Legionnaires; Former Ohio State Doctor Scores Age Discrimination Settlement
The Seattle Times: UW Medical Center, Overlake Report New Legionnaires’ Disease Cases
A fifth patient has been diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease at the University of Washington Medical Center, days after health officials said the deadly outbreak appeared to be contained. (Aleccia, 9/26)
Columbus Dispatch: Former Ohio State Doctor Gets $100,000 In Age Discrimination Settlement
Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center will pay $100,000 as part of a settlement unveiled Monday to a former doctor who alleged age discrimination in a 2015 lawsuit filed in the Ohio Court of Claims. In 2004, Dr. Nathan C. Hall became an assistant professor in the OSU College of Medicine's radiology department. Within two years, he was promoted to division chief of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging. In his lawsuit, Hall states that he met or exceeded the productivity expectations outlined in his employment agreement as well as received positive performance reviews until Dr. Richard D. White was appointed to department chair in 2010. (Forchesato, 9/26)
Minnesota Public Radio News: 3 Weeks Into Strike, Nurses Union And Allina Resume Contract Talks
Negotiators for Allina Health and the nurses union resume contract talks today — three weeks after more than 4,000 hospital nurses went on strike over health benefits. A federal mediator called negotiators back to the bargaining table last week, but that doesn't mean the two sides are ready to cut a deal. Both Allina and the Minnesota Nurses Association have been loathe to make the first move in resuming contract negotiations after a 22-hour bargaining session in early September. (Benson, 9/27)
Modern Healthcare: Connecticut Hospitals Lose Challenge To State User Fee Tax
Two Connecticut regulators last week upheld a controversial state tax on hospitals' net patient revenue, opening the door for dozens of hospitals to take their challenge to court. (Teichert, 9/26)
Mercury News: Drugging Our Kids: Legislators Call On Governor Brown To Sign Bills To Protect Foster Youth
Foster youth advocates and Bay Area legislators on Monday told a panel of state officials that the alarming conclusions of a recent state audit highlighting California’s weak oversight of psychiatric drugs for foster kids could be solved if Gov. Jerry Brown signs three pieces of key legislation into law this week... The audit, released Aug. 23, mirrored many findings of this newspaper’s series “Drugging Our Kids” that disclosed the state’s dependence on psychotropic medications to control troubled children in the state’s foster care system and the failure to track how the drugs are prescribed. Beall said that one solution is his own Senate Bill 1291, which would require better transparency and tracking of mental health services for foster kids in every California county. (Seipel, 9/26)
The Associated Press: Psychiatrist: Hospital Provokes Patients To Enrich Itself
A doctor who trained for two years at the psychiatric unit of a New York hospital said in a lawsuit Monday that poor adolescent patients were routinely provoked into acting out, then restrained and drugged, extending their hospitalization and Medicaid payments. Dr. Alfred Robenzadeh said that supervisors at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla retaliated against him when he tried to address what he says was chronic patient abuse that increased the severity of diagnoses, with usual two-week inpatient stays often extended days or weeks. He alleges the practice defrauded Medicaid. (9/26)
Boston Globe: Steward Gets $1.25B To Fund Expansion, Repay Cerberus
Medical Properties Trust will buy Steward Health Care’s hospital properties for $1.2 billion and take a $50 million stake in the company... Steward, the largest for-profit hospital operator in Massachusetts, was created in 2010 when Cerberus Capital Management bought the former Caritas Christi network of Catholic hospitals. It said it will return the New York-based firm’s original investment, though Cerberus will continue to hold a majority stake. (Dayal McCluskey, 9/26)
Cleveland Plain-Dealer: Cleveland Will Post Signs Warning Of Lead Hazards; Old Dangers Still Linger
For the past 11 months, Cleveland officials say they've been at work rebuilding a beleaguered program meant to respond to children poisoned by lead. Yet homes that city health workers knew contained hazardous levels of the toxin still linger in neighborhoods, posing a potential threat to young children and pregnant women. Right now, the city knows about more than 300 properties that it should have evacuated and posted signs warning of lead hazards. (Dissell and Zeltner, 9/26)
The Seattle Times: Patients Flood ERs, Hospitals After Pain Clinics’ Shutdown
More than 1,500 former patients of Seattle Pain Centers have sought help in Washington emergency rooms since the chain of clinics was closed abruptly in July — and hundreds more have swamped local hospital programs. (Aleccia, 9/26)
Mercury News: California Ballot Measures: Tobacco Tax Tight; Voters Favor Parole Reforms, Poll Finds
California voters favor reforming the state parole system, but are more closely divided about slapping a two-buck-a-pack tax on cigarettes, a new Field Poll shows. And voters also favor extending a tax on the wealthy that they first approved in 2012, the poll shows. The new poll shows what could be a softening of voters’ appetite for a new tobacco tax to fund health care and tobacco prevention efforts, as the deep-pocketed opposition rolls out a heavy ad campaign attacking the measure as a tax grab for special interests. (Peele, 9/26)
Kaiser Health News: Election Buzz: With Pot On The Ballot, States Weigh How To Police Stoned Drivers
In five states this fall — California, Arizona, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts — voters will be deciding whether marijuana should be legal for recreational use. And any of those states that do legalize marijuana will have to wrestle with the question of how to enforce laws against stoned drivers. It has been legal to smoke pot for fun in Colorado since January 2014, and the state modeled its marijuana driving-under-the-influence law on the one for alcohol. If a blood test shows a certain level of THC, the mind-altering compound in marijuana, the law says you shouldn’t be driving." (O'Neill and Markus, 9/27)
Boston Globe: Massachusetts Marijuana Doctor Should Not Have Lost License, Judge Says
A Massachusetts physician should not have had his medical license suspended for allowing nurse practitioners in his office to certify patients for medical marijuana use, according to a state administrative law judge. Regulators in May suspended the license of Dr. John C. Nadolny, medical director of Canna Care Docs, a practice with eight Massachusetts locations that specialize in screening and approving patients for marijuana use. The Board of Registration in Medicine had ruled that Nadolny was an immediate threat to public safety, saying his office improperly used nurse practitioners to certify that thousands of patients were eligible to receive medical marijuana. (Lazar, 9/26)
