Health Care Headlines

California legislators introduced a bill to allow the state to dictate the cost of healthcare in commercial markets, which is being met with fierce opposition.

Just under a year after the World Health Organization declared “the end” of the recent outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s government has announced a fresh outbreak with two confirmed cases of the virus.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar on Wednesday urged hospital executives to speed the shift of services from hospitals to other settings, saying it saves money and produces better results.

Prescription drug prices are out of control. The average annual cost for one specialty medication to treat a chronic condition is now more than what most families earn in a year. Big Pharma could solve the problem by committing to more rational and sustainable pricing models.

This week, we recognize the nation’s hospitals and health systems that are there for their communities all day, every day — no matter what.

As the legalization of medical marijuana becomes more common worldwide, medical cannabis is being prescribed by doctors and caretakers to help treat cancer-related side effects—either from the cancer itself or from treatments like chemotherapy.As the legalization of medical marijuana becomes more common worldwide, medical cannabis is being prescribed by doctors and caretakers to help treat cancer-related side effects—either from the cancer itself or from treatments like chemotherapy.

California’s leading gubernatorial candidates agree that health care should work better for Golden State residents: Insurance should be more affordable, costs are unreasonably high, and robust competition among hospitals, doctors and other providers could help lower prices, they told California Healthline.

The Food and Drug Administration is making moves to encourage the use of artificial intelligence and other digital tools in medicine and drug development, expanding a program it announced last year around digital health and establishing a new incubator focused on health technology.

In 2016, 59 rural hospitals in 36 California counties provided a wide range of critical services to more than two million patients. These patients were, on average, sicker, older, and more vulnerable than their urban counterparts. The hospitals where they were treated are vital lifelines in the communities they serve.

Anger over rising health care prices is boiling over in California. But good long term results rarely emerge from a red-hot pot.
 

Latinos in Ventura County are less likely than white non-Hispanics to graduate from high school, own their home or earn enough money to live outside of poverty.  They are also less likely to breastfeed their children and may be more likely to struggle with obesity and behavioral health issues, according to data presented Wednesday.

In the spirit of the pharmaceutical industry’s advertising campaign slogan, “Let’s Talk about Cost,” let’s do just that. More specifically, let’s talk about the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs and what they mean for patients and our health care system.

An estimated 4 million adults aged 19-64 have lost health coverage since 2016, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s latest Affordable Care Act Tracking Survey.

Project Angel Food will announce the launch of a new statewide pilot program to benefit Medi-Cal patients with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure on Friday, May 4, at 10 a.m. in the parking lot of the nonprofit at 922 Vine St.

Last week, a bill that would dismantle California’s health care delivery system as we know it was introduced in the Legislature. Assembly Bill 3087 would penalize millions of patients through massive cuts in services and result in as many as 175,000 hospital workers losing their jobs. 

Direct-to-consumer telemedicine is a viable way to deliver medical care in the days following a natural disaster, although most people who use such services do so for routine matters rather than disaster-caused illnesses, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Wanted: A million people willing to share their DNA and 10 years of health habits, big and small, for science.

The state Assembly’s Health Committee has approved Assembly Bill 3087, the Health Care Price Relief Act. The controversial bill would create the California Health Care Cost, Quality and Equity Commission to set amounts that health plans, hospitals, doctors and other health providers may charge. 

Stem cell research is one of science’s most promising fields. Scientists believe stem cells may someday be used to repair or replace tissues and organs lost to age or disease, though they say effective therapies are still years away.

With over 115,000 patients on the waiting list for organ transplants in the U.S., the organ shortage has reached an all-time high—and some patients are taking the organ donor search into their own hands.

Teamwork between outpatient behavioral health clinics and hospitals has been a perennial problem in healthcare—but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Earlier this month, I received an interesting email. It was from an organization offering comment on the new Medicare Advantage rules. These emails are not unusual. Medical associations, provider organizations, policy think tanks, IT vendors and other industry stakeholders routinely weigh in on important federal healthcare regulations.

Today, the Assembly Committee on Health voted to advance Assembly Bill 3087 (Kalra), a harmful government intrusion into the health care market that would decimate California’s health care system, limit access to health care providers, create state-sanctioned rationing and increase out-of-pocket costs for patients.

A top hospital executive says drug ads drive up healthcare costs and contribute to the opioid crisis and should be banned from television.

Undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic violence may be reluctant to seek medical care for fear of being identified to immigrant authorities.

