Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Wandering Assisted-Living Residents Dying In 'Alarming Numbers': Report
The Washington Post: An Alarming Number Of Assisted-Living Residents Die After Wandering Away Unnoticed
The alarms went off at 9:34 p.m. inside Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing, an assisted-living facility near Des Moines catering to people with dementia. A resident had wandered through an exit door, a routine event in America’s growing senior assisted-living industry. Automated texts pinged the iPads of the two caretakers working the night shift, and the phones of an on-call nurse and the facility’s director. The warnings repeated every few minutes. (Rowland, Frankel, Torbati, Weil, Whoriskey and Rich, 12/17)
In other health care industry news —
Stat: Life Science Postdocs Should Get Big Pay Hike, NIH Panel Says
A National Institutes of Health working group on Friday recommended a sizable increase in salaries of postdoctoral researchers and a cap on the length of the position in an effort to secure the future of academia’s research workforce amid an unprecedented exodus of young life scientists to industry. (Wosen, 12/15)
Becker's Hospital Review: New Orleans Saints, Pelicans Owner's Donation To Fund New Ochsner Hospital
Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and the Pelicans, made an undisclosed donation to New Orleans-based Ochsner Health for a new pediatric hospital. The five-story, 343,000-square-foot hospital will be named after Ms. Benson and her late husband, Tom Benson. Ochsner expects to break ground on the hospital in mid-2024 and open in 2027, according to an Ochsner news posting. (Schwartz, 12/15)
Modern Healthcare: Elevance, Blue Cross Of Louisiana Revive $2.5B Merger Bid
Elevance Health's $2.5 billion acquisition of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana may be back on. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana filed a new application with state regulators to convert from a nonprofit to a for-profit company Thursday. Elevance Health announced its intention to acquire the smaller insurer in January, but the parties suspended the deal in September amid concerns from policyholders and regulators about how the conversion would impact Louisiana's' healthcare market. (Tepper, 12/15)
Becker's Hospital Review: Dartmouth Health Makes $5M Donation To Homeowners Fund
Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth Health gave an additional $2 million to the Community Loan Fund, an organization that provides financing and education to help residents of manufactured-home communities run their parks. The most recent donation brings its total donation to the loan fund to $5 million. The donation makes the health system the largest in-state investor in the fund. The fund also offers 30-year, fixed-rate manufactured home mortgages to low-wealth buyers. Dartmouth Health officials view access to housing as a key part of personal and community health, according to a Dec. 14 Dartmouth Health news release. (Schwartz, 12/15)
Also —
CNN: Medical Student Sally Rohan Discovers Own Thyroid Cancer During Ultrasound Class
With a pink, week-old surgical wound etched across a few inches of her neck, medical student Sally Rohan said somehow, she’d never had a scar until now. “This is my first,” Rohan, a second-year medical student at the New Jersey-based Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine, told CNN on Thursday. “I don’t know how I’ve gone through life so unscathed that I’ve never had a scar until it was this massive one on my neck at 27 (years old).” Rohan, originally from Ukiah, California, had an operation on December 6 to remove her entire thyroid gland after a class about ultrasounds alerted her to what was later diagnosed as thyroid cancer, she said. (Williams, 12/17)
