State Highlights: Mass. Hospital Restricts Privileges Of Controversial Child Abuse Skeptic; California Faces Crisis With One Out Of Every Three Water Systems Compromised

ProPublica: Boston Hospital Reports Disciplining Of Renowned Child Abuse Skeptic
A Boston hospital has notified the Massachusetts medical board that it has restricted the work of a world-renowned endocrinologist criticized for espousing controversial theories as an expert witness for people accused of child abuse. The action against Dr. Michael Holick is cited on his profile page on the board’s website under “health care facility discipline.” The listing is intended to alert members of the public who visit the site that Boston Medical Center, where Holick practices, has restricted his rights or privileges. (Armstrong, 7/24)

The New York Times: The Crisis Lurking In Californians’ Taps: How 1,000 Water Systems May Be At Risk
It was bath time and Rosalba Moralez heard a cry. She rushed to the bathroom and found her 7-year-old daughter, Alexxa, being doused with brown, putrid water. “We kept running the tub, we turned on the sink, we flushed the toilet. All the water was coming out dirty,” Ms. Moralez said. For more than a year, discolored water has regularly gushed from faucets in the family’s bathroom and kitchen, as in hundreds of other households here in Willowbrook, Calif., an unincorporated community near Compton in South Los Angeles. (Del Real, 7/24)

The Associated Press: Gun Group Wants Judge To Block Ammunition Background Checks
A California affiliate of the National Rifle Association has asked a U.S. judge to block a new law requiring background checks for anyone buying ammunition. The California Rifle & Pistol Association asked San Diego-based U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez to halt the checks and related restrictions on ammunition sales.Voters approved tightening California's already strict firearms laws in 2016. The restrictions took effect July 1. (7/23)

Sacramento Bee: CA Health Care Spending Hurts Community Health, Report Says
In a report released Tuesday, community health advocates at Oakland’s Well Being Trust warned California’s leaders that they must curb prices and waste in health care spending or risk a dangerous paradox where soaring medical costs gobble up funding that should go to essential social programs. To illustrate that point, researchers noted that the state of California paid out $1.22 on education, public health, environmental protections and social services for every dollar it spent on health care in 2007 but 11 years later, only 68 cents went toward those four areas for each dollar spent on health care. (Anderson, 7/23)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Neil Armstrong’s Family Got $6M Settlement From Hospital After Death
When Neil Armstrong died Aug. 25, 2012, at Mercy Health Fairfield Hospital, his family simply attributed the cause to complications from coronary bypass surgery. A month later, the first man on the moon was buried at sea with military honors and the thanks of a grateful nation. Armstrong’s family has never talked publicly about the astronaut’s last days in the hospital, largely to stay in harmony with how he lived. The modest, humble man from Wapakoneta, Ohio, shied from the spotlight in the decades after his flight aboard Apollo 11 and his July 20, 1969, walk on the lunar surface. (Saker, 7/23)

The Baltimore Sun: 3D Printed Hearts And Joints? Doctors At UMMC, VA Hospital Are Starting With Models 
About 1 percent of babies are born with congenital heart defects. A fraction of those children, like Syah, have severe heart problems. With a kinked aorta, holes in her heart and two right ventricles, the shape of Syah’s heart is rare, making surgical repairs complicated. But using 3D-printed models of her heart, doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center were able to anticipate the anatomical differences they would find when they cut open Syah’s chest, increasing the chances for a shorter and successful surgery. (Meehan and Cohn, 7/24)

Sacramento Bee: Former Sutter Executive Alleges His Firing Was Retaliatory
A former Sutter Health IT executive said the company fired him because he told an investigator that management could have avoided a systemwide computer failure in May 2018 if they had taken his advice to install backup infrastructure for electronic medical records, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Sacramento Superior Court. Stuart James said that Sutter not only wrongfully terminated him in July 2018 but that the health provider also went on to defame him by naming him as one of three information technology executives terminated in the fallout from the outage. (Anderson, 7/23)

WBUR: Mass. Nursing Homes Get $50 Million Lifeline, But More Closures Are Expected
Massachusetts lawmakers are extending a financial lifeline to the state's nursing home industry, which has seen a string of providers shutter in recent months. On Monday, both houses of the state legislature passed a budget with $415.4 million in Medicaid funding for nursing homes—a $50 million increase from the previous year's budget. (Ma, 7/23)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cleveland Lead-Safe Legislation ‘One Step Closer’ To Passing
City Council’s lead poisoning prevention legislation is “one step closer” to becoming law.Introduced in June, the legislation would require mandatory lead-safe certificates for pre-1978 rental properties. The full council could vote on and pass the legislation as soon as tomorrow. (Dissell, 7/23)

Texas Tribune: New Texas Law Makes It Easier To Punish Students Who Harass Teachers
Starting in September, such students will be subject to a new state law, one that requires students who harass teachers to be referred to disciplinary alternative education programs — outside of their regular classrooms. The law narrowly passed the Republican-dominated state Legislature in May after a lobbying group for Texas teachers argued it was key to ensuring educators are safe and protected in their classrooms. (Swaby, 7/24)

The Associated Press: Judge Orders Improvements At County Jail In Georgia
A U.S. judge ordered officials in a metro Atlanta county Tuesday to improve conditions at a local jail where women with mental health problems said in a lawsuit that they were subject to prolonged solitary confinement and dirty cells. Fulton County Sheriff Theodore Jackson must permit the women at South Fulton jail to have one hour of recreation time and two hours of free time each day and come up with a plan to provide clean cells and "therapeutic activities," Judge William Ray said. (7/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: Court Orders Consultation With Patients Or Reps In End-Of-Life And Psychiatric Drug Decisions
Doctors and staff at nursing homes can administer psychiatric drugs and make end-of-life decisions for patients who have been found mentally incompetent, as long as the patients or their representatives have a say in the decision. That was the verdict Monday from a state appeals court in San Francisco about a 1992 California law that allowed nursing home physicians to make decisions affecting the health and lives of incapacitated residents with no close friends or relatives to make decisions for them. (Egelko, 7/23)

Los Angeles Times: Peak Fire Season Is Near And The Federal Government Is Short Hundreds Of Firefighters
Heading into the hottest and driest months of the wildfire season, the Department of the Interior is short hundreds of firefighters, a result of recruitment problems and the longest federal government shutdown in history. Based on interviews and internal agency memos obtained through a public records request, The Times found that the agency has about 500 fewer firefighters available than expected — a roughly 10% shortfall. (Phillips, 7/23)

Georgia Health News: Residents, Officials Voice Concern About Ethylene Oxide Pollution
Local residents and their elected officials in metro Atlanta are responding with concern after learning that a cancer-causing gas could be drifting through the air near their homes, schools and workplaces. On Friday, WebMD and Georgia Health News revealed that Georgia had three census tracts the EPA identified as having elevated cancer risks because of a toxic gas called ethylene oxide. (Goodman and Miller, 7/23)

The Washington Post: Northern Virginia Health Officials Investigating Foodborne Illness Outbreaks
Virginia health officials are investigating an increase in cases of a foodborne intestinal illness and dozens of suspected cases involving two large employers. The Virginia Department of Health reported Tuesday on a recent increase of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness caused by the foodborne parasite cyclospora, since mid-June in Northern Virginia. The source of the outbreak has not been identified. (Moyer, 7/23)