State Highlights: Thousands Of Patients Potentially Exposed To HIV At New Jersey Surgery Center; OhioHealth Propelled Into Era Of Value-Based Care

The Hill: More Than 3,000 Patients In New Jersey Possibly Exposed To HIV, Hepatitis 
Thousands of patients at a New Jersey ambulatory surgery center were possibly exposed to infections such as HIV and hepatitis, according to the state's Department of Health. NBC News reports that the HealthPlus Surgery Center in Saddle Brook, N.J., was shut down by the state's health agency after staffers were found to not be practicing proper infection control procedures. (Bowden, 12/26)

Reuters: New Jersey Clinic Sued After HIV Infection Warning
A former patient has filed the first lawsuit against a New Jersey surgery center that may have exposed nearly 3,800 patients to HIV and hepatitis due to poor sterilization and medication practices. The HealthPlus Surgery Center in Saddle Brook recently told the patients that a state probe of its facilities found "lapses in infection control" and "the injection of medications" could have exposed them to the diseases. (12/29)

Modern Healthcare: OhioHealth's Plan To Provide High-Touch Primary Care For Seniors
OhioHealth leaders needed a dramatically different approach to care for lower-income seniors with little access to quality primary-care providers. Too many patients with chronic diseases like diabetes and heart failure were coming into their system's emergency departments and hospitals. The not-for-profit system's leaders wanted a more proactive primary-care model that focused on keeping these patients healthier, even if that initially cut into hospital revenue. The idea was to use multidisciplinary primary-care teams that spent a lot of time with high-risk patients. (Meyer, 1/1)

The Washington Post: Shortage Of Home Nurses In Va. And Md. Due To Low Pay Is Forcing Family Members To Step In
Laurie Baturin, a substitute teacher in Hagerstown, Md., stays up two nights a week, watching to make sure her son stays stable till morning. Alex, 16, a quadriplegic with severe cerebral palsy, has been receiving home nursing care since he was 3. He has a feeding tube and needs to be catheterized every four hours and constantly monitored for seizures. He is qualified through Medicaid to receive nursing care seven nights a week and on school days. (Bahrampour, 12/28)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Most Louisiana Nursing Homes Face Penalties Under New Medicare Rules
The majority of Louisiana nursing homes will face financial penalties under a new Medicare program that aims to improve quality of care and lower the number of elderly patients repeatedly readmitted to hospitals. The program, which kicked off Oct. 1, will penalize about 85 percent of Louisiana’s 277 skilled nursing facilities by as much as 2 percent of their individual Medicare reimbursement rate per patient, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of Medicare data. The review found the same rate of nursing facilities in Mississippi and Arkansas will also be penalized. (Clark, 12/26)

Arizona Republic: Maricopa County Finishes Off Record-Breaking Year Of Police Shootings
Police shootings were a regular occurrence in Maricopa County in 2018, the last one occurring late Monday afternoon. There were 82 shootings involving law enforcement in Arizona's most populous county — nearly double the 44 shootings in 2017. Phoenix police were responsible for more than half. (Burkitt, 1/1)

Boston Globe: Employer Group Balks At Fees To Prop Up MassHealth
A prominent Massachusetts business group is calling for an immediate end to new fees that cost employers across the state $300 million last year, noting that Beacon Hill failed to follow through on its part of a bargain to tame the rising costs of the state Medicaid program. Governor Charlie Baker proposed the fees and legislators approved them in 2017, requiring employers, over two years, to contribute more toward the costs of the state program that provides health coverage for poor and low-income residents. (Dayal McCluskey, 1/2)

The Oregonian: Class-Action Suit Alleges Legacy Health Failed To Pay Nursing Staff For Hours Worked 
Legacy Health hasn’t paid its nursing staff for all hours worked, including overtime, improperly deducted money from their wages and denied them meal and rest breaks as required by law, according to a new class-action suit filed in federal court. Legacy’s hospitals have failed to compensate non-exempt employees for work during meal breaks and for work performed while “off-the-clock,’’ the suit alleges. (Bernstein, 12/27)

Los Angeles Times: Utility May Have Violated Probation For Its Role In Deadly California Wildfires, Federal Prosecutors Say
Federal prosecutors said Pacific Gas & Electric Co. may have violated the terms of its probation in a 2010 criminal case for its role in igniting deadly wildfires that ravaged Northern California’s wine country last year. In a court filing Monday, the U.S. attorney’s office said state investigators found evidence that the utility violated state law in 11 fires — including the Atlas fire that killed six people — that broke out in October 2017. (Tchekmedyian, 1/1)

