Tag: health

Health care industry pressures spurring strikes across the country | Local News

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Health care industry pressures spurring strikes across the country | Local News

The strike at Mercy Hospital is more than two weeks old.

But it isn’t the only place in the country where health care workers have gone on strike or reached the brink of walking off the job.



'We definitely do have leverage,' Mercy Hospital nurses say amid strike, labor shortage

The ongoing worker shortage could provide leverage for CWA as they continue to negotiate with Catholic Health System, hospital employees and labor experts say.

The reasons health care workers cite for striking are similar: They have endured the demands and exhaustion of working through the pandemic and insist hospitals staff up to help shoulder the workload.

They say their complaints about staffing levels and working conditions preceded the pandemic but have moved to the forefront over the past year and a half with greater attention on their work.

The strikes and threatened walkouts are creating more urgency to confront the issues, at a time when hospital systems say they are struggling to recruit workers.



AG claims staffing firm in Mercy Hospital strike lacks license

The state Attorney General’s Office called for Huffmaster to stop providing its services to Mercy Hospital.

The swirl of worker shortages, the pandemic and the pressures health care workers are under have led some labor disputes to spill over into strikes, said Larry Zielinski, a former Buffalo General Hospital president.

“It just exacerbates the normal labor-management issues that have existed in health care for a long, long time,” said Zielinski, an executive in residence for health care administration at the University at Buffalo School of Management.



Mercy Hospital strike

Workers have been on strike at Mercy Hospital since Oct. 1.




It comes at a time when employers across the country, in all sorts of industries, are struggling to fill jobs, a dynamic that gives workers some leverage by making it harder for companies to hire replacements for striking workers.

The competition for workers also is forcing some industries to raise wages for lower-paid workers – a factor that has taken on a prominent role in the health care labor disputes, including at Mercy.

As the strike at Mercy continues, Catholic Health faces another pressure point, in the form of the millions of dollars it is paying each week to a staffing firm for temporary replacement workers it is relying upon to keep the hospital open.

As about 2,000 striking CWA members support their union’s push for a new contract, they are about to receive a financial boost.

More than 2,000 workers are part

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Majority (55.5 percent) were equally worried about the privacy of medical records, DNA data, and facial images collected for precision health research — ScienceDaily

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Majority (55.5 percent) were equally worried about the privacy of medical records, DNA data, and facial images collected for precision health research — ScienceDaily

Uses of facial images and facial recognition technologies — to unlock a phone or in airport security — are becoming increasingly common in everyday life. But how do people feel about using such data in healthcare and biomedical research?

Through surveying over 4,000 US adults, researchers found that a significant proportion of respondents considered the use of facial image data in healthcare across eight varying scenarios as unacceptable (15-25 percent). Taken with those that responded as unsure of whether the uses were acceptable, roughly 30-50 percent of respondents indicated some degree of concern for uses of facial recognition technologies in healthcare scenarios. Whereas using facial image data in some cases — such as to avoid medical errors, for diagnosis and screening, or for security — was acceptable to the majority, more than half of respondents did not accept or were uncertain about healthcare providers using this data to monitor patients’ emotions or symptoms, or for health research.

In the biomedical research setting, most respondents were equally worried about the use of medical records, DNA data and facial image data in a study.

While respondents were a diverse group in terms of age, geographic region, gender, racial and ethnic background, educational attainment, household income, and political views, their perspectives on these issues did not differ by demographics. Findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

“Our results show that a large segment of the public perceives a potential privacy threat when it comes to using facial image data in healthcare,” said lead author Sara Katsanis, who heads the Genetics and Justice Laboratory at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and is a Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “To ensure public trust, we need to consider greater protections for personal information in healthcare settings, whether it relates to medical records, DNA data, or facial images. As facial recognition technologies become more common, we need to be prepared to explain how patient and participant data will be kept confidential and secure.”