The National Health Foundation is set to transform a century-old sanitarium into a 62-bed recuperative-care facility in Pico-Union for homeless residents discharged from local hospitals.

Those that provide and purchase health care in California believe AB 3087 is a dangerous and unprecedented threat to patients and health care delivery throughout the state.•

For decades, transplant surgeons have treated organs as if they were beers for a camping trip: You just pack them in a cooler and hit the road.

Physician burnout may grab headlines, but a new survey shows its effects extend to all clinicians and even up to the C-suite.

For the first time, a treatment that boosts the immune system greatly improved survival in people newly diagnosed with the most common form of lung cancer. It’s the biggest win so far for immunotherapy, which has had much of its success until now in less common cancers.

Jerri Plummer was at home in Arkansas, watching television with her three children, when a stranger called to warn that her life was in danger.

California’s government would set prices for hospital stays, doctor visits and other health care services under legislation introduced Monday, vastly remaking the industry in a bid to lower health care costs.

The California Hospital Association is opposed to Assembly Bill 3087 (Kalra, D-San Jose), a poorly constructed measure that would take billions of dollars out of the state’s health care system, while doing nothing to improve the quality of patient care in California. The bill would cripple patient access to care through a government-run price setting scheme.

Deep machine learning can help predict sepsis in hospitalized patients an average of 5 hours before they meet the clinical definition, new data show.

The largest nurses union in the U.S. called for more robust federal workplace safety rules this week as one of the strongest workplace violence prevention rules in the nation went into effect in California.

Running the Food and Drug Administration is one of the toughest jobs in government. Running it for a boss with a record of firing political appointees adds another level of complexity.

Health departments working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Antibiotic Resistance Lab Network (ARLN) found more than 220 instances of germs with “unusual” antibiotic resistance genes in the United States last year, according to a Vital Signs report released Tuesday.

A Los Angeles County supervisor is headed to Sacramento Wednesday to advocate for legislation that would allow paramedics to bring patients to mental health urgent care clinics and sobering centers.

Air conditioners for people with asthma, healthy groceries, rides to medical appointments and home-delivered meals may be among the new benefits offered to Medicare beneficiaries who choose private sector health plans, when new federal rules take effect next year.

I‘m the attending physician in a pediatric trauma room, and my patient, a girl who looks to be about 12, is going into anaphylactic shock. “Do something,” her mother screams. I check the girl’s breathing (sounds funny); I check her pulse (seems OK, but who knows?). To my right is a red cart loaded with assorted medications. A voice behind me tells me to give her a dose of epinephrine. “Is she dying?” I ask.

Imagine you are the tightfisted potentate of a small republic, plotting the least expensive way to care for subjects in fragile health who depend on your beneficence.

Walmart is in preliminary talks to buy health insurer Humana, according to people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

Prices for each of the 20 most-prescribed brand-name drugs for seniors have increased dramatically every year for the past five years, according to a new report released by Sen. Claire McCaskillClaire Conner McCaskillDems ask GAO to investigate Interior staff reassignments Hillary Clinton should step off the stage to let Democrats move onObama to raise funds for McCaskill in Beverly Hills: reportMORE (D-Mo.).

Recognizing the connection between people’s health and well-being, and where they live — including their housing, neighborhood and environment — California’s hospitals have developed innovative community-based programs that promote access to healthy foods for healthy eating patterns; transportation access and mobility; injury prevention and safety; and parks, playgrounds and walkability.

How do you stop an outbreak from becoming an epidemic?  You catch it early, of course – a task that requires rapid response and coordination. That’s a tough mission in any country, especially a nation lacking in resources.

At CMS, our top priority is putting patients first. CMS Administrator Seema Verma launched the “Patients over Paperwork” initiative, which is in accord with President Trump’s Executive Order that directs federal agencies to “cut the red tape” to reduce burdensome regulations.

In 1996, Kathy Giusti, then a 37-year-old pharmaceutical sales exec with a new baby, was told she had a blood cancer called multiple myeloma and three years to live. She refused to act like her life was over. “I decided I was going to live like I was going to live, not like I was going to die,” she says.

Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation recently welcomed more than 500 guests to its annual black-tie gala, the Tiara Ball, held March 10, 2018, at The Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Goleta.     

After back-to-back, eight-hour shifts at a chiropractor’s office and a rehab center, Nirva arrived outside an elderly woman’s house just in time to help her up the front steps.