NPR: Nuclear Testing's Lasting Legacy For Oklahomans From The Marshall Islands
The prairie town of Enid, Okla. — population 50,122 — is best known as the state's "wheat capital." Enid is also home to a community of around 2,000 people who were born in the Marshall Islands. Most are low-income and struggling to get health care. After World War II and until the 1980s, their homeland in the Central Pacific was a U.S.-administered territory, and for a part of that time, Americans used some islands in the region as a bombing range for testing nuclear weapons. Partly because of that history, a treaty now allows Marshallese to live and work in the U.S, as "indefinite legal residents." (Craig and Westerman, 12/25)

The Oregonian: Zoom Care Names New CEO Days After Acquisition By PeaceHealth
Days after PeaceHealth announced it would buy Portland health clinic startup Zoom Care, the company has a new CEO. Bill Frerichs will move from senior vice-president of retail health to CEO at the start of the new year. Dave Sanders, the charismatic co-founder of Zoom Care, will step down. A spokesman for Zoom said that Sanders will have no other role with the company after that point. Frerichs has been a vice president with Zoom since 2016. Before that, he was vice president of store operations at Target. (Harbarger, 12/21)

The New York Times: ‘A Pumping Conspiracy’: Why Workers Smuggled Breast Pumps Into Prison
At 3 a.m. on a frigid night in January 2017, Susan Van Son, a nurse at the Deerfield Correctional Center in southeastern Virginia, left the prison’s medical department and walked through a series of eight locked doors. At a security checkpoint, she made sure that the normal guards — the ones known for breezily waving employees through the metal detectors — were on duty. Then, risking her livelihood, she headed to the prison’s parking lot. (Kitroeff, 12/31)

Dallas Morning News: Arlington Mental Hospital Closes Amid Criminal Case Alleging It Held Patients Against Their Will 
An Arlington mental health hospital indicted on charges of holding patients illegally will shut down and is no longer taking patients, KXAS-TV (NBC5) reported. Sundance Behavioral Healthcare System had been indicted on 20 counts of violating state mental health codes, most of them involving holding patients against their will. Attorneys representing Sundance, officially SAS Healthcare Inc., had maintained that the case was an instance of "unprecedented overreach" that would have major consequences. They argued that detention of the mentally ill was sometimes necessary for their own and others' protection. (Ramirez, 12/21)

Dallas Morning News: Medical Researchers Fear Wider Spread Of Paralysis Linked To Mysterious Polio-Like Virus
Medical researchers fear that more children will develop paralysis from a mysterious polio-like illness that has struck every two years since 2014. The condition, known as acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, is rare and has reached its peak for 2018. It will likely continue to fade as winter approaches. But many believe it will be back. ...Texas has reported 27 cases in 2018, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, including five in Tarrant County, three in Collin County and two in Dallas. (Kuchment, 12/21)

Nashville Tennessean: TennCare Payment Freeze Means Tennessee Rural Health Clinics Struggle
Extra TennCare payments promised to Servolution — and about 20 other rural health clinics that have opened within the past 15 months — have been frozen while the state works out new payment rules. ... National and state health care organizations, including the Tennessee Hospital Association, have asked the state to immediately end its moratorium on payments. In letters and in person at a November meeting, they told TennCare officials many clinics are in imminent danger of closing — compounding an already acute crisis in rural Tennessee where many hospitals have shut down. (Wadhwani, 12/27)

Dallas Morning News: Groceries And Therapy, Too? New Mental Health Clinic Opens In A Walmart Store In Carrollton 
Milk, paper towels, T-shirts — and therapy? Dallas area residents can now drop by a Walmart store in Carrollton to meet with a mental health professional. The new concept — started by Boston-based Beacon Health Options — aims to make mental health care more convenient and approachable by opening clinics in high-traffic locations like retailers. The company rented a space in the store and began offering therapy there in November. (Repko, 12/30)

The Washington Post: U.S. Health-Care Worker With Possible Exposure To Ebola Evacuated To Nebraska
An American health worker who was possibly exposed to Ebola while treating patients in Congo was evacuated to the United States on Saturday and placed in a secure area at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, hospital officials said. The person has no symptoms of the deadly hemorrhagic fever and is not contagious, but will be monitored closely for up to two weeks, hospital officials said. (Sun, 12/29)