Senior author Jennifer K. Wagner, Assistant Professor of Law, Policy and Engineering in Penn State’s School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs adds: “Our study offers an important opportunity for those pursuing possible use of facial analytics in healthcare settings and biomedical research to think about human-centeredness in a more meaningful way. The research that we are doing hopefully will

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Health care trading network buys case support platform

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Health care trading network buys case support platform

Global Healthcare Exchange Inc. bought Explorer Surgical Corp. on undisclosed terms. GHX is a Louisville-based software-as-a-service company. Explorer Surgical operates a digital and remote case support platform and is based in Chicago.

GHX’s main offering is GHX Exchange, which connects health care providers and suppliers of goods and services via electronic platform, a back-office supply-chain and purchasing system and incorporating data and analytics globally, according to its website, news reports and a press release on the acquisition.

Explorer Surgical’s work also includes connecting suppliers with health care providers, including remote mentoring and performance-tracking tools. One offering lets hospitals “guide, track and analyze activity in the operating room, and improve communication and performance,” startup journal Chicago Inno said.

“Patient care decisions must be grounded in data, product expertise and procedural best practices because lives depend on it,” GHX president and CEO Bruce Johnson said in a press release announcing the deal.

“Healthcare is rife with inefficiency and must standardize the operational and clinical best practices and products that yield the best possible patient outcomes,” Explorer Surgical co-founder and CEO Jennifer Fried said.

Explorer Surgical had raised $11 million in funding through April, led by Aphelion Capital in California and Sofia Fund, a Minnesota group investing in technology companies run by women, Chicago Inno said.

The acquisition of Explorer Surgical follows GHX’s purchase of Lumere, founded as Procured Health in 2014 and focused on cutting health care costs with data and analytics, in January 2020. In 2018 it bought Medical Columbus AG, a cloud-based health care supply-chain manager.

GHX was founded in 2000 by industry suppliers including Medtronic Inc., Abbott Laboratories, GE Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson and Baxter International. Other owners joined through February 2014 a healthcare journal said, reporting its sale to private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC.

The private equity firm at the time generally invested up to $300 million in its acquisitions. Additional acquisitions followed its buyout.

In May 2017, Singapore-based Temasek Holdings Ltd. bought most of Thoma Bravo’s stake. Thoma Bravo exited its investment fully in June 2021 when Warburg Pincus made a minority investment in GHX. PE Hub said the Pincus investment was $500 million.

GHX works with 5,600 health care providers and 950 suppliers in the U.S. and Europe, its website said. In the Warburg investment press release, GHX said its platform serves providers with 80% of licensed hospital beds in the U.S. and that 85%

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Age discrimination: Seniors say they feel devalued when interacting with health care providers

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Age discrimination: Seniors say they feel devalued when interacting with health care providers

There was the time several years ago when she told an emergency room doctor that the antibiotic he wanted to prescribe wouldn’t counteract the kind of urinary tract infection she had.

He wouldn’t listen, even when she mentioned her professional credentials. She asked to see someone else, to no avail. “I was ignored and finally I gave up,” said Whitney, who has survived lung cancer and cancer of the urethra and depends on a special catheter to drain urine from her bladder. (An outpatient renal service later changed the prescription.)

Then, earlier this year, Whitney landed in the same emergency room, screaming in pain, with another urinary tract infection and a severe anal fissure. When she asked for Dilaudid, a powerful narcotic that had helped her before, a young physician told her, “We don’t give out opioids to people who seek them. Let’s just see what Tylenol does.”

Whitney said her pain continued unabated for eight hours.

“I think the fact I was a woman of 84, alone, was important. When older people come in like that, they don’t get the same level of commitment to do something to rectify the situation. It’s like ‘Oh, here’s an old person with pain. Well, that happens a lot to older people,'” she said.

Whitney’s experiences speak to ageism in health care settings, a long-standing problem that’s getting new attention during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed more than half a million Americans age 65 and older.

More organ transplant centers require patients to get Covid-19 vaccine, or get bumped down waitlist

Ageism occurs when people face stereotypes, prejudice or discrimination because of their age. The assumption that all older people are frail and helpless is a common, incorrect stereotype. Prejudice can consist of feelings such as “older people are unpleasant and difficult to deal with.” Discrimination is evident when older adults’ needs aren’t recognized and respected or when they’re treated less favorably than younger people.

