Health Care Headlines

US influenza activity is now the most widespread since the 2009 influenza A(H1/N1) pandemic, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today in its latest weekly update on flu activity.

Seasonal influenza — the flu — sickens and kills many Americans in a good year, and this is already a bad one. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 2010, flu has annually caused “between 9.2 million and 35.6 million illnesses, between 140,000 and 710,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 and 56,000 deaths.”

A bad case of the flu can trigger a short-lived, but substantial, spike in some people’s heart attack risk, new research suggests

The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed a new leader for the vast array of federal health programs, tapping former pharmaceutical executive Alex Azar, who already has significant experience at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike are congratulating themselves for finally passing new funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program — and for another six years yet!

It was 3:35 a.m. and flames from a massive Northern California wildfire licked at the back of a Santa Rosa hospital.  Within three hours, staffers evacuated 122 patients to other facilities — something they’d never come close to doing before. Ambulances sped off with some of the sickest patients; city buses picked up many of the rest.

Palm Springs – This desert resort town some 100 miles east of Los Angeles, in the sprawling Coachella Valley, is known for many things: Its spectacular setting, nestled next to towering Mount San Jacinto; its vibrant gay and lesbian community (fully 100 percent of the City Council identifies as LGBT); and its midcentury modern architecture. It’s also known, perhaps above all, as a haven for old people: The median age here is about 54, compared with 36 for the rest of California.

Rates of flu1 are skyrocketing in the U.S., with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking high rates especially in the South, Midwest, Southwest, and West.

This year’s emergence of breakthrough innovations illustrates the vitality of the health care industry. And biopharma is largely what’s underpinning this paradigm shift in the global health-care ecosystem.

After a three-day standoff, Senate Democrats and Republicans have cleared a major hurdle to reopen the government — but only for three weeks.

Researchers say they have taken a step toward developing a blood test that would detect eight common cancers, possibly even before symptoms appear.

Hear from AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack on all the good work being done in health care.

Grand River Hospital and Medical Center, a 13-bed critical access hospital in Western Colorado which sees an average of seven patients a day, has saved about $300,000 in staffing costs by using telehealth tools to establish a round-the-clock pharmacy.

House Republicans on Tuesday night appeared to coalesce around a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown Friday — even as conservatives threatened to oppose it and a bitter fight continued over the fate of more than 700,000 Dreamers.

In a cornfield here, past the shuttered General Motors plant and the Janesville Terrace trailer home park, a facility not seen in the United States in three decades could soon rise: a manufacturing plant that will make a vital radioactive isotope used to detect cancer and other potentially fatal maladies in millions of people every year.

A double whammy of federal budget cuts might force many hospitals, particularly those that serve poor or rural communities, to scale back services or even shut their doors.

An influenza A strain known as H3N2 is making people so ill in California that thousands have shown up in recent weeks at hospitals struggling to fight the infection.

Dr. Mahendra Patel, a pediatric cancer doctor, has begun giving away medications to some of his patients, determined not to disrupt their treatments for serious illnesses like leukemia, should Congress fail to come up with renewed funding for a key children’s health program now hostage to partisan politics.

Lawmakers in both parties say that a long-running disagreement over children’s health funding has almost been resolved and that funding could be passed as soon as next week.

Jake Creviston, a nurse practitioner, has been repeatedly mistaken for a doctor.  Adam White says the veterans he cares for as a student nurse at the V.A. hospital feel comfortable around him because “I’m a big burly guy with a beard.”

Doctors at some of the country’s largest hospital chains admit they went overboard with opioids to make people as pain-free as possible.  Now the doctors shoulder part of the blame for the country’s opioid crisis. In an effort to be part of the cure, they’ve begun to issue an uncomfortable warning to patients: You’re going to feel some pain.

Federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expired on September 30, 2017. CHIP covers 8.9 million children in working families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford or access private coverage. (See here for state Medicaid and CHIP eligibility limits for children.)

Healthcare job growth slowed in 2017, but it still accounted for 15% of the 2 million new jobs created in the U.S. economy last year, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.

People in public health hate H3N2 flu seasons, like the one1 gripping most of North America right now. So do folks who work in hospitals and in the care facilities that look after the elderly.

Even as the opioid crisis fueled overdose deaths across the nation, the number of Californians who succumbed to these and other drugs has remained stable, new federal data show.

