State Highlights: Johns Hopkins Filed Suits Against 2,400 Maryland Patients For Unpaid Bills; Conn. House Passes Bill Raising Age Of E-Cig Sales To 21

The Baltimore Sun: Johns Hopkins Hospital Sues Patients, Many Low Income, For Medical Debt 
John Hopkins Hospital has filed more than 2,400 lawsuits in Maryland courts since 2009 against patients with unpaid bills, including a large number of residents from distressed neighborhoods surrounding the East Baltimore medical campus. The number of cases has been increasing, from 20 in 2009 to a peak of 535 in 2016, according a report released by the Coalition for a Humane Hopkins, which includes patients and neighborhood, faith and activist groups such as the AFL-CIO and National Nurses United, a union involved in a contentious organizing effort at Hopkins. (Cohn and Mirabella, 5/17)

The CT Mirror: House Passes Bill To Ban Sale Of E-Cigarettes To Youths Under 21
After more than three hours of debate, the House approved a bill Thursday that would raise the age from 18 to 21 for anyone purchasing cigarettes, tobacco products and electronic nicotine delivery systems. Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport and co-chairman of the legislature’s public health committee, said the bill was one of the most important to be considered this year. (Megan, 5/16)

The CT Mirror: No Vote To End Religious Vaccine Exemptions This Year
egislators who in recent weeks had accelerated efforts to repeal Connecticut’s religious exemption on mandatory immunizations reversed themselves Thursday, abandoning their quest amid concerns about what to do with unvaccinated children who are already enrolled in school. The change would not have forced children to be immunized, but it would have prohibited kids who are not vaccinated on religious grounds from enrolling in the state’s public schools. (Carlesso, 5/16)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Should Cleveland Tax Soda To Pay For A Lead Program? Health Benefits Are Clear, But Opposition Could Be Fierce
By taxing the sale of sugary drinks, as recently suggested by a City Council member, Cleveland could combat multiple health issues, including lead poisoning, diabetes and heart disease. The tax could raise much needed money to abate lead hazards in thousands of city homes while reducing the consumption of soda, fruit punches and other sugar-laden beverages that research shows contribute to early death. (Higgs, 5/16)

Modern Healthcare: Study: EHRs Can Help Address Social Needs In Primary Care
Boston Medical Center's new screening tool has shown promise for addressing patients' social needs in primary-care settings and developing better clinical strategies, according to a study published Wednesday. The hospital has embedded a screening program for identifying social needs within its electronic health record system that automatically processes responses and prints out a list of appropriate resources. (Johnson, 5/16)

Reuters: Bayer Bets On 'Silver Bullet' Defense In Roundup Litigation; Experts See Hurdles
Bayer AG plans to argue that a $2 billion jury award and thousands of U.S. lawsuits claiming its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes cancer should be tossed because a U.S. regulatory agency said the herbicide is not a public health risk. Some legal experts believe Bayer will have a tough time convincing appellate courts to throw out verdicts and lawsuits on those grounds. Bayer has a better shot if a business-friendly U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case, experts said. But that could take years. (5/16)

The Wall Street Journal: New York’s First Proton Therapy Center To Open In July
New York City is set to get a new radiation-treatment center, nearly a decade in the making, that uses proton beams to treat cancerous tumors. Called the New York Proton Center, it is a for-profit partnership of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Montefiore Health System and Mount Sinai Health System, managed by the ProHEALTH company. Financing for the center was provided in part by the hospitals. (West, 5/16)

The Associated Press: Lawyer: Cop Who Killed Texas Woman Knew She Was Mentally Ill
A Houston-area police officer knew his neighbor suffered from mental illness and should have offered assistance when that was apparent, but instead he fatally shot the 44-year-old woman, a lawyer for the victim's family said Thursday. Pamela Turner had struggled with paranoid schizophrenia since her diagnosis in 2005, and may have been in crisis the night she was killed, attorney Ben Crump said during a press conference. (5/16)

The Associated Press: 71-Year-Old Man Undertakes Cross-Country Walk For Veterans
A 71-year-old man, inspired by his work last year at a park where veterans were camping because they were homeless and struggling with addiction, embarked on a 3,600-mile, coast-to-coast walk this week to draw attention to their plight. William Shuttleworth, toting a 25-pound backpack and singing "America the Beautiful," departed his hometown of Newburyport, of Massachusetts, on Wednesday for what he estimates will be a 7½-month trek to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California. (5/16)

Modern Healthcare: Two Health Systems Standardize Sepsis Care To Reduce Mortality, Costs
Leaders at Ascension noticed that nearly 10% of patients in their hospitals who were diagnosed with sepsis died, five times the average mortality for all inpatients. They decided to prioritize the goal of improving sepsis outcomes at all their hospitals during fiscal year 2019. That's no easy task in a company with 151 hospitals in 21 states and the District of Columbia. (Meyer, 5/16)

