Worries Grow Over Hearing Damage From Loud Music Inside Metro Station: L.A. Metro has been blaring classical music at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station in an effort to reduce crime and drive away unhoused people. L.A. Metro says the music is played at 72 decibels, but the Los Angeles Times clocked the noise at an average of 83 decibels, sometimes peaking at 90– which is louder than a gas-powered leaf blower. Extended listening at that range can damage your hearing, the CDC says. Read more from the Los Angeles Times.
In other news about the unhoused —
Street Medicine Program Begins In Garden Grove: Health care providers are taking to the streets of Garden Grove armed with a “doctor’s office on wheels” to bring medical assistance to homeless people where they are at – including primary care, but also behavioral health services and case management. Read more from the Orange County Register.
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today's national health news, read KHN's Morning Briefing.
More News From Across The State
Berkeleyside:
These Berkeley And Oakland Hospitals Still Require Masks
In recent days, Oakland-based disabled and immunocompromised individuals, seniors, doctors, and others concerned with public health have participated in protests, call-ins, and letter-writing campaigns calling on Alameda County and its top health officer Dr. Nicholas Moss to continue requiring mask-wearing in healthcare facilities. The county health department issued a mandate on March 27 requiring staff at skilled nursing facilities to wear masks while working with residents, but the order did not include other healthcare settings, including hospitals and clinics. (Haber, 4/4)
Los Angeles Daily News:
While California Lifts Mask, Vaccine Mandates, Some Restrictions Will Endure In LA County
As the state officially eased many COVID-era masking rules on Monday, April 3, Los Angeles County will retain its vaccine requirement and mask mandate for all health workers when they are around patients. Visitors and patients, however, will no longer be required to wear a mask. (Valdes, 4/3)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Feds Flip-Flop On More COVID Boosters, Will Authorize Them For Some
Federal regulators are prepared to approve a second COVID-19 vaccine booster shot tailored to combat the omicron variant for people over the age of 65 or those with weakened immune systems. The move is an attempt to offer extra protection to high-risk individuals. According to individuals familiar with the plan, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to make an announcement regarding the authorization within the next few weeks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also expected to endorse the move, officials told the Washington Post. (Vaziri, 4/4)
Reuters:
US Rule To Allow Some Inmates To Stay Home After COVID Emergency Lifts
Federal inmates who were allowed to serve their prison terms at home during the COVID-19 pandemic will be able to remain there after the Biden administration lifts the public health emergency, under new rules unveiled by the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday. The regulations are expected to provide some relief to inmates, who feared they could potentially be hauled back into prison when the public health emergency expires on May 11. (Lynch, 4/4)
Los Angeles Times:
Medi-Cal Will Soon End Some People's Benefits. What This Means For You
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest, low-income Californians who enrolled in Medi-Cal — California's version of the government-funded Medicaid health insurance program — have been able to keep their coverage without having to prove every year that they still qualified for it. (Healey, 4/4)
Health Care and Pharmaceuticals
Los Angeles Daily News:
LA County Supervisors Say Contracted Hospital Workers Will Get Health Benefits
In a move applauded by service workers, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, April 4 agreed that contracted workers at four county hospitals will be provided fully-paid healthcare benefits. (Scauzillo and Harter, 4/4)
Fresno Bee:
Woman's Sterilization Was 'Gross Negligence.' Now California Doctor Will Lose His Medical License
The surgeon’s license of Hanford physician David Wayne Nelson is to be revoked by the California Medical Board after the board determined Nelson was guilty of gross negligence by performing a sterilization surgery on a 31-year-old female patient. (Guy, 4/4)
Modern Healthcare:
Joint Commission Data Show Hospital Falls Up In 2022
Healthcare organizations and patients reported more than 1,400 serious adverse events to the Joint Commission in 2022, an increase from recent years, according to data released Tuesday. Falls, delayed care and wrong-site surgeries continued to be the biggest contributors to severe patient harm and death, the Joint Commission concluded. (Devereaux, 4/4)
NPR:
Doctors Are Drowning In Paperwork. Some Companies Claim AI Can Help
When Dereck Paul was training as a doctor at the University of California San Francisco, he couldn't believe how outdated the hospital's records-keeping was. The computer systems looked like they'd time-traveled from the 1990s, and many of the medical records were still kept on paper. "I was just totally shocked by how analog things were," Paul recalls. (Brumfiel, 4/5)
FiercePharma:
J&J Opens Its Wallet With Whopping $8.9B Talc Settlement Offer
Johnson & Johnson's talc saga may finally be nearing an end. The drugmaker on Tuesday said it’s offering $8.9 billion over 25 years to resolve all lawsuits claiming that the company’s talc-containing baby powders caused cancer. The deal proposal comes after years of litigation and a high profile, $2 billion verdict which J&J unsuccessfully appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. This settlement proposal could end what would otherwise take decades of legal proceedings, J&J’s vice president of litigation, Erik Haas, said in a statement Tuesday. It would also compensate the claimants “in a timely manner” while allowing J&J to focus on its business, Haas added. (Liu and Sagonowsky, 4/4)
Voice of OC:
Orange County’s Unhoused Have Nowhere To Warm Up As Temperatures Drop