For those homeless and sick, or suffering from substance abuse or mental health disorders, life is a constant struggle. They show up repeatedly in hospital emergency rooms only to return to the streets, where the day-to-day challenge to survive quickly overtakes any follow-up medical care plans.

President Trump is vowing to return to two of his favorite goals in 2018: a crackdown on immigration and the dissolution of the Affordable Care Act.

Last month, I visited Puerto Rico with a team of six members assembled by the AHA, Greater New York Hospital Association, and Healthcare Association of New York State, as part of our initiative to identify ways the field can aid in this health care community’s long-term recovery and return to normal operations. Our fact-finding team met with hospital administration and staff from 10 of Puerto Rico’s 69 hospitals to get a better understanding of their immediate and long-term needs. 

Scientists in the United Kingdom and China find that a new drug for type 2 diabetes may protect the brain from damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease, after testing it in mice.

The United States spends almost twice as much on health care, as a percentage of its economy, as other advanced industrialized countries — totaling $3.3 trillion, or 17.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2016.

2018 is going to be a long year, and probably a hard one to keep up with in the ever-evolving world of health care.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week recommended treating all hospitalized, severely ill and high-risk patients who have suspected or confirmed influenza with antiviral medications as soon as possible. H3N2 A viruses are predominating this flu season, and in past seasons have been associated with more hospitalizations and deaths in older adults and young children.

Congressional Republicans appear to be moving full speed ahead in repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, prompting debate among California health care experts on how the state could continue encouraging residents to buy health insurance — including imposing a state-level requirement to purchase coverage.

iaoyuan Yang was pregnant and her husband Weiming Lei needed a job when they moved more than 20 years ago from Guangzhou, China, to Los Angeles.  “We knew nothing, and we didn’t understand anything,” Lei said. “Someone told us to live in Chinatown.”

A new white paper from Merritt Hawkins Associates, a leading physician recruiting firm, argues that specialists such as pulmonologists, psychiatrists, and dermatologists are in just as short supply as primary care physicians (PCPs) are, and that the situation is getting worse.

Federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expired on September 30, 2017. CHIP covers 8.9 million children in working families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford or access private coverage.

In rural areas in Colorado, Oklahoma and North Carolina, doctors, their assistants and patients feel the effects of a shortage of healthcare providers.

The patients were evacuated before the Vista Del Mar Hospital in Ventura, Calif., was destroyed by wildfire, according to an article on the Pharmacy Choice website.

Hospitals across Southern California reported that high numbers of patients with breathing problems caused by this week’s wildfires visited emergency rooms.

Craig Wagoner, chair of the board of the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California, today announced that Arthur A. Sponseller, President and CEO of the Hospital Council since 2005, will retire when his employment contract ends on December 31, 2018.

Some people wear red bandanas over their faces or blue surgical masks or tight-fitting face warmers decorated with a skull.  The masks offer better protection against smoke and ash inhalation than nothing, according to doctors and air control experts, but not by much.

The US Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Trump’s latest ban on travel to the United States from six Muslim-majority countries ― Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen ― to stand, at least for now.

Laquita Gardner, a sales manager at a furniture rental store here, was happy to get a raise recently except for one problem. It lifted her income just enough to disqualify her and her two young sons from Medicaid, the free health insurance program for the poor.

Fire licked at the charred skeleton of Vista Del Mar Hospital. Black smoke spewed. Flames ignite.  Therapist Mehrzad Bazyar stood outside Vista Del Mar Hospital as it spewed smoke and flames Tuesday morning. He pointed at an obliterated corner of a building.  “That was my office,” he said, noting that the building “had just been decorated for Christmas.”

Los Angeles County’s marquee program to provide housing for very sick homeless people saved taxpayers thousands of dollars by reducing hospitalizations and emergency room visits, a three-year Rand Corp. study released Monday found.

Two months past its deadline, Congress has yet to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program, leaving several states including California scrambling for cash.

On Nov. 16, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge was one of the 1.5 million Americans who will have a heart attack or stroke this year. He was in Austin, Texas for a meeting of the Republican Governors Association, and was rushed to the city’s Dell Seton Medical Center where he was given treatments that were uncommon decades ago but now prevent heart attacks from becoming fatal, such as a catheterization and stenting.

Eli Wheatley and Christian Guardino are among a growing number of patients whose lives are apparently being saved or radically improved by gene therapy.  Wheatley, 3, of Lebanon, Ky., and Guardino, 17, of Patchogue, N.Y., were both diagnosed with what were long thought to be incurable genetic disorders. In the past, Wheatley’s condition would have probably killed him before his first birthday. Guardino’s would have blinded him early in life.

