Bay Area News Group: Santa Clara Valley Healthcare Nurses Strike As County Shells Out More Than $20 Million On Contract Nurses
Santa Clara County nurses donning cobalt blue shirts with their union logo rang cow bells and waved signs calling for a fair contract in front of Valley Medical Center on Tuesday morning as they entered the first day of a three-day strike. (Hase, 4/2)

San Francisco Chronicle: Kaiser Medical Residents Seek A Union For Better Pay, Work Conditions
The hundreds of medical residents and fellows across all Kaiser Foundation hospitals in Northern California are formalizing efforts to unionize, the latest in a nationwide trend of young physicians pushing their employers for better benefits, pay and working conditions. Union representatives filed paperwork Tuesday with the National Labor Relations Board that will kick off a vote among prospective members to form a collective bargaining unit, said the Committee of Interns and Residents, or CIR, the union that would represent the nearly 500 Kaiser residents and fellows at Kaiser hospitals in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and several other Northern California locations. (Ho, 4/2)

VC Star: HCA Healthcare Names New CEO For Los Robles Health System
The former leader of a Kansas for-profit hospital has been hired as the new CEO of Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks and will begin the job Monday. (Kisken, 4/2)

NBC 7 San Diego: Half Of Physicians Struggle With Burnout, Including In Southern California
M.D. is a high-pressure title. “Even in just the day-to-day, it's a lot getting through a typical workday,” said Dr. Abisola Olulade, who is the Sharp Reese-Stealy Medical Group's chief impact officer. Doctors see an average of 20 patients a day, but the job involves a lot more desk work than one might think. (Menezes, 4/2)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Abortion Access Services Have Surged Since Dobbs Court Ruling
Just a few years ago, Access Reproductive Justice, California’s only standalone organization dedicated to helping women access abortions, had just two full-time employees who staffed a phone line that callers from all over the country could reach for help. The nonprofit offered a range of services: paying for abortions, booking hotels and taxi rides if women had to travel for the procedure, or paying for child care while they were away. It covered about $50,000 worth of such services, spread across hundreds of clients each year. (Ho, 4/3)

Santa Cruz Sentinel: Bay Area Health Officials Urge Vaccination Amid Measles Rise
Santa Cruz County public health leaders have joined 12 neighboring jurisdictions in urging measles vaccination amid an uptick in cases at state and national levels. The Association of Bay Area Health Officials, which includes representatives from Santa Cruz, wrote in a recent release that the best protection against measles is two doses of the measles-mumpus-rubella vaccine, which provides protection for life. Local officials urged the public to get the shot and to watch for symptoms after exposure or travel. (Hattis, 4/3)

CBS San Francisco: San Francisco Nonprofit Works To Help Residents -- Including Immigrants -- Who Are Unaware Of Medi-Cal Eligibility 
Health care for low-income Californians has expanded over the years through Medi-Cal, but the state is also disenrolling hundreds of thousands of people each month after hitting the pause button during COVID.   Kavya Chatterjee works for a nonprofit that is helping to enroll patients who lack health care coverage and are unaware they're eligible for Medi-Cal. (Choi, 4/2)

Politico: CMS Rejects Drugmaker Price Offers, Kick-Starting Medicare Talks
CMS said Tuesday it shot down drugmakers’ price offers for 10 pharmaceuticals subject to Medicare price negotiations, kicking off talks expected to stretch through the summer. The agency’s decision is the latest development in a negotiation process created by the Inflation Reduction Act. Officials touted the prospect of savings for those on Medicare, but the final prices won’t take effect until 2026. (King, 4/2)

Stat: White House Offers New Plan To Address Drug Shortages
The White House at long last published a plan to stem drug shortages, and it involves basing Medicare pay to hospitals on whether hospitals adopt business practices that avoid shortages. The White House formed a task force at the beginning of 2023 to deal with the issue of persistent drug shortages, including cancer drugs. As of late last summer, lawmakers working on drug shortage legislation hadn’t spoken to the task force and didn’t know who was in charge of it. (Wilkerson, 4/2)

