Staffing shortages leave nursing homes overwhelmed, patients vulnerable, experts sayVideo
Mary Ellen Cross lived some of the best days of her life each December when she spent hour upon hour baking cookies and wrapping gifts, carefully crafting what she hoped would be the perfect, magical Christmas for her family. The baking began weeks in advance, sometimes with her eclectic playlist...
Staffing shortages plague nursing homes; some fear patient care threatened
An employee at a Westmoreland County nursing home says the conditions of her job have brought her to tears. Residents regularly have to wait for help and often go hungry because of a lack of people to feed them. A single staffer sometimes is asked to care for 60 residents...
Nursing home rating system criticized over reliability, accuracy
Tools designed to help families researching a nursing home are obscure and often criticized by industry experts over their reliability and accuracy. The Care Compare website maintained by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services houses detailed data about nursing homes, provides quality-of-care ratings and flags homes for incidents...
2% of kids and 7% of adults have received the new covid shots, U.S. data show
NEW YORK — A month after federal officials recommended new versions of covid-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten a shot. One expert called the rates “abysmal.” The numbers, presented Thursday at a meeting held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from...
Armstrong County hospital considers affiliation with Indiana, Punxsutawney hospitals
Armstrong County Memorial Hospital said Wednesday it is considering a possible affiliation with the hospitals in Indiana and Punxsutawney, in another sign of Western Pennsylvania’s hospitals banding together in a difficult time for community health care systems. The Kittanning-based hospital said Wednesday it signed a nonbinding letter of intent “to...
Few transplant surgeons are Black. Giving medical students a rare peek at organ donation may help
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It’s long after midnight when the bustling operating room suddenly falls quiet — a moment of silence to honor the man lying on the table. This is no ordinary surgery. Detrick Witherspoon died before ever being wheeled in, and now two wide-eyed medical students are about to...
Bad tech, staffing shortages hinder Pa. as it reassesses health care coverage for thousands
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania is struggling with faulty technology, persistent staffing shortages, and flawed procedures as it reassesses health care coverage for hundreds of thousands of...
Former attorney works to bring resources to those with rare genetic disease
Mark Christman had people around him, but he still felt lonely. “When you have a rare disease, it makes you feel alone,” said Christman, who was diagnosed in 1977 with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD, a genetic disorder that causes weakening of the skeletal muscles. “I had never met another...
Pig heart transplant recipient reaches 1-month mark, pushing through physical therapy
WASHINGTON — It’s been a month since a Maryland man became the second person to receive a transplanted heart from a pig — and hospital video released Friday shows he’s working hard to recover. Lawrence Faucette was dying from heart failure and ineligible for a traditional heart transplant when doctors...
CVS Health pulls some cough-and-cold treatments with ingredient deemed ineffective by doctors
CVS Health is pulling from its shelves some cough-and-cold treatments that contain an ingredient that has been deemed ineffective by doctors and researchers. The drug store chain said it will remove a small number of products that contain phenylephrine as the only active ingredient. CVS also said it will still...
Allegheny General nurses vote in favor of potential strike
Nurses at one of Pittsburgh’s largest hospitals are on the verge of strike. There are more than 1,200 nurses and nurse practitioners unionized at Allegheny General Hospital, and they voted Tuesday to deliver notice of a potential strike to hospital ownership if their requests for raises are not met, according...
Amazon will start testing drones that will drop prescriptions on your doorstep
Amazon will soon make prescription drugs fall from the sky when the e-commerce giant becomes the latest company to test drone deliveries for medications. The company said Wednesday that customers in College Station, Texas, can now get prescriptions delivered by a drone within an hour of placing their order. The...
Study: Climbing 5 flights of stairs a day may reduce heart disease risk
Climbing five flights of stairs can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by 20% according to a recent study published in Atherosclerosis Journal. The study collected data from more than 400,000 adult participants in the United Kingdom. “These findings highlight the potential advantages of stair climbing as a primary...
