Re the CalMatters article: “Why hospitals are struggling to meet earthquake safety deadline” The issue of seismic safety at hospitals is of utmost importance to the future of patients who live in remote areas in California. As the CEO of a rural hospital, I know California’s rural hospitals would love...
Valley Patients Could be Diverted to Out of Area Hospitals Under New Health Order
California is so swamped by the coronavirus pandemic that the state has ordered hospitals with room to accept patients from others that have maxed out on intensive care beds. The public health order issued late Tuesday is the latest attempt by authorities to confront a surge in coronavirus infections and...
‘Tired to the Bone’: Hospitals Overwhelmed With Virus Cases
Overwhelmed hospitals are converting chapels, cafeterias, waiting rooms, hallways, even a parking garage into patient treatment areas. Staff members are desperately calling around to other medical centers in search of open beds. Fatigue and frustration are setting in among front-line workers. Conditions inside the nation’s hospitals are deteriorating by the...
Some California Hospitals Are Overwhelmed by Virus Cases
SACRAMENTO — Teams of military doctors, nurses and other health care specialists are being deployed to eight California hospitals facing staffing shortages amid a record-breaking surge of coronavirus cases across the state. The Air Force, at California's request, assigned 160 people to increase capacity in intensive care units. Some teams...
Hong Kong Reports Virus Death as Workers Strike at Hospitals
BEIJING — Hong Kong hospitals cut services as thousands of medical workers went on strike for a second day Tuesday to demand the border with mainland China be shut completely. The new virus caused its first death in the semi-autonomous territory, adding to growing fears it is spreading locally. All...
US, Others Prepare Evacuations as Virus Spreads From China
BEIJING — The United States and several other nations prepared Tuesday to airlift citizens out of a Chinese city at the center of a virus outbreak that has killed more than 100 people. Hong Kong's leader said it will cut all rail links to mainland China and halve the number...
More Americans Are Dying at Home Rather Than in Hospitals
For the first time since the early 1900s, more Americans are dying at home rather than in hospitals, a trend that reflects more hospice care and progress toward the kind of end that most people say they want. Deaths in nursing homes also have declined, according to Wednesday's report in the New...
Why Are There So Many Filipino Nurses in California?
In California hospitals today, immigration has diversified not only the state’s patient population, but the demographics of its caregivers as well. It is now commonplace to be cared for at the bedside by a Filipino immigrant nurse. According to the 2016 Survey of California Registered Nurses, Filipinos make up the...
Efforts to Minimize Opioid Painkillers After Surgery Appear to Be Working
The opioid epidemic has been wreaking misery and death across the nation for years. In 2017 alone, opioid overdoses killed more than 47,000 people – 10,000 more deaths than were caused by traffic accidents that year. For many people who abuse opioids, the problem begins with opioid prescriptions from their...
Health Care Price Transparency: Fool's Gold or Money in Your Pocket?
Health care news is full of stories about monumental surprise hospital bills, sky-high drug prices and patients going bankrupt. The government’s approach to addressing this, via an executive order that President Trump signed June 24, is to make hospitals disclose prices, including negotiated rates with insurers, so that patients supposedly can...