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The call can come at any hour on any day, but the message is always the same. A tragedy has occurred — car accident, massive stroke, suicide — and despite heroic efforts, the emergency medical team cannot save a person’s life. After comprehensive testing and evaluation by the hospital staff, the patient is declared brain dead. By this time, we have arrived onsite to help guide their family through end-of-life decisions. (Wes Patten, 10/12)

Facebook and other social media companies have accurate information about the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of millions of individuals. What these companies know is often more than what user’s therapists know. If therapists and other health care professionals must guard what they know about a patient’s mental health as protected health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Facebook and other social media companies should, too. (Param Kulkarni, 10/13)

As a leader, sometimes you want an opportunity for a do-over. Recently, I sought to reverse a decision I made in 2017 when we removed non-diet sodas from Intermountain Healthcare facilities. Intermountain implemented changes to its eating environments including replacing sugar-sweetened soda in cafeterias, cafés, vending and staff lounges. One of the initial aims in getting rid of non-diet soda was to encourage a dialogue about the role of organizations in promoting healthy behaviors, and that is what happened. But it also spawned an underground economy in our facilities for those wanting sugar-sweetened soda, with local vendors offering to deliver it to our hospitals and clinics. Any many of our caregivers took full advantage of that offering. (Dr. Marc Harrison, 10/12)

In just three months, a change is coming in California that could negatively impact the health of more than a third of the state’s residents – the 14 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries. On January 1, 2022, all Medi-Cal pharmacy benefits will transition away from health plans into a fee-for-service model implemented by a private, for-profit company. (John Baackes and Jarrod McNaughton, 10/11)

The Covid-19 lockdown began in Massachusetts the week I submitted my dissertation to become a doctor of public health (DrPH). When I had gone back to school in Boston three years before, after working as a policy analyst at the National Institutes of Health, I could never have imagined graduating during a health crisis like this. I had studied pandemics, of course, but only as history lessons. Suddenly I — like everyone around the globe — was living through one. (Eric Coles, 10/13)