Tag: Carol J. Bova
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A Malicious Prosecution
by Carol J. Bova During the Bob McDonnell administration, the Commonwealth of Virginia preserved 232,000 acres through conservation easements or donations, falling short of the governor’s 400,000-acre goal because of the tight economy. Seizing on the deficit in his 2013 gubernatorial campaign, Terry McAuliffe promised that he would “preserve at least 400,000 acres of open…
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VDH Still Can’t Count
by Carol J. Bova In a blog post published yesterday, I noted that the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) COVID-19 dashboard breaks down vaccination status by racial/ethnic group and by age, but not by racial/ethnic groups and age. Thinking that VDH might possess the data, even if it had chosen not to publish it, I…
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VDH Should Show Vaccinations for Age and Race Together
by Carol J. Bova Jim Bacon used an infographic from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) in his recent post, God, COVID and the Rage Against the Unvaccinated showing the percent of the eligible population in Virginia with at least one dose. What the infographic doesn’t say is the numbers are based on Virginians age…
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Gloucester School Board Nixes CRT
by Carol J. Bova The Gloucester County Public School Board spelled out its opposition to indoctrination or teaching that encourages hate and division in Gloucester public schools in its Tuesday meeting. The Board voted 6 to 0 for a resolution opposing Critical Race Theory in their school district’s curriculum. The resolution printed in the Mathews…
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Making Money from Cultural Cleansing
by Carol J. Bova Richmond business owner Devon Henry is best known for his role as owner of NAH, LLC, for procuring a $1.8 million contract from Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney to take down Richmond’s Confederate statues. While Stoney’s handling of the contract outside the normal procurement process became a political liability — a special…
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Equity Innuendo
by Carol J. Bova In 1984 the Wendy’s fast food chain launched an advertising campaign in which the catchphrase was, “Where’s the beef?” The phrase entered the popular lexicon as a way to question the substance of an idea or claim. The time has come to dust off the phrase in this age of fast,…
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Fear and Loathing in Mathews County
by Carol J. Bova When Mathews County Supervisor Amy Dubois offered a resolution on June 22 that the Board of Supervisors meet at the high school auditorium instead of the Historic Courthouse, surprised members of the public attending called out, “Why?” At the meeting, all Dubois said was, “We were urged by an organization within…
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The Ballad Merger V: the Pandemic
by Carol J. Bova The nursing shortage was a top issue for Ballad Health from the moment the health system was created in 2018 from a merger of Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System. The new health system, which served far Southwest Virginia and neighboring parts of Tennessee, laid out a plan in…
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Ballad Merger IV: Has Quality Improved?
by Carol J. Bova As a condition of the merger between Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System in 2018, the combined entity, Ballad Health System is required to periodically update Virginia regulators on health metrics for its far Southwest Virginia service territory. Those quality measures and actual performance must be accessible to the…
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The Ballad Merger III: Reshuffling, Reconstruction and Repurposing
by Carol J. Bova When Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System merged to create Ballad Health in 2018, the healthcare companies justified the consolidation with the argument that the ability to cut costs and rationalize delivery of health services would yield tangible benefits to patients in Southwest Virginia and Northeastern Tennessee. The previous…
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The Ballad Merger II: Cuts and Consolidations
by Carol J. Bova Upon the merger of Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System in 2018, the first order of business for the newly created Ballad Health was shoring up its finances. If Ballad wasn’t successful at this, it would not have the resources to invest in the new services, facilities, programs, and…
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The Ballad Merger — A Leap of Faith by Two States
by Carol J. Bova In April, 2015, two Tennessee-based not-for-profit hospital organizations with a 75% market share in Southwest Virginia said a merger would allow them “to address the serious health issues affecting the region and to be among the best in the nation in terms of quality, affordability and patient satisfaction.” The merger would…
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Northam’s Vaccine Quotas
by Carol J. Bova Reporter Sabrina Moreno asked Dr. Danny Avula at a Virginia Department of Health (VDH) teleconference on March 26 if Virginia planned to do what Maryland’s governor had done a few weeks previously in reserving a portion of doses at each of its COVID-19 vaccination sites “for priority populations, you know, Black…
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Shhh! Don’t Ask! COVID-19 Equity Analysis Is for Governor’s Eyes Only
by Carol J. Bova The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) blog posted March 16 that the department and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) would open community vaccination centers in Danville, Portsmouth, Petersburg and Prince William. “The sites were selected after the Virginia Department of Emergency Management conducted an equity analysis to determine the…
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VDH Cleans Up COVID Deaths Stats
by Carol J. Bova Anecdotes and social media comments have insisted that the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) has counted deaths from suicide, gunshot or motor vehicle accidents as COVID-19 deaths. On March 19, VDH announced on its COVID-19 Dashboard that it had reviewed more than 10,000 reported COVID-19 deaths using the Virginia Case Definition…