Axios: More Americans Forgoing ADHD Meds As Shortages Drag On
Shortages of commonly prescribed drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have stretched on for nearly 18 months, with no clear end in sight for many Americans who've found it difficult if not impossible to get the treatments. Why it matters: As demand for stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse soared, the fill rate for such prescriptions has dropped more than 10% in two years, according to a new analysis from health analytics firm Truveta. (Reed, 4/3)

Newsweek: Demand For Weight-Loss Drugs Spikes Despite Horror Stories
Since weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro first hit the market, patients have shared horror story symptoms and even complained of how the pounds pile back on when they stop taking the medication. Nausea, diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain and other gastrointestinal issues are just some of the common side effects listed. However, even if you make it through these, some patients say the weight loss goes into reverse once you're off the drug again. (Blake, 4/2)

LAist: FBI Investigates Santa Ana School District’s COVID Testing Contracts Brokered By Disgraced Anaheim Leader
The FBI has been conducting a criminal investigation into the Santa Ana Unified School District's agreements with several companies that provided weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff during the pandemic, according to documents obtained by LAist. The contract at the center of the FBI inquiry, for the 2021-2022 school year, was among the largest pandemic-era school testing contracts in the state. It was worth well over $100 million, according to an estimate given to independent investigators in a separate wide-ranging investigation, and LAist calculations. (Replogle, 4/2)

Marin Independent Journal: Marin County Challenge State Over Fecal Pollution Claim
Marin County and Novato are disputing a state water board’s contention that they are doing too little to prevent the discharge of fecal bacteria into the Petaluma River. The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Board notified both the county and Novato in January that they are out of compliance with a program that it adopted in 2019 to reduce the level of fecal bacteria in the river. (Halstead, 4/3)

The Washington Post: How Prepared The U.S. Is For A Bird Flu Pandemic
Federal officials are preparing for the possibility of additional human cases of bird flu, testing components to create a vaccine after a Texas dairy worker was infected with the highly virulent virus, even as they stress the United States remains far from needing to activate a full-blown emergency response. Two candidate vaccine viruses — essentially the building blocks manufacturers use to produce a vaccine — appear well matched to protect against the H5N1 strain circulating among dairy cattle and birds, according to federal health officials. (Roubein and Sun, 4/2)

Stat: What Is The Risk To Humans From Cows Infected With H5N1 Avian Flu?
The discovery of H5N1 bird flu in U.S. cattle — and the news that at least one person in Texas has been infected, apparently through contact with infected cows — has taken scientists who study influenza by surprise. But after absorbing their shock, several admitted there was evidence to suggest bovine infection could happen — it just hadn’t been reported with this particular strain of influenza virus until now. (Branswell, 4/3)

NPR: Mental Health Care Is Hard To Find, Especially If You Have Medicare Or Medicaid
With rates of suicide and opioid deaths rising in the past decade and children's mental health declared a national emergency, the United States faces an unprecedented mental health crisis. But access to mental health care for a significant portion of Americans — including some of the most vulnerable populations — is extremely limited, according to a new government report released Wednesday. The report ... finds that Medicare and Medicaid have a dire shortage of mental health care providers. (Chatterjee, 4/3)

CalMatters: California’s Most Controversial Housing Law Could Get A Makeover
Some of California’s top lawmakers want to clear up, but also rein in, the state’s most controversial housing statute. (Christopher, 4/2)

San Francisco Chronicle: Advocates For Homeless Pen Supreme Court Brief Opposing Camp Sweeps
Civil rights groups and advocates for homeless people asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to maintain a ban on encampment sweeps of people who have nowhere to go, and they accused leaders in California and San Francisco of using a court case to hide their own failings. The state’s “failed housing policies have resulted in an extreme affordable housing shortage that has forced thousands of working Californians onto the street,” groups led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area said in a filing with the Supreme Court. (Egelko, 4/2)