Monday, July 24, 2023

California Healthline Original Stories

Giant Health System Almost Saved a Madera Hospital. Now, It Wants to ‘Extract Every Dollar.’

A bankruptcy judge will soon decide whether a Central Valley hospital needs to liquidate to repay its creditors. Its largest creditor, St. Agnes Medical Center, is the very entity that backed out of purchasing the Madera Community Hospital last December. (Bernard J. Wolfson and Melissa Montalvo, The Fresno Bee, 8/7 )

Intense Heat Is Life Threatening To Homeless Population: The risk of heat-related illness or death is especially high for people experiencing homelessness — particularly those in isolated rural towns like Blythe, where there are fewer resources for helping this vulnerable population, whose members often struggle with addiction and severe mental illness. Read more from the Los Angeles Times

Scroll down for related news on housing issues and extreme heat.

San Diego Hospitals Work To Protect Health Care Workers From Violence: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of intentional injuries against health care workers and technicians has increased from 6.7 to 12.9 per 10,000 workers from 2011 to 2020. A survey of health care workers nationwide conducted in early 2023 found that 40% reported that they were directly involved in workplace violence in the previous 2 years. Read more from the San Diego Union Tribune.

Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today's national health news, read KFF Health News' Morning Briefing.

Environmental Health

The 19th: Los Angeles Is Spending Millions To Protect Kids From Extreme Heat The clouds that blanket Los Angeles in the late spring, keeping temperatures cool and skies overcast, dissipate by the first weeks of summer. The months known in the city near the ocean as “May Gray” and “June Gloom” give way to an exposed July sun that blazes relentlessly until well after the school year starts. It is not unusual for Angelenos to contend with triple-digit heat until shortly before Halloween. When the mercury rises, many students can’t take refuge. They attend campuses with more cement than greenery, unreliable air-conditioning and drinking fountains that go unused due to water quality concerns. (Nittle, 7/21)

The Desert Sun: ‘Hazardous’ Air Quality In Coachella Valley As Heat Wave Continues The heat wave, which has affected most of California and other parts of the United States, comes as climate change continues to drive up temperatures while also increasing the number of extreme heat events. According to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index, which analyzes the influence of climate change on daily weather, high temperatures in the valley were made at least five times more likely by climate change. (John, 7/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Tick And Lyme Disease Risk: Did Rainy Winter Make It Worse? In the winter and early spring, as the Bay Area got pummeled by near record-breaking rainfall, some wondered whether the extra moisture might contribute to more ticks — which thrive in damp environments and carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease — and a longer than usual summer tick season. Anecdotal evidence suggests that may be happening in some parts of the Bay Area. But longtime researchers caution it’s too soon to say how the rain is affecting tick populations and the risk of Lyme disease to humans because there are many other factors that come into play, including temperature and the population of tick hosts such as deer and lizards. (Ho, 7/22)

The New York Times: Rising Heat Deaths Are Not Just About The Temperature The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports around 700 deaths and about 9,000 hospitalizations each year related to heat. But studies have shown that the actual toll of heat is likely to be much higher, possibly contributing to tens of thousands of deaths. Researchers in Britain predict that heat-related deaths will rise 257 percent by 2050 due to climate change. (Tish Harrison Warren, 7/23)

Sacramento Watch

Southern California News Group: California Republicans Want The State To End Tax On Health Savings Plans California Republican members of Congress want the state to kill its tax on health savings accounts. Led by Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, six Republican members of California’s congressional delegation, including Rep. Young Kim, this week sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, urging him to end the state tax on health savings accounts. Dubbed HSAs, these accounts allow someone to set aside money on a pre-tax basis to pay for qualified medical expenses. (Kang, 7/24)

KQED: California Fast-Tracks Rules To Protect Stonecutters From 'Horrible' Deaths California workplace regulators have committed to fast-tracking the development of new rules to protect countertop fabrication workers who are inhaling toxic silica dust that doctors say is causing a growing number of young men to irreversibly lose their capacity to breathe. (Jhabvala Romero, 7/22)

Hospitals

Orange County Register: Hospital Building Spree Could Turn Irvine Into Nation’s Next Big Health Brand Over the next three to five years, a half-dozen health brands will either expand or break ground in Irvine, creating several million square feet of new hospital and health education space, 350 new care beds, and thousands of high-paying new jobs. (Farzan, 7/23)

