Category: Health Care
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Northam Administration Neglects Virginia’s Mentally Ill
by Kerry Dougherty You would think that with a medical doctor occupying Virginia’s Governor’s Mansion, Virginia would have topped the nation in COVID testing and COVID-19 vaccine rollouts and would be setting the standard for care for the mentally ill. You would be wrong on all counts. At the risk of plowing old fields, Virginia…
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Psst! We Have Some Beds for You
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Something just does not seem right about this. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports today that the state has temporarily halted admissions to its mental health hospitals. In addition to being overcrowded, on Friday, Central State Hospital in Petersburg had more patients than beds, the hospitals have lost a significant number of staff and…
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President’s Executive Order Could Bolster Healthcare Competition in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Yesterday President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) on competition that has the potential to significantly affect Virginians, especially our monopolized regional healthcare markets. While an EO does not have the force of law, the president as chief executive can set priorities. The executive departments will honor the EO where…
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Time to Take the Fentanyl Scourge Seriously
by James A. Bacon Drug dealers are lacing opioids, marijuana and cocaine with fentanyl in the Washington area, reports The Washington Post. The city medical examiner identified the super-addictive and often deadly drug in 95% of the 85 overdose deaths through March this year. Law enforcement authorities are seeing similar increases in fentanyl overdoses in…
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COVID’s Latest Victims: Those Afraid to Return to the World
Many are experiencing significant anxiety as the world slowly reopens. Join VA COPES for a free virtual event on July 22 and July 29: “Coping with Re-Entry Anxiety.” https://t.co/BVofTkIWX5 pic.twitter.com/wCaLzxi2e1 — Va Dept of Health (@VDHgov) July 8, 2021 by Kerry Dougherty If there’s one thing we can all agree upon it’s that mental health…
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Virginia Nets $80 Million for Opioid Treatment
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s Opioid Abatement Authority will get an $80 million shot in the arm (so to speak) from the resolution of a lawsuit pursued by Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring and his peers in 14 other states. The bankruptcy-court settlement with the Sackler family and its company Purdue Pharma requires payment of…
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More Jumbled Thinking about Healthcare and Race
by James A. Bacon The lead story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today focuses on the findings from a new Virginia Commonwealth University study: “Life expectancy in the U.S. sees largest drop since 1943, ‘jolting’ decline for Black people and Latinos.” The average life of Blacks fell 3.25 years and of Latinos by almost four years.…
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Virginia’s New Ruling Class: How Exploitation Works in the Real World
Medical debt, which comprises 58% of all debt collections in the U.S., is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Between January 2018 and July 2020, hospitals filed tens of thousands of lawsuits and other court against against patients, according to AXIOS, which drew upon Johns Hopkins University data. Until a public outcry…
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North Carolina AG takes on Hospitals That Fail to Publish Shoppable Prices
by James C. Sherlock Attorney General Josh Stein of North Carolina, fresh off killing the Sentara-Cone merger, on his very busy day yesterday had an Assistant AG send a letter to North Carolina hospitals. It demanded that hospitals comply with federal hospital pricing transparency regulations that require that hospitals make publicly available a machine-readable file containing a…
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North Carolina AG Investigation Quashes Sentara/Cone Health Merger
by James C. Sherlock In the big merger equivalent of “spend more time with our families,” Cone and Sentara issued a joint statement on June 2 that they “have jointly decided not to move forward” with their planned merger. “As this work progressed, we realized that each of our communities and key stakeholders require support…
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Sentara, Cone Health Call Off Merger
From Virginia Business: “Sentara Healthcare and Greensboro, North Carolina-based Cone Health mutually called off a merger Wednesday, according to a statement by the Norfolk-based health care system.” The Sentara Healthcare Board of Directors and the Cone Health Board of Trustees came to the mutual agreement to end affiliation plans late last week, according to the…
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How VCU and Richmond Blew It Again
by James A. Bacon Six years ago William H. Goodwin Jr. and his wife Alice championed the idea of building an independent children’s hospital in Richmond that would conduct research and provide state-of-the-art healthcare to the region’s children. The couple was prepared to contribute $150 million of the estimated $600 million cost in order to…
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An Agenda for High Quality Primary Care
by James C. Sherlock I have written columns here and in various newspapers across the state for a number of years supporting health enterprise zones (HEZ’s) in underserved areas of Virginia. I drafted and Republican Attorney General candidate Jason Miyares sponsored legislation of that title in the General Assembly. It lost. Like night follows day,…
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Layne Going to the Dark Side
I do not know if this is good news or bad news for Jim Sherlock’s campaign, but Aubrey Layne, currently the Secretary of Finance, will be joining Sentara on July 1. (This is about the time during an administration that Cabinet members start jumping ship.)
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Paul Marik: COVID Quack or Pandemic Hero?
by James A. Bacon Across the state of Virginia, the fatality rate for COVID-19 patients entering hospitals has been 37.7%. Put another way, nearly two of every five patients died, according to Virginia Department of Health data. But in Norfolk, only 25.8% died. What accounts for that disparity? One possibility is that the dominant hospital…