The Star Tribune: Heavy Drinking, Lack Of Vaccinations Hurt State's Health Ranking 
Minnesota’s longstanding reputation as one of the healthiest states has taken a hit in recent years, and now the state has fallen to seventh place in a widely watched national ranking — its lowest spot in the survey’s 29 years. Although many strengths keep Minnesota in the top 10, America’s Health Rankings cited excessive drinking, a low childhood immunization rate and increases in obesity and infant mortality as troubling indicators. (Howatt, 12/30)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Eighth Cuyahoga County Jail Inmate Dies
A Cuyahoga County jail inmate died Sunday night at a hospital after hanging himself in his cell, marking the eighth death of a jail inmate in 2018. Brenden Kiekisz, 27, died at the hospital at about 10 p.m. Sunday, according to his brother, Brett Kiekisz. He had been on life-support for three days after being found Thursday night hanging in his cell. (Astolfi, 1/1)

The Hill: Ohio Doctor Fired By Hospital After Saying She Would Give Jews 'the Wrong Meds'
A hospital in Cleveland reportedly fired a resident after it was discovered she had been sharing anti-Semitic comments on social media. Cleveland.com reported on Sunday that the Cleveland Clinic confirmed that Lara Kollab is no longer working with the organization after having only worked as a supervised resident with the clinic from July to September last year. (Folley, 1/1)

Ventura County Star: $43 Million Cleared For Ventura County Reserves, Special Projects
Ventura County has notched the biggest year-end balance in five years in a general fund budget that pays for key services, finishing with $43 million at the end of the last fiscal year in June. ...About $10 million of the $43 million balance materialized because state payments for mental health care delivered years ago finally arrived. The county Behavioral Health Department was owed the money for counseling of schoolchildren whose learning is inhibited by attention, emotional and other disorders. (Wilson, 1/1)

Seattle Times: You’re Homeless, But You Have To Leave The Hospital. Where Do You Go? 
As homelessness continues to rise in Washington, patients like [Edward] Thomas present a worsening problem for public hospitals. Hospitals are required by federal law to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay, but many chronically homeless people have overlapping medical and mental struggles that make them ethically difficult to discharge. The problem is serious enough that Washington State Hospital Association convened a work group from area hospitals: They found that in Western Washington during summer 2018, there were 200 homeless patients who spent an average of 82 days in the hospital after they no longer needed acute inpatient care. (Greenstone, 12/24)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia's Officer-Involved Shootings Were More Deadly In 2018
Georgia law enforcement officers were involved in 53 fatal shootings in 2018, a large jump from recent years, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The number, which included four cases where officers died after being shot, was up 77 percent from 2017, when 30 officer-involved shootings involved deaths. It’s unclear what made shootings so much more deadly in 2018, but drug abuse and mental illness are two factors authorities have cited behind some of the deaths. (Sharpe, 1/1)

Tampa Bay Times: The Tampa Bay Area Is Home To One Of The Nation's Largest Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Populations. Advocates Wonder Why It Isn't More Accessible.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who are deaf or hard of hearing who live in the Tampa Bay area, and Littlewood, is one of them. For this community, the ability to communicate with 911 in real time could one day mean the difference between life or death. (Wilson, 1/2)

Pioneer Press: Changing How We Die: Hospice Care Surges In Minnesota 
Hospice patients have tripled since 2000, and today they account for more than half of all deaths in Minnesota. They are part of a revolution in the way people die, according to Cordt Kassner, CEO of the consulting company Hospice Analytics in Colorado Springs, Colo. ...Minnesota’s hospice population spiked to 19,253 in 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available. This includes people getting care in their homes, as well as those living in hospice centers. (Shaw, 12/31)

KCUR: Federal Government Sues Lenexa Chiropractic Clinic For Medicare Fraud 
A Lenexa chiropractic clinic and its two owner-operators are being sued by the federal government for defrauding Medicare. The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas, names Kansas City Health & Wellness Clinic, Ryan Schell and Tyler Schell. It seeks triple damages under the federal False Claims Act. The lawsuit alleges the Schells, who are brothers, billed Medicare for peripheral neuropathy treatments that are not covered by the program and for treatments they did not provide at all.  (Margolies, 12/24)

Concord Monitor: Concord Girl’s Wrongful Death Suit Settled
A wrongful death lawsuit involving 13-year-old Molly Banzhoff has been settled. Hillsborough County Superior Court records show Concord Hospital settled with the girl’s family in mid-October. She died of complications from an undetected brain tumor in the spring of 2016. The settlement is sealed. Concord Hospital spokesperson Jennifer Dearborn said in an email that the settlement includes a confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement that prohibits both sides from talking about the settlement. (Andrews, 12/29)

Denver Post: Colorado Supply Of Shingles Vaccine Low Amid National Shortage
Coloradans needing the shingles vaccine are having difficulty getting the two-dose shot as a national shortage has left health providers in the state in short supply. The vaccine, called Shingrix, is in such high demand that the company behind it has placed order limits on it and health systems are facing shipping delays — both of which are expected to continue in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Seaman, 12/28)