Becker's Hospital Review: California Hospitals To Rebrand Three acute care hospitals — Modesto, Calif.-based Doctors Medical Center, Turlock, Calif.-based Emanuel Medical Center and Doctors Hospital of Manteca (Calif.) — are rebranding under a new name, Central Valley Doctors Health System. The move was made to create a "single, identifiable name and brand," according to a July 20 press release from Central Valley Doctors Health System. (Diaz, 7/21)

Health Care Industry

ProPublica: Hospices In Four States To Receive Extra Scrutiny Over Concerns Of Fraud, Waste And Abuse Last week, regulators rolled out enhanced oversight for new hospices in Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which pays for most of American hospice care, announced that this change was spurred by “numerous reports of hospice fraud, waste, and abuse” and “serious concerns about market oversaturation.” (Kofman, 7/21)

Los Angeles Times: What To Do If Scammers Charge For COVID-19 Tests You Didn't Order Unsolicited COVID-19 tests are being sent to people with Medicare as part of a national scam. What should you do next and what resources are available? (Medina, 7/24)

Drug Use

CalMatters: How California Is Fighting Meth With Gift Cards Among the most difficult addictions to witness at San Francisco general hospital’s drug clinic is methamphetamine, which leaves users tearing at their skin and unable to eat, sleep or sign up for help. The worst part: The clinic workers largely are powerless because unlike with opioid addiction, for which doctors prescribe medications such as methadone, there is no medicine for stimulant use disorder. (Kendall, 7/24)

Pharmaceuticals

Stat: Providers Still Hesitate To Prescribe Buprenorphine, Study Finds Significant challenges remain before most American clinicians feel comfortable treating patients with buprenorphine, according to a new study. While the federal government’s recent moves to deregulate buprenorphine have led to a bump in new prescribers, it didn’t lead to a significant bump in overall prescribing volume. Many health care providers still see prescribing buprenorphine as difficult, or simply have little interest in using the medication, according to the study. (Facher, 7/21)

The New York Times: How Gilead Profited By Slow-Walking A Promising H.I.V. Therapy In 2004, Gilead Sciences decided to stop pursuing a new H.I.V. drug. The public explanation was that it wasn’t sufficiently different from an existing treatment to warrant further development.In private, though, something else was at play. Gilead had devised a plan to delay the new drug’s release to maximize profits, even though executives had reason to believe it might turn out to be safer for patients, according to a trove of internal documents made public in litigation against the company. (Robbins and Gay Stolberg, 7/22)

Housing Issues

San Diego Union-Tribune: Local Spending On Homelessness Topped $2 Billion The Last 7 Years Homeless service providers received $2.37 billion from local governments between 2015-2022, a San Diego taxpayers’ group announced Friday. The San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation calculated the dollar amount as part of an ongoing review of how homeless service providers operate. The dollar amount includes $90 million awarded to 18 cities in the county, with the balance awarded to San Diego County. (Warth, 7/21)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Is The Housing First Model Helping To End Homelessness? Or Does It Enable Drug Users? A generally accepted practice of providing housing to homeless people even if they continue to use drugs is being criticized as a failure because it does not mandate treatment and it has not halted the growing number of people living on San Diego County streets. (Warth, 7/23)

AI In Health Care

The Wall Street Journal: At Startup That Says Its AI Writes Medical Records, Humans Do A Lot Of The Work Hundreds of doctors across the U.S. have entrusted recordings of their private talks with patients to a startup promising to turn the conversations into usable medical records through artificial intelligence. (Walker, 7/23)

CBS News: AI Could Revolutionize Dentistry. Here's How New forms of artificial intelligence are already changing how we write, communicate with our doctors and even create art. But the rapidly evolving technology could soon have a permanent fixture in a more sensitive environment: our mouths. Hundreds of dental offices across the U.S. are now using AI-powered X-ray imaging technology from Boston-based VideaHealth. The software helps dentists deal with routine procedures, such as identifying cavities, as well as spot more serious conditions, including periodontal disease, or bone loss within the mouth often linked with diseases like diabetes or Alzheimer's. (Bangalore, 7/21)

Mental Health

The Wall Street Journal: Schools Sue Social-Media Platforms Over Alleged Harms To Students Plaintiffs’ lawyers are pitching school boards throughout the country to file lawsuits against social-media companies on allegations that their apps cause classroom disciplinary problems and mental-health issues, diverting resources from education. (Randazzo and Tracy, 7/23)

Pandemic Preparedness

Stat: White House Launches Permanent Pandemic Office The White House on Friday launched its pandemic preparedness office, half a year after Congress instructed the administration to set up a new arm in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy is a now-permanent installment in Washington and will first be led by retired Major General Paul Friedrichs, a longtime biosecurity official. It comes roughly two months after the Covid-19 public health emergency ended and weeks after Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha stepped down, reflecting an overall wind-down of the administration’s coronavirus efforts. (Owermohle, 7/21)