In health care settings, ageism can be explicit. An example: plans for rationing medical care (“crisis standards of care”) that specify treating younger adults before older adults. Embedded in these standards, now being implemented by hospitals in Idaho and parts of Alaska and Montana, is a value judgment: Young peoples’ lives are worth more because they presumably have more years left to live.

Justice in Aging, a legal advocacy group, filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in September, charging that Idaho’s crisis standards
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Current health care system cannot survive aging population

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Current health care system cannot survive aging population

The anticipated rise in healthcare costs due to the aging population is simply not sustainable.

The U.S. has the second largest oldest population in the world. By 2050, 21.4 percent of our population will be 65 years or older. Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the U.S. population accounting for one-third of the deaths in the U.S. every year. The cost is staggering, with direct costs of 214 billion dollars and a further cost of 138 billion dollars due to lost job productivity.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., costing the healthcare system of approximately 174 billion dollars. Diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s disease are endemic and will continue to rise with an aging population. The anticipated rise in healthcare costs due to the aging population is simply not sustainable.

A new approach to care delivery is required. We’re saddled with expensive, inefficient healthcare IT (HIT) that has severed the personal connection between doctors and patients as well as between nurses and patients. If we don’t change how care is delivered in this country, the healthcare system will collapse into a sea of red ink.

The move to value-based care is sometimes cited as a way to prepare for an aging population. But value-based models depend on enough patient volume to make the model work. Doctors and nurses are stressed enough due to inefficient HIT like EHRs, which were designed as billing systems that don’t accommodate healthcare workflows. HIT needs to make the transition from data collection to supporting higher levels of productivity.

Appropriate strategies to decrease the incidence of chronic diseases and the associated costs to the healthcare system are critical if all Americans are to have appropriate access to healthcare. Even a decrease of chronic diseases by 10 percent would result in savings of greater than 100 billion dollars to the health care system. Using primary and secondary prevention strategies that rely upon lifestyle changes are extremely cost-effective and will improve the quality of life for the aging population. Inparticular, improved education to the at-risk population will further enhance the positive impact to cost upon the health care system.

The 21st Century Cures Act mandates that patients have unfettered access to their medical records.Navigating through the maze of lab and imaging reports and physician notes with current technology is a daunting task for patients. We need to provide an

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Biden admin invests $100 million on health care labor shortage

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Biden admin invests 0 million on health care labor shortage

The Biden administration announced Thursday that it will direct $100 million to the National Health Service Corps to help address the health care worker shortage.

Pulled from funding in the American Rescue Plan, the $100 million represents one of the nation’s biggest investments in a program that helps place primary care doctors in communities that have difficulty recruiting and retaining them. It’s a five-fold increase from previous years, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The National Health Service Corps offers loan repayments and scholarships to clinicians in exchange for multiple years of service in areas that have a health care provider shortage.

“Whether you’re in rural America, or in a low income part of America, that shouldn’t be a reason why you can’t access good quality health care,” Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a phone interview. “And so we want to help states that are going to try to do what they can to keep that public health workforce in those rural communities, those low-income communities, they’re where people need them.”

The announcement comes after the United States lost 17,500 health care employees in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the industry’s employment figures now sitting at just under 16 million, the agency reported the country has lost 524,000 health care employees since the start of the pandemic. Job losses in nursing, hospitals and residential care saw the biggest drops in the industry last month.

Losing employees has in turn increased labor costs. Hospitals and other medical facilities have had to sharply increase spending on recruiting and retaining employees, according to a report published last week by Moody’s Investors Services. That has led to boosted benefit options and sign-on bonuses that can go well into five figures since the start of the pandemic.

“Covid has basically caused a laser focus on the glaring gaps and dysfunction across the American health care system,” said Tener Veenema, a scholar focused on workforce issues at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. “Making investments to redistribute health care providers into rural areas, low-resourced areas, is so important because we know how much they are suffering from a lack of access to good health care.”

States will be able to apply for grants until April and the Department of Health and Human Services predicts it will make up to 50 awards as high as $1 million per

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