The Orange County Health Care Agency issued a news release yesterday warning of the temperatures dropping today through Thursday in inland, coastal and south Orange County. Officials pointed to the temporary cold weather shelter without walk-ins in Fullerton that opened up in February – a couple months into the cold weather season. Except that shelter closed down Friday, as reported by LAist last week. (Elattar, 4/4)
KQED:
The Last Residents Of Oakland’s Wood Street Commons
The city of Oakland plans to evict the 60 remaining residents of the Wood Street encampment on Monday, April 10. This comes after months of ramping up sweeps in order to move forward with plans to build 171 affordable housing units. At its height, Wood Street was a self-sustaining community of about 300 people and spanned several city blocks. The remaining residents, some of whom have lived there for more than a decade, are feeling an immense sense of loss and uncertainty about whether they can rebuild their community. (Guevarra, Baldassari, Montecillo and Esquinca, 4/5)
San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Can’t Spend Affordable Housing Money Fast Enough With Projects Delayed, Audit Finds
San Francisco’s affordable housing agency can’t spend money as fast as it collects it, with past projects delayed for more than a year for multiple reasons, a new audit revealed, spelling trouble as the city needs to ramp up production to meet its new state-mandated housing goals. It can take at least five years and cost between $800,000 to $1 million a unit to build affordable housing in San Francisco. (Moench, 4/4)
KQED:
San Francisco Has Doubled Participants Of This Opioid Treatment. Here's Why
The first time Alyssa Ibarra tried to get suboxone, a medication proven to treat opioid use disorder, she bought it from someone off the street. After an ankle injury in 2014, she started using Vicodin and Percocet recreationally and later developed an addiction to opioids after experiencing postpartum depression. (Johnson, 4/4)
San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Embraces Buprenorphine Treatment For Fentanyl Crisis
Damian Peterson trudged through a gritty stretch of San Francisco on a recent afternoon, making his way to a building for formerly homeless people. Nestled in his black backpack was a prescription for buprenorphine, a medication to treat opioid addiction. Peterson, a clinical psychiatric pharmacist, walks an average of 19,000 steps a day with a clear goal in mind: Make buprenorphine easier to access for his clients than the drugs they’re using — like the highly addictive opioid fentanyl. Having someone come to their door, he said, “has been life changing.” (Thadani and Leonard, 4/4)
Axios:
Opioid Addiction Treatment In EDs Not A Guarantee
The overdose crisis is prompting more hospitals to initiate opioid addiction treatment in emergency rooms — a change welcomed by many behavioral health experts. Yes, but: It's resurfacing tension among providers over who's really responsible for addressing the underlying problem of opioid misuse. (Moreno and Dreher, 4/5)
USA Today:
Overdose Deaths And Xylazine: Narcan Doesn't Work On Animal Tranq
Harm-reduction experts said it's important to carry naloxone because the vast majority of overdoses involve opioids such as illicit fentanyl or heroin. More than 107,000 people died from overdoses during the 12 months through August 2023, and two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids. Still, doctors warn naloxone doesn't work on xylazine, which is increasingly found in illicit fentanyl and heroin. (Alltucker, 4/4)
Military.com:
Air Force Will Allow More Body Fat For Recruits As Service Struggles To Find New Airmen
The Air Force will allow recruits to have a greater percentage of body fat in an effort to reach more Americans as the service expects to fall short of its recruiting goals this year. Male recruits are now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%, Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday. That's up from the previous requirement of 20% for men and 28% for women. (Kheel, 4/4)
Military Times:
Suicide Surges Among Soldiers Not Inherently Tied To Wars, Study Finds
Suicide rates among active duty soldiers do not appear to be significantly impacted during times of war, a recent study found. Despite an uptick in suicides amid the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, historically times of combat are not solely accountable for surges in self-harm among troops, according to the study slated for the May issue of Psychiatry Research. (Lehrfeld, 4/4)
Military Times:
Lawmakers Move To Block VA’s Plans To Resume Health Records Rollout
Plans from Veterans Affairs leadership to restart their embattled electronic health records program this summer could be upended by lawmakers concerned over the long-term safety and reliability of the program. Capitol Hill staff said members in both chambers are discussing how to move ahead on new requirements for the program after a flurry of new legislation aimed at ensuring the new records system doesn’t move ahead until major fixes are made. If a compromise is reached, it could significantly set back plans from VA officials to expand the software to new medical centers in June. (Shane III, 4/4)
CapRadio:
As Broader Sweep Of Anti-Trans Action Comes To Sacramento Region, Community Organizations Push Back
Bit by bit, the trans pride flag rose above Serna Center in south Sacramento on a breezy Monday in March. Pastel blue, white and cotton-candy pink fabric fluttered above a crowd of dozens, many of whom were teary-eyed, smiling and clutching each other as their eyes moved upward. As two of the Sacramento City Unified School District board members hoisted the flag onto its new vantage point in front of the district’s main office, one woman chanted: “Justice! Justice! Justice!” (Salanga, 4/4)
San Francisco Chronicle:
How Safe Is Bay Area Drinking Water From Chemicals?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month proposed the first federal limits on PFAS — manmade “forever chemicals” linked to cancer, organ damage and other health issues — in the nation’s drinking water. The proposed regulation, which is not final, would require water systems to reduce levels of six of the most studied types of PFAS to the lowest levels that can be reliably measured with testing. (Ho, 4/4)