Stat: FDA Official Pushes For Dedicated Emerging Pathogens Team A top Food and Drug Administration official wants Congress to dedicate full-time staff to emerging pathogens, after the FDA scrambled to find people for Covid-19 priorities like Operation Warp Speed. “Vaccines were a pretty heavy duty lift during the pandemic,” said Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, at a Thursday Politico event. “Rather than having to essentially reassign whole groups of people and disrupt things, the idea is to have a group of people who are constantly working on this.” (Bajaj, 7/21)

NBC News: CDC Prepares For Possible RSV, Covid And Flu Winter ‘Tripledemic’ Even as the nation is faced with blistering heat waves this summer, Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is already thinking ahead to cold and flu season this winter. “We’re going to have three bugs out there, three viruses: Covid, of course, flu and RSV,” Cohen said in an interview. “We need to make sure the American people understand all three and what they can do to protect themselves.” (Edwards, 7/23)

USA Today: Deadly, COVID-Style Pandemic Could Easily Start In US, Report Finds The next global pandemic could come from the United States. That's the sobering message of a report from Harvard Law School and New York University, examining how humans, livestock and wild animals interact here. (Weintraub, 7/22)

Women's Health

FiercePharma: Meta Faces FTC Complaint Over Blocking Women's Sexual Health Ads The nonprofit Center for Intimacy Justice (CIJ) has made a formal complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that Facebook, Instagram and Threads parent company Meta is still banning advertisers and censuring ads across its social media sites that feature women’s sexual health promotions. This comes just over 18 months after the CIJ released a report describing what it saw as Facebook’s “censorship of health ads for women and people of diverse genders.” (Adams, 7/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area ‘Aunties’ From China Can Charge $10K A Month. Who Are They? Before she takes on a new job, Lisa Liu sends a list of 27 items in Chinese to the potential clients she’ll be living and working with in the Bay Area — nine for the new mothers and 18 for their new babies. The services Liu provides as an in-home nanny run the gamut. She’ll start in the maternity ward and transition into the home, preparing three meals for the sleep-deprived mothers, helping them out of bed and showing them the proper way to breastfeed, change and bathe infants. (Chen, 7/24)

Gun Violence

ABC News: US Surpasses 400 Mass Shootings So Far In 2023: National Gun Violence Website A shooting that erupted in a Houston park over the weekend that left a pregnant woman dead and four other people injured marked the 400th mass shooting in the United States in 2023, according to a national website that tracks firearm deaths and injuries. The Houston incident was among six mass shootings that occurred on Saturday and early Sunday in cities across the nation, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as a single event with four or more victims either injured or killed. (Hutchinson, 7/23)

Public Health

Bay Area News Group: Martinez Refining Company Reports Second 'Coke Dust' Release In Less Than Two Weeks The Martinez Refining Company reported the second release of ‘coke dust’ in less than two weeks on Saturday evening, according to the Contra Costa County Health Department. (McCarthy, 7/23)

Sacramento Bee: Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills 2-Year-Old Nevada Boy: Family A brain-eating amoeba killed a Nevada child possibly exposed during a visit to a hot spring, state health officials reported. The child died following a trip to Ash Springs, a natural hot spring on federal land in Lincoln County, the state Division of Public and Behavioral Health said in a July 20 news release. Testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Naegleria fowleri, commonly called a brain-eating amoeba, as the cause of death, officials said. (Sweeney, 7/23)

The Boston Globe: Rise In Cancer Among Younger People Worries And Puzzles Doctors An array of cancers — colorectal chief among them — are striking people younger than 50 at higher rates than in previous decades, prompting new screening guidelines, new research, and growing concern. Why is this happening? That’s “the very hard question that none of us really know the answer to,” said Timothy Rebbeck, professor of cancer prevention at the Harvard T.H. Chan School Of Public Health. Theories abound, although none has firm data behind it. (Freyer, 7/22)

ABC News: Watching TV As A Kid Linked To High Blood Pressure And Obesity As An Adult: Study The amount of time that young people spend watching screens -- instead of physical activity like sports, hikes or gardening -- could be linked to health issues in adulthood, according to a new study. Children and teenagers who spent more time watching television had less efficient oxygen use during exercise, higher blood pressure, and higher rates of obesity in mid-adulthood, even when accounting for sex, childhood body mass index and the family's economic situation, the study published in Pediatrics says. (Hwang, 7/24)