Latest California Healthline Stories
Daily Edition for Tuesday, May 6, 2025
KP Mental Health Workers Tentatively Agree To End Strike: Approximately 2,400 mental health workers have ended a strike that began Oct. 21, 2024, after reaching a tentative labor contract with Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente. Read more from Becker’s Hospital Review, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Capital & Main.
Daily Edition for Monday, May 5, 2025
Soil Testing Shows High Levels Of Toxic Substances After LA Wildfires: The federal government decided not to test the soil of L.A.'s burn areas for hazardous substances. The Los Angeles Times launched its own investigation and found high levels of lead and other heavy metals. Read more from the Los Angeles Times.
Daily Edition for Friday, May 2, 2025
Grant To Support Students’ Mental Health Clawed Back: The West Contra Costa Unified School District Board has learned that the Department of Education intends to cut a five-year, $4.2 million grant to just one year. The Mental Health Services Professional Grant was supposed to enable the Bay Area district to address the mental health needs of its students. Read more from EdSource.
Daily Edition for Thursday, May 1, 2025
LA County Offers Isolated Hospital A $3M Lifeline: Avalon-based Catalina Island Health received $3 million in one-time funding to help keep its doors open. The hospital faces serious financial challenges with insolvency predicted as early as July. Read more from Becker’s Hospital Review.
Daily Edition for Wednesday, April 30, 2025
LA County Worker Strike Disrupts Health Care, More: Nonurgent health clinics were closed Tuesday — and expected to remain closed today — as a sea of SEIU Local 721 workers descended on downtown L.A. over a contract dispute. Union members decried the industry's reliance on high-paid contractors. “How would you feel if someone comes into your hospital for three weeks and makes four times your salary and leaves you,” one person said. Read more from the Los Angeles Times.
Daily Edition for Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Governor Closing Loophole Used At Psychiatric Hospitals: Gov. Gavin Newsom is moving to impose nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in California’s psychiatric hospitals in response to a Chronicle investigative series that spotlighted rampant abuse and neglect in many of the locked facilities. The administration intends to deploy the state’s emergency regulations process. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Daily Edition for Monday, April 28, 2025
Covered California Website Sent Sensitive Personal Data To LinkedIn: The website that lets Californians shop for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, coveredca.com, has been sending sensitive data to LinkedIn. The information included whether someone was blind, pregnant, transgender, used a high number of prescription medications, or was a possible victim of domestic abuse. Read more from CalMatters.
Daily Edition for Friday, April 25, 2025
Behavioral Health Court Marks A Milestone: This spring’s class of the Behavioral Health Court boasts 26 graduates, its largest ever. The 16-year-old San Diego Superior Court program is designed to help felony criminal defendants who have a diagnosis of a serious mental illness by giving them the tools they need to navigate life. Read more from The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Daily Edition for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Blue Shield Of California May Have Exposed Patients' Health Data: The Oakland-based health insurance giant said a misconfiguration in Google Analytics led to the private health data of 4.7 million members potentially being shared with Google Ads. Google may have used that information to conduct targeted ad campaigns. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle and Fierce Healthcare.
Daily Edition for Wednesday, April 23, 2025
EPA Demands That Mexico Fix Sewage Crisis: EPA administrator Lee Zeldin vowed Tuesday in San Diego to pressure Mexico to stop the decades-long Tijuana River sewage crisis. “Mexico needs to fulfill its part in cleaning up the contamination that they caused,” he said. “They cannot view this as a U.S. problem just because their contamination reached U.S. soil.” Read more from The San Diego Union-Tribune and Times of San Diego.