The average time to identify a new cancer drug is six years. Since one of every four deaths in the U.S. is due to cancer, a lot of lives could be saved if that drug development time could be cut down to just a year.

A teenage girl walks the hardscrabble streets of Richmond, a Bay Area city, rapping about the challenges of drugs, violence—and diabetes. Here, she says, big dreams are “coated in sugar,” and innocence is “corrupted with Coke bottles and Ho Ho cupcakes.”

The opioid drug problem has reached crisis levels in the United States—in 2015, over 33,000 Americans died of a drug overdose involving opioids. CEA finds that previous estimates of the economic cost of the opioid crisis greatly understate it by undervaluing the most important component of the loss—fatalities resulting from overdoses.

During the past year, state and local officials have planned the annual disaster drill to ensure California’s hospitals are ready to respond to emergencies, natural and man-caused disasters.

Sacramento resident Charis Hill was caught off guard by the tiny bottle of saline solution hanging from the intravenous pole when she went for the latest infusion of medication that helps her avoid crippling pain. Accustomed to seeing a much larger bag of fluid, she immediately asked staff about the change.

Millions of Americans living in vulnerable rural and urban communities depend upon their hospital as an important, and often only, source of care. However, these communities and their hospitals face many challenges.

If you have flu-like symptoms, like cough, fever or difficulty breathing, that are lasting more than two weeks, state and Merced County health officials think you should ask your health provider about valley fever.

Republican efforts to alter the health law, left for dead in September, came roaring back to life this week as the Senate Finance Committee added a repeal of the “individual mandate” fines for not maintaining health insurance to their tax bill.

A cancer survivor is alive because doctors diagnosed her disease in time and got her the treatment she needed immediately. A man with diabetes learns how to monitor his blood sugar to avoid the amputation of his leg. These miracles happened because these patients had meaningful access to care as a result of having health care coverage. 

Hospitals, university buildings and affordable housing projects could become markedly more expensive to develop if the tax plan aproved Thursday by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives becomes law.

You may not have had high blood pressure Sunday, but you may have it today. Even if your blood pressure hasn’t changed a smidge. What’s up?

Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates made news this week by vowing more than $50 million to fund Alzheimer’s research. But in making that generous move he expressed a concern, which was echoed today in a new report from the Rand Corporation: Due to the aging of the population, the population of Alzheimer’s patients is growing so rapidly the healthcare system isn’t equipped to handle it, Gates warned.

Long Beach’s City Council members and its mayor are of a seeming consensus that Community Medical Center Long Beach and its emergency room need to remain open, even though the hospital’s top manager has said repeatedly that doing so is impossible under the terms of seismic safety regulations.

Representatives of Community Medical Center Long Beach said they plan to shutter its emergency room and acute care services within 18 months because the nearly century-old hospital can’t meet state earthquake safety standards.

California health officials have stepped up their hepatitis A prevention efforts in recent days as new fronts emerge in the battle against the state’s massive outbreak.

For years, hospital emergency rooms have been seen as easy marks for people who are doctor shopping for opioids like Vicodin and Oxycontin.  But that perception may be changing. An effort aimed at getting local emergency room physicians to change their prescribing practices appears to be bearing fruit.

The use of technology by care teams is helping to improve the management of care for patients covered by Inland Empire Health Plan in California, which serves 1.25 million residents in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Since March 2017, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why has been trending among young audiences across the globe. In May, it was even renewed for a second season.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved legislation to continue a federal insurance program for millions of lower-income children and pregnant women, but with an ongoing funding battle it could be weeks before the program gets more money.

The percentage of registered nurses who plan to retire in less than a year is up significantly, a finding that indicates the long-predicted wave of retirements among baby boomer nurses is already underway, according to a new survey from staffing firm AMN Healthcare.

Young adults in Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties who are not eligible for Medi-Cal and cannot afford private insurance can enroll in a new Kaiser Permanente health program.

It is important to take a look at your health plan during the renewal period because plan options and rates could change each year, and you may qualify for a different amount of financial help — especially if things like your income, household size and address have changed since last year. Renewal is also a great time to update your information with Covered California and shop for new coverage.

A new $244,000 grant will fund palliative care education for qualified Medi-Cal providers at the California State University Institute for Palliative Care in San Marcos.