In the midst of a US shortage of intravenous (IV) fluids, oral hydration is a low-cost, evidence-based solution hospitals can implement to treat adults with mild rehydration, write a group of international emergency care physicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in an article published March 21 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Pomona leaders put off a decision Monday on whether they should include regulating local hospitals as part of their municipal duties.  The City Council on Monday discussed a proposed ordinance that would establish minimum wage and staffing levels at acute care hospitals in the city, a topic that attracted hundreds on both sides of the issue — although most were opposed. The proposal is almost identical to an initiative backed by a health workers’ union.

Supervisors voted Monday for Orange County to spend $70.5 million on permanent housing for the homeless, and to create temporary homeless camps in Irvine, and possibly in Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel.

USC Verdugo Hills Hospital is gearing up to open its new neonatal intensive-care unit later this month so moms who give birth at the hospital won’t have to have their premature newborns transported to another hospital.

Surgeons in London have carried out a pioneering human embryonic stem cell operation in an ongoing trial to find a cure for blindness for many patients.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has launched a new initiative that digs into social determinants of health and aims to chip away at geographical impediments to care.  

Every year, millions of people are booked into U.S. jails. The jurisdiction holding them—usually a county—has a constitutional mandate to provide necessary health care while individuals are incarcerated. Yet to date, little has been known about how jails arrange this care.

During harsh Chicago winters when he was homeless, Glenn Baker used to spend as many as 20 nights each month in local emergency rooms–both because of his chronic medical conditions and, at times, just to get out of the cold. But for the last year and a half, Baker has lived in his own apartment, paid for in part by the University of Illinois Hospital.

Obamacare is unraveling. California can’t create its own replacement, at least not yet.  So health care advocates and lawmakers are working on a piecemeal approach. They want to offer a public insurance option to compete with private companies. 

Physical therapy helps Leon Beers, 73, get out of bed in the morning and maneuver around his home using his walker. Other treatment strengthens his throat muscles so that he can communicate and swallow food, said his sister Karen Morse. But in mid-January, his home health care agency told Morse it could no longer provide these services because he had used all his therapy benefits allowed under Medicare for the year.

A startling surge in deaths due to alcohol, drug abuse, and suicide has caught the U.S. off guard. In the most detailed study yet, appearing in JAMA, researchers from the University of Washington highlight where the problem is the worst.

County leaders on Tuesday will decide whether to transform a soon-to-be vacant building on the campus of Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey into a facility where homeless individuals can recover from hospital stays.

One shred of solace that surfaced as hurricanes and tropical storms pummeled Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico last fall was the opportunity to see drones realize some of their life-saving potential.

Lompoc Valley Medical Center this past week became the first facility in Santa Barbara County to receive a “MED-Project” medication disposal kiosk.

Congress will get one last shot later this month to pass a modest plan to help fix the Obamacare marketplaces — that is, unless the Trump administration torpedoes what has been until now a very uneasy truce.

Phyllis Petruzzelli spent the week before Christmas struggling to breathe. When she went to the emergency department on Dec. 26, the doctor at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital near her home in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood said she had pneumonia and needed hospitalization. Then the doctor proposed something that made Petruzzelli nervous. Instead of being admitted to the hospital, she could go back home and let the hospital come to her.

Funding the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing subsidies would lower premiums by 15-20%, according to an analysis being circulated around congressional offices from the Office of Management and Budget. OMB says those subsidies would be more cost-effective than a new reinsurance program.

The woman known as Miss Chevron has lived on a Los Angeles County  bus bench for nine years, which is why people just call her by the name of the gas station behind her.

On a rare rainy night in Albuquerque, two dozen students are learning the proper way to care for older people. Teacher Liliana Reyes is reviewing the systems of the body — circulatory, respiratory and so on — to prepare them for an upcoming exam.

— Adventist Health—a faith-based, nonprofit integrated health system serving more than 75 communities in California, Oregon and Hawaii—today announced the appointment of Andrew Jahn to president of the Adventist Health Southern California Region. Jahn previously served as the president and chief executive officer of Adventist Health Sonora and affiliated clinics in Northern California. Jahn will assume his new duties full-time on February 28, 2018 and report to Bill Wing, President of Adventist Health.

In the wake of last year’s historically devastating wildfires, several state legislators have introduced a bill that would make it easier for community health clinics to help those affected by natural disasters.

Patients who use high levels of hospital services are a costly burden on the healthcare system, but a new study suggests that pairing them with community navigators can help. 