Long covid study links lingering virus with bowel-to-brain havoc
Covid may trigger complex biological reactions from the bowel to the brain, leading to persistent neurological symptoms in some people, according to a study that points the way toward a treatment. Viral vestiges in the gastrointestinal tracts of a subset of long-covidpatients may drive chronic inflammation that interferes with a...
Drug used in diabetes treatment Mounjaro helped dieters shed 60 pounds, study finds
The medicine in the diabetes drug Mounjaro helped people with obesity or who are overweight lose at least a quarter of their body weight, or about 60 pounds on average, when combined with intensive diet and exercise, a new study shows. By comparison, a group of people who also dieted...
Unsustainable funding model, shrinking workforce leave ambulance services in critical condition
Emergency medical services across Western Pennsylvania have found themselves on life support, despite being in the business of saving lives. Minimal state and municipal funding, combined with sluggish private donations, has leaders scraping by and some services on the brink of folding. “It costs us $150 an hour to operate...
AHN, Johns Hopkins end cancer center partnership
After nearly a decade, Allegheny Health Network and Johns Hopkins are ending their cancer center collaboration. The affiliation between the Pittsburgh-based health care system and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins was established in 2014 and ended earlier this year. AHN will continue to partner with Johns...
Georgia will be 1st state with medical marijuana in pharmacies
ATLANTA — Georgia soon will become the first state in the nation to offer medical marijuana products at independent pharmacies, state officials said. The Georgia Board of Pharmacy began accepting applications this week, and nearly 120 pharmacies have agreed to provide medication from Botanical Sciences, one of the state’s two...
No vaccine card needed to get updated covid shots at local pharmacies
To get the latest updated covid vaccine, you no longer need that paper vaccine card you may have been carrying in your wallet for the past few years. The CDC announced Wednesday that, because the federal government itself is not distributing covid vaccines, the organization no longer will be giving...
Say goodbye to the covid-19 vaccination card. The CDC has stopped printing them
It’s the end of an era for a once-critical pandemic document: The ubiquitous white covid-19 vaccination cards are being phased out. Now that the federal government is not distributing covid-19 vaccines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped printing new cards. The federal government shipped more than...
Thousands of U.S. health care workers go on strike in multiple states over wages and staff shortages
LOS ANGELES — Picketing began Wednesday morning at Kaiser Permanente hospitals as some 75,000 health care workers go on strike in Virginia, California and three other states over wages and staffing shortages, marking the latest major labor unrest in the United States. Kaiser Permanente is one of the country’s larger...
‘He saved my life’: Hillandale Farms founder donates $25M to Pitt after back surgeries
The pain in Orland Bethel’s lower back and hips became excruciating. In 2014, he was diagnosed with spinal stenosis — a narrowing and squeezing of the nerves and spinal cord. The 87-year-old Greensburg resident consulted with six orthopaedic surgeons. They told him they would need to “cut a chunk of...
Forbes Hospital in Monroeville adds behavior health suite to emergency departmentVideo
Allegheny Health Network officials have added a behavioral health suite to the emergency department at Forbes Hospital in Monroeville, part of a response to an increase in ER visits by patients with behavioral health needs. “Being hospitalized or visiting an emergency department is incredibly stressful for anyone, let alone those...
Biden says that all 10 drugs targeted for the first Medicare price negotiations will participate
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that the manufacturers of all of the first 10 prescription drugs selected for Medicare’s first price negotiations have agreed to participate, clearing the way for talks that could lower their costs in coming years and give him a potential political win heading into...
President of Trulieve Cannabis retires
The president of Trulieve Cannabis Corp. has stepped down, effective Oct. 1. Steve White will continue to serve as a strategic adviser for the cannabis company until his anticipated retirement at the end of this year. Mr. White co-founded Harvest Health & Recreation in 2011 and served as its CEO...