The House on Friday is expected to pass legislation to refinance the Children’s Health Insurance Program and send federal funds to community health centers. But a partisan morass over how to pay for the legislation all but ensures that state governments and millions of children will get little relief from the uncertainty that has faced the programs since funding officially expired a month ago.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to create a “village” of services for homeless individuals and others in need on the LAC+USC Medical Center campus.

Two U.S. senators introduced legislation Tuesday requiring federal agencies to come up with solutions to the waste caused by oversized eyedrops and single-use drug vials, citing a ProPublica story published last month.

Los Angeles County is preparing to ask the state legislature to expand the legal definition of “grave disability” to give officials more power to put certain homeless individuals on involuntary psychiatric holds. The move, which takes the county into uncertain ethical territory, is motivated by a desire to provide crucial medical help to those with mental health issues who refuse to get the care they need.

David Branch knew that his job, helping people sign up for Obamacare, would be harder this year. But Mr. Branch didn’t fully realize the scope of his challenge until a group that he approached with his fliers insisted that the Affordable Care Act had been repealed.

If President Trump had his way, Covered California would not even be in business.  But despite the president’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act, California’s health insurance exchange is alive and well as it launches its fifth open enrollment period.

This fact sheet provides an overview of the status of action to extend federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Federal funding for CHIP expired on September 30, 2017.

The countdown has begun!  Open enrollment starts Nov. 1 and continues through Jan. 31, 2018

How well do health care providers translate for patients who speak another language? California has taken another step toward answering that question.

Health care coverage is an essential component of achieving the AHA’s vision of healthy communities, where all individuals reach their highest potential for health. More than 10 milliion Americans are enrolled in coverage through the Health Inusurance Marketplace and now is the time to review coverage and enroll in a plan for 2018.

The days are long past when the only career doors that readily opened to young women were those marked teacher, secretary or nurse. Yet young adults who are part of the millennial generation are nearly twice as likely as baby boomers were to choose the nursing profession, according to a recent study.

As Republican and Democratic lawmakers clash over the future of Obamacare, Americans largely are eager for a bipartisan solution to its shortcomings, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday.

Long a staple of science fiction, robots are now proving their value as a telemedicine resource.

Infectious diseases have ravaged continents, treatment-resistant superbugs are on the rise, and social stigma inhibits treatment of crippling psychiatric disorders. At times, the state of global health may seem hopeless and concerning. But in fact, a number of advances, from drug development to disease tracking, are helping people live longer at a scale that was previously unimaginable.

A US judge in California on Wednesday refused to block President Donald Trump’s decision to end subsidy payments to health insurers under Obamacare, rejecting a request by Democratic attorneys general from 18 US states.

The Food and Drug Administration continues to work with medical device manufacturers in Puerto Rico to prevent product shortages following Hurricane Maria, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., said Friday.

ver bitter protests from the pharmaceutical industry, California this month enacted a law1 that requires drug makers to explain and justify prices for some medicines.

A last-ditch health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act failed to advance in the Senate prior to the Sept. 30 budget reconciliation deadline. The Graham-Cassidy Block Grant amendment to the American Health Care Act was abandoned after three Republican senators announced their opposition to the amendment - Susan Collins (R-ME), Rand Paul (R-KY) and John McCain R-AZ). Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) indicated that further action is unlikely this year and the Senate will turn its focus to overhauling the tax code.

Controversy has emerged recently over federal payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) related to cost-sharing reductions for low-income enrollees in the ACA’s marketplaces.

During the five years Tony Price roamed the streets and dozed in doorways, the emergency rooms of Sacramento’s hospitals were a regular place for him to sleep off a hard day’s drinking.

Wielding his pen, Gov. Jerry Brown has reinforced the Affordable Care Act, stood up to pharmaceutical companies and boosted testing for childhood lead poisoning.

Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital stayed open even though 51 of its doctors lost their homes. It stayed open even when twice as many patients as normal crowded into its emergency room, coughing and gasping. It stayed open and delivered 36 babies.

Although the Department of Health and Human Services has declared public health emergencies in California due to raging wildfires and in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for the hurricanes that caused widespread devastation, hospitals damaged in those disasters may not find the federal government will be as willing to provide all the funds they need to rebuild the facilities.

California officials are denouncing President Trump for ending the subsidies that help cover out-of-pocket medical costs for 670,000 lower-income Californians. But experts believe the state’s health care marketplace is mostly insulated from a move that could hit the industry hard in other parts of the country.