The Thomas Fire that burned 282,000 acres and replaced brush-covered hillsides with blackened, barren vistas is likely contributing to growing waves of valley fever disease in Ventura County, said area lung and infectious disease specialists.

Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell (D – Long Beach) introduced AB 2591 Thursday in an effort to keep Long Beach Community Hospital open. The bill seeks an extension for seismic compliance at the hospital.  Assemblymember O’Donnell is working with the City of Long Beach on this bill in response to numerous pleas from the community calling for action. 

Amazon is gearing up to launch a larger offering in the medical supplies business, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Unless it’s an absolute emergency, Tere, a 35-year-old mother of five children in Oxnard, tries not to leave the house these days.

When Marie was being sold for sex throughout California, she was rarely away from her pimp. Even when he wasn’t physically confining her, she was frightened he was watching or listening.  Marie, a 27-year-old who asked to be identified by her middle name for safety reasons, was first exploited by an older man when she was 16. She was traded between pimps and forced into sex work for nearly a decade.

The Food and Drug Administration gave a green light Wednesday for the first time to a blood test that doctors can use to help rule out concussions.

The opioid epidemic has cost the U.S. more than a trillion dollars since 2001, according to a new study, and may exceed another $500 billion over the next three years.

Researchers have developed an ultraviolet (UV) lamp that kills the influenza virus but isn’t harmful to human skin or eyes, according to a new study in Scientific Reports. They hope the technology can be commercialized and marketed to prevent the spread of seasonal flu in public places, such as schools, hospitals, and airports.

Emergency medical service (EMS) systems were developed in the 1960s and 1970s to respond to traumatic and medical emergency conditions in the community and provide life-saving (stabilizing) care while en route to the hospital emergency department.[1,2] Over time, additional skills training and medical education were provided to prehospital care providers.

California Rep. Doug LaMalfa and Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos have introduced a bill to designate a Rural Health Liaison at USDA.  “Rural hospitals are a critical lifeline in rural America, both in terms of our economy and maintaining access to care,” said LaMalfa, a Republican.

It will be a place where families dealing with pediatric cancer or premature birth can take a breath.  A Ronald McDonald family room planned for Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura would be the third such project in Southern California and the first in Ventura County.

Jim Rickards, a radiologist, helped develop one of the first coordinated care organizations on the West Coast, called Yamhill Community Care

Almost 12 million Americans signed up for 2018 health coverage through marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, according to a new tally that indicates nationwide enrollment remained virtually unchanged from last year despite President Trump’s persistent attacks on the 2010 health law.

Last October, I wrote that a large pot of money, dedicated to protecting the world from infectious diseases, was about to run dry

In Dallas, a 93-year-old is worried about the woman who, for years, has come to her house four days a week to help with shopping, laundry, housecleaning and driving. “She’s just a wonderful person, someone I feel I can trust completely,” said the older woman.  But because her helper is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, both women increasingly fear that she’ll be detained and deported. (I’m withholding their names for that reason.)

Overall hospitalizations for influenza-like illness (ILI) are at their highest since the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began collecting such data, according to new information presented during a teleconference by the CDC today.

Paul Viviano, chief executive of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, has been named chair of a state association for children’s hospitals to lead initiatives intended to help boost pediatric health.

Once again, hospital CEOs ranked finances as their top concern, according to the American College of Healthcare Executive’s annual survey of the most troubling issues confronting hospitals.

On Thursday, California’s six leading gubernatorial candidates will meet on stage in Los Angeles to discuss the issues that matter most to the state’s Latinos. Health care will no doubt be a hot topic. And it should be.

Amazon and two other American titans are trying to shake up health care by experimenting with their own employees’ coverage. By Chinese standards, they’re behind the curve.

For the last two years, the University of Illinois has been trying an unconventional treatment for homeless “super-user” patients at emergency rooms: it finds them a place to live.

The Affordable Care Act is going to survive.  Health care has slowly but surely moved out of the limelight: It isn’t expected to be much more than a blip in President Trump’s first State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

In recent years, Alzheimer’s disease has occasionally been referred to as “type 3” diabetes, though that moniker doesn’t make much sense. After all, though they share a problem with insulin, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, and type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease caused by diet.

Fanny Ortiz, a mother of five who lives just east of downtown Los Angeles, spent nearly a decade married to a man who controlled her and frequently threatened her. Then, she said, his abuse escalated. “He would physically hit me in the face, throw me on the wall,” she recalled.