Latest California Healthline Stories
More Than Half Of California Nursing Homes Balk At Stricter Staffing Rules
Patient advocates say the state’s new staffing regulations are a good start toward better protecting the frail, but the nursing home industry contends they’re too burdensome.
Like Clockwork: How Daylight Saving Time Stumps Hospital Record-Keeping
One of the most popular electronic health records software systems used by hospitals, Epic Systems, can delete records or require cumbersome workarounds when clocks are set back for an hour, prompting many hospitals to opt for paper records for part of the night shift.
Patient Advocacy Or Political Ploy? Union, Industry Square Off Over Dialysis Initiative
The measure, which will appear on the November ballot, seeks to cap industry profits. The SEIU-UHW union has raised almost $17 million, but opponents from the industry have invested more than four times that.
California’s Newly Minted Health Care Laws: Doctor Misconduct, Drug Prices, Kids’ Meals And More
Gov. Jerry Brown approved numerous new health care laws addressing a broad range of issues, but he vetoed several bills, including one that would have allowed parents to administer medical marijuana to their children in school and another that would have made the abortion pill available at the student health centers of California’s public universities.
California: A Health Care Laboratory With Mixed Results
California frequently innovates to address its wide-ranging health care needs, but it has not always achieved its aims. A series of articles in the journal Health Affairs shows, among other things, that efforts to care for HIV patients, provide better access to reproductive services for low-income women and fill gaps in primary care have sometimes fallen flat.
Mining A New Data Set To Pinpoint Critical Staffing Issues In Skilled Nursing Facilities
Low staffing is a root cause of many injuries in nursing homes. Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Jordan Rau explains how he connected the dots between manpower and risk at facilities nationwide, using a federa tool known as the Payroll-Based Journal.
1,400 Nursing Homes Get Lower Medicare Ratings Because Of Staffing Concerns
Medicare said those homes either lacked a registered nurse for “a high number of days” over three months, provided data the government couldn’t verify or didn’t supply their payroll data at all.
‘Like A Ghost Town’: Erratic Nursing Home Staffing Revealed Through New Records
Daily nursing home payroll records just released by the federal government show the number of nurses and aides dips far below average on some days and consistently plummets on weekends. A new California law increases minimum staffing standards at nursing homes, but critics say it doesn’t go far enough.
Look-Up: How Nursing Home Staffing Fluctuates In California
Use this tool to see staffing levels at skilled nursing homes in California.
Doling Out Pain Pills Post-Surgery: An Ingrown Toenail Not The Same As A Bypass
As the opioid epidemic rages, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and researcher is leading an effort to curb overprescribing by offering procedure-specific guidelines to ensure that post-surgical patients leave the hospital with enough, but not too much, pain medication.
