State Highlights: Minn. Works To Curb Unnecessary ER Trips; Medication Vending Machines Gain Traction In Florida

The Star Tribune: 150 ER Visits In A Year? New MN Program Flags High-Use Patients 
Each year, Minnesota’s hospital emergency rooms see thousands of patients with minor illnesses — from coughs to fevers — who could be better treated at a neighborhood clinic at drastically lower cost. To stem that tide, state authorities are using a sophisticated computer screening tool that detects when people on public health insurance programs make dozens of unnecessary trips to hospital ERs and medical clinics. (Serres, 12/3)

Health News Florida: Medical Vending Machines Popping Up In Jacksonville 
Jacksonville Memorial Hospital recently started offering prescription medicine through an “RX-to-go” kiosk right in its emergency room. The idea of on-demand medicine is taking off. Three Jacksonville pharmacists launched a medical vending machine of their own Friday. (Kilbride, 12/4)

Richmond Times Dispatch: Top Officials Seeking Answers In Virginia's Mental Health Crisis 
The facilities accused of negligence in the death of a jail inmate outlined on Friday changes made to improve the way they operate, but top state officials said Virginia is far from fixing its mental health and criminal justice systems. Jamycheal Mitchell, an accused petty thief who wasted away and died in custody, and the plight of thousands like him who are mentally ill and in jail were discussed at length in a landmark meeting that included the secretaries of health and public safety, elected officials and officials with multiple state and local agencies. (Kleiner, 12/2)

The Associated Press: Rural Hospitals In Upstate NY Asked To Repay Federal Money
Rural hospitals across upstate New York are facing the prospect of having to pay back millions of dollars in federal funds that already have been distributed. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently decided to change a calculation used to determine certain funding for sole community and Medicare-dependent hospitals. He says it is retroactively seeking to recoup federal funds based on a new formula. (12/3)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee County To Audit Medical Care In Jails After 4 Deaths
Milwaukee County auditors have started a wide-ranging investigation into medical care at the county's two jails, where four people have died in recent months and a court-appointed monitor found numerous problems related to inmate treatment. Jerry Heer, director of audits for the Milwaukee County Office of the Comptroller, confirmed this week that auditors plan to investigate whether Armor Correctional Health Services is meeting contract requirements and standards of medical care. Armor, a Miami-based for-profit company, has contracted with the county since 2013 to provide medical care at the Milwaukee County Jail and the House of Correction. (Carpenter, 12/2)

Gwinnett Daily Post: Legislators Expected To Tackle Hospital, Education Funding In 2017
The fate of the Affordable Care Act may be uncertain as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over with a Republican-controlled Congress, but don’t expect Georgia lawmakers to wait for Washington’s lead in 2017. At least that was the message Georgia Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer and House of Representatives Minority Leader Stacey Abrams shared during the Gwinnett Chamber’s Legislative Update Luncheon on Friday. (Yeomans, 12/3)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Nurses At Hahnemann, St. Christopher's Reach Tentative Contracts With Tenet
The union representing registered nurses at Hahnemann University Hospital, St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, and St. Christopher's Pediatric Outpatient Clinic announced Sunday that it had reached tentative agreements on first contracts with Tenet Healthcare Corp., the Dallas-based for-profit chain that operates the hospitals. Hahnemann's 940 nurses are scheduled to vote on the tentative agreement Monday. Voting by the 400 nurses at St. Christopher's Hospital and the 30 nurses at the outpatient clinic is set for Wednesday. (Von Bergen, 12/5)

Health News Florida: Lawmakers Searching For A Workers Comp Cure
But in the early 2000's, Florida and a handful of other states went on a business friendly cost-cutting binge. Orlando attorney Geoff Bichler says injured workers were left out in the cold. (Ash, 12/4)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: St. Louis County Caregiver Defrauded Elderly Victims Of $30,000, Prosecutors Say
An in-home caregiver for seniors has been indicted in federal court here for allegedly scheming to defraud three elderly people of more than $30,000. De'Janay Noldon, 27, of St. Louis County, was indicted Thursday on multiple charges including mail fraud, bank fraud, identity theft and Social Security fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. Prosecutors say Noldon assumed the identity of one of her victims to obtain three credit cards she used to make several personal purchases, get cash advances and pay bills. She also accessed the bank accounts of all three victims. (Benchaabane, 12/2)

The Baltimore Sun: Auditors: State Wrongly Charged Disabled Residents Millions In Fees
For years, the state agency that oversees people with disabilities erroneously charged monthly fees to largely poor people who live in residential facilities. And they might never get any of the millions of dollars back. State auditors reported this week that more than 2,500 people might have been charged fees exceeding $4 million during just one year of their review from February 2012 to April 2014, but the payments were likely assessed for a much longer period. (Cohn, 12/3)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Developers Twice Stripped Elderly Services After Getting Millions In Tax Credits
Father-and-son developers from Iowa City have received more than $26.4 million in federal tax credits to provide affordable assisted-living care for Iowa seniors — but they twice have decided to pull services and eliminate oversight of their facilities, state agency records show. A decade ago, Robert P. Burns and his son, Jesse Burns, accepted $6.4 million in tax credits over 10 years to build Walden Point, across from the Mercy Medical Center in downtown Des Moines. (Rood, 12/2)

The CT Mirror: Bottling Plant A Wake-Up Call On State Water
A year ago the Metropolitan District Commission, the Capitol region’s water and sewer agency, approved the sale of up to 1.8 million gallons of water a day, with a volume discount, to a water bottling plant to be built in Bloomfield by the California-based Niagara Bottling Co. A lot of area residents didn’t see this coming, and when they learned of it, they were profoundly unhappy. (Condon, 12/5)

Los Angeles Times: Agencies Were Urged To Address Paramount Metal Emissions Years Before Air Toxics Scare
The recent discovery of high levels of a cancer-causing pollutant in Paramount has alarmed residents and led authorities to crack down on dangerous emissions from two metal-processing plants.But the interventions last week by air regulators and health officials followed years of slow and sporadic steps by several agencies in response to health concerns, say residents and activists in the small city southeast of Los Angeles. If regulators had done their jobs properly, they say, they might have found out years ago that toxic emissions from metal businesses were putting neighbors at risk — and taken action. (Barboza, 12/4)

Texas Tribune: New Screening Tool, Vigilance Lead To Drop In Texas Jail Suicides 
Texas county jails have seen a sharp decline in inmate suicides since they began using a revised mental health screening tool last December. Since December 2015, 14 county jail inmates have taken their own lives, a drop from a record 34 suicides between December 2014 and November 2015. In the five years before that record, inmate suicides averaged 23 a year, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which monitors county lockups across the state... Last fall, lawmakers and other officials set their eyes on the screening tool, also called an intake form, used by jails to determine if inmates are suicide risks. (Silver, 12/4)

Seattle Times: Long Waits For Medications As Group Health Updates Computer System 
Group Health Cooperative pharmacy customers have experienced delays in recent weeks waiting for prescriptions to arrive by mail, waiting on the phone to talk to a pharmacy representative and waiting in line at a pharmacy to get prescriptions filled. The problems can be blamed on a “head to toe” update to the pharmacy system, according to Executive Vice President Erin Leff. Leff said the new system, which went live about three weeks ago, is working well for most, but a minority are suffering longer-than-usual waits, causing anxiety and irritation. (Young, 12/3)