State Highlights: North Carolina’s Senior Residents Brace For Oncoming Storm; Calif. Nurses Claim Restrictive Timekeeping Software Has Led To Unpaid Overtime

North Carolina Health News: When Hurricanes Threaten, Older People Need Special Assistance
Maria Brown and her friends at a Raleigh senior center weren’t too freaked Monday about the approach of Hurricane Florence — yet. “I’m not frightened,” said Brown, 71, a New York City transplant who was playing cribbage at the Five Points Center for Active Adults. “I’ve got gas and cash. That’s what we were told to get.” Several patrons’ plans were informed by distinct recollections of previous monster storms such as Hurricane Hazel, which in 1954 killed 19 people and destroyed 15,000 homes in North Carolina, according to the National Weather Service. (Goldsmith, 9/11)

Sacramento Bee: Dignity Health Sued, Nurses Say Prep Work Is Unpaid Overtime
A recent lawsuit alleges that up to 1,200 Sacramento-area nurses with Dignity Health worked as many as 50 minutes per 12-hour shift of unpaid overtime, three times a week — and that Dignity’s restrictive timekeeping software was part of the reason those hours couldn’t be logged properly. Listing Dignity Health as the defendant, the class action complaint alleges that the plaintiffs were paid for exactly 12 hours of work per shift at hospitals in the greater Sacramento area, “regardless of when they actually clocked in or out,” attorney Bryan Lazarski wrote. (McGough, 9/10)

Baltimore Sun: Gates Foundation Gives $20.5 Million To Hopkins Bloomberg Teen Reproductive Health Study
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been awarded a $20.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study adolescent and youth sexual health issues. The money will go toward research at The Challenge Initiative, which is run out of the Bloomberg School’s population, family and reproductive health department. The initiative was started in 2016 to look at reproductive health needs in poor communities around the world. (McDaniels, 9/10)

Modern Healthcare: Zane Burke Steps Down As Cerner President
Cerner President Zane Burke will leave the company on Nov. 2 after five years in the role. John Peterzalek, Cerner's executive vice president of worldwide client relationships, will take on Burke's duties and become chief client officer. Burke helped oversee Cerner's $16 billion deal to replace the Department of Veterans Affairs homegrown electronic health record with one made by the Kansas City, Mo.-based company. (Arndt, 9/10)

The Associated Press: Records: Behavioral Health Centers Deal With Staff Shortages
Complaints filed with a West Virginia state agency say ResCare Agency facilities are struggling with staffing shortages, causing problems such as missed doctors' appointments and incorrectly administered medication. The company provides care for people with extreme physical and mental disabilities, among other services. (9/10)

Modern Healthcare: Analysts Praise HCA's Pick To Replace Retiring CEO
HCA Healthcare's Monday announcement that its top executive plans to retire at the end of the year came as no surprise to Wall Street analysts. It's par for the course at the for-profit hospital chain, which they say has made a practice of refreshing its CEO post every handful of years. (Bannow, 9/10)

Georgia Health News: Abrams Health Plan Focuses On Premiums, Access; Kemp Fires Back
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams rolled out a multi-pronged approach to improving Georgia health care Monday, including a familiar push for Medicaid expansion and a new call for stabilizing insurance premiums for consumers. Abrams also advocated for steps to lower Georgia’s infant and maternal mortality rates, along with supporting access to reproductive health care. (Miller, 9/10)

The Star Tribune: Judge Rules For UnitedHealthcare In Medicare Overpayment Case
A federal judge has backed UnitedHealthcare's argument that a 2014 Medicare rule designed to recover overpayments to insurers would have wrongly resulted in underpaying the health plans. As a result, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., vacated the rule, which she said violated a statutory requirement for actuarial equivalence while also departing from prior government policies. (Snowbeck, 9/10)

The Associated Press: Many California Marijuana Products Failing Safety Tests
Nearly 20 percent of marijuana products in California have failed tests for potency and purity since the state started requiring the checks on July 1, a failure rate some in the industry say has more to do with unrealistic standards and technical glitches than protecting consumer safety. The testing has been especially tough on cannabis-infused cookies, candies and tinctures: about one-third have been blocked from store shelves. (9/11)

The Associated Press: Stem Cell Transplant Cements Arizona Men’s Father-Son Bond
Thirty-five years after an Arizona man cared for his son when he was shot in their native Lebanon, the son is returning that devotion. Both the Rev. John Ibraham Sabbagh and his 54-year-old son, Ebby Sabbagh, are celebrating one year of going strong since the elder Sabbagh received a crucial stem cell transplant. After undergoing chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia, the 88-year-old opted to undergo the transplant in September, 2017, at Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Gilbert, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Phoenix. (Tang, 9/10)

The Texas Tribune: Report: Texas Rules Lax On Cleanup Of Polluted Sites
The criteria Texas uses to determine how much — and whether — to clean up abandoned industrial facilities, waste dumps and other polluted sites are so lax that they may allow residential homes to be built in areas that neighboring states wouldn’t even consider safe for factories or oil refineries. (Collier, 9/11)

California Healthline: Confusion Leaves Low-Income Children In Health Care Limbo
Tania Alvarado’s 13-year-old daughter doesn’t smile much anymore. She doesn’t want anyone to see her front teeth, which are so crowded they’re nearly growing atop one another. The crowding makes it painful to eat; it also embarrasses her. “Am I going to get those braces this year?” the Los Angeles eighth-grader asks her mom, again and again. Alvarado always answers her the same way: “It’s still not happening.” (Wiener, 9/10)

Denver Post: Denver Coroner Rules Elderly Woman's Death Homicide
For the second time this year, the Denver medical examiner has declared an elderly woman’s death a homicide and pinned the blame on inadequate medical care. Mary Smith, 88, died May 22 at an area hospital, according to a news release from the medical examiner’s office. Her primary caretaker did not follow her care plan, seek medical attention or provide adequate nutrition or medications as required, the release said. (Phillips, 9/10)

The Seattle Times: For 40,000 Homeless Students, It’s Back-To-School Season In Washington
Carly Cappetto’s fingers twisted into knots early Thursday as she scanned the crowd of students waiting to enter Evergreen Elementary. It was the first day of school. Cappetto, a family-resource coordinator, craned her neck to glance toward the back parking lot, where she hoped to spot one particular school bus unloading its solitary passenger: a fourth-grader, J, alone because she’s coming from a homeless shelter 30 minutes away. (Morton, 9/10)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Some Retailers Defying Ban On CBD Oil Sales
Under Ohio's new medical marijuana program, only state-licensed dispensaries - which aren't open yet - can sell products made with CBD, or cannabidiol, the state declared. Cannabidiol is one of hundreds of active ingredients in cannabis plants. CBD oils and other products have become wildly popular variants of medical marijuana. (Tucker and Saker, 9/10)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Maker Of Firefighting Foam Wants To Remove Chemicals Into The Bay
A Johnson Controls subsidiary in Marinette said it is planning to install pollution-control systems in two waterways to keep toxic chemicals now likely flowing into Green Bay from reaching the water. The efforts of Tyco Fire Products — a maker of fire suppression foam — to keep pollutants from seeping into Lake Michigan waters are believed to be unprecedented in Wisconsin, according to the Department of Natural Resources. (Bergquist, 9/10)