State Highlights: Pa. Hospital ‘Super Users’ Run Up $1.25B Tab; Mass. Dentists Charge Delta Dental Violated Nonprofit Rules
Media outlets report on news from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kansas, Georgia, California, Tennessee and New York.
The Philadelphia Inquirer/Philly.com:
Hospital Super-Users Cost $1.25 Billion In Pa.
Efforts to keep chronically ill patients from going to the hospital as often seem to be making a difference in the Philadelphia area and throughout Pennsylvania, according to a new state report on hospital “super-utilizers.” The number of these patients, defined as those admitted to a hospital at least five times in a year, has declined since 2012, dramatically so in Philadelphia. But they still ring up a big tab, according to the report by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. (Avril, 6/20)
Boston Globe:
Dentists Accuse Delta Dental Of Violating Nonprofit Rules, Seek Investigation
A group of dentists at odds with the state’s largest dental insurer are accusing the company of violating nonprofit rules and engaging in anticompetitive behavior, and they’re asking Attorney General Maura Healey’s office to investigate. The dentists detailed their complaints against Delta Dental of Massachusetts in an 11-page letter to Healey, penned by their lawyer, James C. Donnelly Jr. of the firm Mirick O’Connell in Worcester. (McCluskey, 6/20)
KCUR:
Telemedicine Could Expand Health Care Access In Kansas, But Insurers Balk At Payment Parity
When evening falls, Brian Hunt makes his way to a comfortable chair in a sun room on the south side of his house near La Cygne, Kansas. But he’s not settling in to relax. He’s going to work. Hunt is a doctor who works the overnight shift admitting and monitoring patients through video connections at half a dozen hospitals scattered across Kansas. Sitting in front of his computer, wearing a headset and microphone, he greets a 63-year-old woman who’s just been transferred to Newton Medical Center from the smaller town of Marion. She’s been having difficulties with speech and movement on her right side. (Thompson, 6/20)
WABE:
An Ongoing Fight For More Control Over Birth In Atlanta
When DeKalb Medical changed its policy on VBACs last year, it left patients like [Ashley] Brown feeling like they had nowhere to go. It’s kind of a rare service, and some traveled from out of state just to find a facility where VBACs are offered. (Lagen, 6/20)
San Francisco Chronicle:
SF Supervisors OK Ban On Sale Of Flavored Tobacco
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a citywide ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products Tuesday, saying the candy tinctures and bright-colored wrapping help lure children into a life of addiction. But the law met resistance from small grocers and smoke shop owners — many of them immigrants — who are grappling with other taxes and costs, including tobacco retailer licenses, cigarette litter abatement fees and the new $2-per-pack cigarette tax that state voters approved last year. (Swan, 6/20)
Nashville Tennessean:
New Lawsuit: Nashville Jail Ignored Scabies Outbreak As Disabled Inmates Suffered
Officers at Nashville's privately run jail ignored inmates suffering from a scabies outbreak, leaving vulnerable inmates particularly exposed, states a third federal lawsuit seeking class action status. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Nashville federal court, also alleges officers at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility joked any lawsuit would fail because local judges have money invested in jail operator CoreCivic, a Nashville-based private prison company previously known as Corrections Corporation of America or CCA. (Boucher, 6/20)
WABE:
Monitoring Beginning In Ga. Community Near Nuclear Sites
Researchers are starting an environmental monitoring program in the Georgia community of Shell Bluff. The community is south of Augusta on the Savannah River, near a nuclear power plant and a federal nuclear facility. (Samuel, 6/20)
The New York Times:
A Founder Of The Children’s Health Fund Packs Up His Doctor’s Bag
In 1986, as New York City reeled from a crack epidemic and runaway violence, Paul Simon, the musician, and Irwin Redlener, a doctor, paid a visit to one of the city’s notorious welfare hotels, the Martinique in Midtown Manhattan. The two had been working together to raise money and awareness for children in Africa, as part of the “We Are the World” campaign, when it occurred to Mr. Simon that perhaps they could also address urgent needs closer to home. (Santora, 6/20)
