Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
HHS, Labor Dept. Grants $346 Million To Boost Health Worker Training
In a series of grants focused on equity and access to care, the Health and Human Services and Labor departments are awarding more than $346 million to train nurses, community workers and public health professionals.聽(Devereaux, 10/3)
On any given day, social workers and case managers at Adventist Health Tillamook call 15 to 20 post-acute care facilities trying to place patients ready to be discharged. Some facilities say they can鈥檛 accept new residents. Others don鈥檛 pick up the phone. 鈥淎 lot of time is wasted in looking for facilities to try to take patients,鈥 said Heather Thompson, patient care executive at the Oregon critical access hospital. (Christ, 10/4)
Michigan Medicine nurses have approved a four-year, $273 million contract with University of Michigan Health after months of working without a new agreement in place. (Hall and Jordan Shamus, 10/3)
In other news about health workers 鈥
According to the inspectors鈥 report, Clarion Wellness had installed a grab bar 鈥 also known as an assistance handle or bed bar 鈥 on a resident鈥檚 bed in June 2021. The facility installed the device without first assessing the risk it might pose and without obtaining consent from the resident鈥檚 family, the inspector reported. (Kauffman, 10/3)
The brother of a New Hampshire woman who died in 2014 after heart surgery at Catholic Medical Center in Manchester told a legislative committee Monday that she wouldn鈥檛 have gone through with the operation had she known that the hospital had recently disciplined her surgeon for professional misconduct. (Saltzman and Fernandes, 10/3)
KHN: Watch: Meet The Latest Fact-Checker 鈥 Your Doctor聽
In a one-on-one conversation, KHN partnerships editor and senior correspondent Mary Agnes Carey talked with American Medical Association President Dr. Jack Resneck Jr. about how the current climate of misinformation affects doctors and their daily efforts to treat patients. This interview, which took place Sept. 29 as part of PolitiFact鈥檚 United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking, covered a range of topics 鈥 from how the debate over the safety of covid-19 vaccines played out in exam rooms across the country, to what needs to be done to help rebuild the nation鈥檚 trust in the public health system, and the misinformation that swirls around the abortion issue. (10/4)
Looking for an actually concise explanation of a half-century鈥檚 worth of research and arguments about health care spending in the U.S.? You鈥檙e in luck: Government budget wonks, against all odds, condensed it down to a single PowerPoint slide. (Herman, 10/3)
Also 鈥
A study conducted at a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Ohio suggests that hospital floors and shoes of healthcare workers are potential sources for dissemination of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other healthcare-associated pathogens, researchers reported late last week in the American Journal of Infection Control. (10/3)