The Baltimore Sun: UMMS Affiliate Hospitals Also Have Deals With Board Members. Maryland Lawmakers Want Reforms There, Too. 
State officials outraged by self-dealing contracts between the University of Maryland Medical System and its board members are calling on the health network’s affiliate hospitals to reform their board practices, as well, after a Baltimore Sun investigation revealed similar business ties. UMMS has endured the wrath of lawmakers upset that the medical system entered into contracts with the companies of nearly a third of its board of directors — particularly because several of them were no-bid deals. The outcry resulted in the resignations of seven board members, including the UMMS CEO and Baltimore’s mayor. (Donovan and Rector, 5/16)

Los Angeles Times: Homeless Population Jumps By Thousands Across The San Francisco Bay Area
California is spending millions of dollars to stem the tide of homelessness without much to show for it. The latest evidence of that arrived Thursday, when several Bay Area cities and counties reported that their latest tallies of homeless people revealed big increases. San Francisco saw a 17% jump in the number of homeless residents over the last two years, according to preliminary results of the city’s point-in-time count. (Oreskes, 5/16)

Modern Healthcare: UPMC Forms Telemedicine Company To Tackle Infectious Disease
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has spun out a specialty telemedicine company focused on infectious disease care, the health system announced Thursday. The new company—Infectious Disease Connect—formed following the success of UPMC's tele-infectious disease program, which launched in 2013. The telemedicine program connects infectious disease specialists at UPMC with patients and physicians at rural community hospitals for consultation and treatment services. (Cohen, 5/16)

Arizona Republic: Safety Concerns Spark Move Of More Than 700 Inmates From Lewis Prison
After facing criticism over safety concerns, the Arizona Department of Corrections moved hundreds of inmates from a Buckeye prison to other facilities across the state. The department completed the move of 716 close-custody inmates — those requiring intensive supervision — from the Lewis prison Thursday, it announced. (Castle, 5/16)

Sacramento Bee: 4,000 Kaiser Therapists Authorize Indefinite Strike In CA
Roughly 4,000 mental health clinicians at Kaiser Permanente have authorized their union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, to declare an open-ended strike as early as June if they have not secured a new contract with their employer. ...John Nelson, Kaiser’s vice president of communications, said NUHW’s announcement is another tactic in the union leadership’s ongoing campaign to create pressure for management to agree to their financial demands. (Anderson, 5/17)

Sacramento Bee: Strikers: UCD’s Aggie Square Hospital Pulls ‘Bait And Switch’
Picketing outside UC Davis Medical Center on Thursday, unionized workers again hammered home their displeasure over UCD’s plan to allow Kindred Healthcare to staff a new rehabilitation hospital planned for the Aggie Square development on the corner of Stockton Boulevard and Broadway in Sacramento. (Anderson, 5/16)

Detroit Free Press: Michigan State University Could Increase Student Costs For Health Care
Michigan State University quietly cut funding from tuition going to its student health and wellness department in the fall of 2018, forcing the department to run on other sources of income, including its reserves. In an internal memo, department leaders say they were not consulted on the cut. The cut was part of an ongoing plan to redo how the department is funded, which could include a new student health fee and billing students for more services, according to documents provided to the Detroit Free Press by sources within the university's administration. (Jesse, 5/17)

Arizona Republic: Chickenpox Cases Among Asylum Seekers Waiting To Enter U.S.
Since late January, U.S. immigration officials have been forcing some Central American asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for judges to decide their cases; the controversial program took effect at the Calexico border crossing in mid-March. Now, as migrants crowd into shelters in Mexicali, facility operators and Mexican state health officials are dealing with a new challenge: At one shelter, at least a dozen adults and children, including Briseba Aracely, have developed chickenpox in the past month. (Plevin, 5/16)

Des Moines Register: Mental Health Care Away From Home Can Be Difficult For College Students
Beginning and attending college or graduate school can be a major life transition for many students. It especially becomes difficult, however, for students with mental illness who move away from home and care designed to deal with their specific health care problem. One of every three U.S. college students shows symptoms of a mental health problem such as depression, generalized anxiety disorder or being suicidal, a study by Sara Oswalt, of the University of Texas at San Antonio, and other researcher said in a 2018 report, “Trends in college students’ mental health diagnoses and utilization of services, 2009-15.” Depression and anxiety are the two most common mental illnesses among college students, anxiety having surpassed depression, affecting between 38 and 55 percent of college students, the study, published in the Journal of American College Health, showed. (Bohlke, 5/16)