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Amid shortages going back months to over a year of dextrose syringes and intravenous fluid bags to treat a wide variety of emergency conditions, US emergency medical services (EMS) are scrambling to adapt treatment protocols and conduct trainings on how to use them. Dextrose is a critical drug used to treat conditions such as low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), dehydration, acute alcohol poisoning, and high potassium levels, or as a carbohydrate in parenteral nutrition. ( Van Beusekom, 8/4)

San Francisco’s current and former city attorneys have filed a pair of lawsuits that they hope will bring the federal government’s effort to shutter Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center next month to a screeching halt. (Asimov, 8/4)

Reproductive rights advocates are breathing a sigh of relief after learning Thursday that a planned early September closing has been postponed for the North Shore Birth Center in Beverly, the last operating, free-standing center in Eastern Massachusetts. The potential loss had raised concerns about dwindling access to maternity services, particularly for low-income families and women of color. (Lazar, 8/4)

After a hospital stay in 2016 for a brain tumor, Regina Romero was transferred to a nursing home in New Mexico. Romero died less than four months after arriving at the home; she was only 59 years old. (Whitlock, 8/5)

Johns Hopkins Medicine has received $200 million in federal funding to head up a consortium aimed at treating and stemming the spread of one of the world’s oldest and deadliest scourges: tuberculosis. (Cohn, 8/4)

Cigna saw net income rise 6.2% to $1.5 billion in the second quarter because of less emergency department and surgery utilization and lower direct costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the company reported Thursday. The decline in spending on care for fully insured customers, along with repricing in the insurer’s government-sponsored business, drove Cigna’s medical loss ratio down to 80.7%. The company reported an 84.4% medical loss ratio during the same period a year ago. (Tepper, 8/4)

Pope Francis has promoted a Vatican nurse whom he credited with saving his life to be his “personal health care assistant.” The Vatican announced the appointment of Massimiliano Strappetti in a one-line statement issued Thursday. Strappetti, the nursing coordinator of the Vatican’s health department, accompanied Francis on a difficult trip to Canada last month. Francis, 85, last year credited Strappetti with having accurately ascertained an intestinal problem that led to the pope’s 10-day hospital stay in July 2021 to remove 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon that had narrowed. ... Francis noted that Strappetti’s intervention was the second time a nurse had saved his life. (8/4)