Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
In Nursing Shortage, Temp Staff Cost Florida Hospitals Double
Florida hospitals are聽facing skyrocketing costs for temporary contract nurses as聽the COVID-19 pandemic burns out longtime staff members and workforce shortages continue to worsen. As staffing agencies for travel nurses聽double聽and聽triple聽their fees to hospitals, the Florida Hospital Association is聽tracking聽complaints of price gouging in other states. California's hospital association last month聽asked the state聽Department of Justice to conduct a probe on behalf of its 400 hospitals. (Freeman, 10/7)
It was one week in November. Every day, Illinois nurse Jacob Forsman had a COVID-19 patient. And every day, that patient died by noon. 鈥淭hat was for three days in a row,鈥 he said. 鈥淭hat one just broke me.鈥 Nearly a year later, he had hoped to be finished with COVID-19 body bags. But Forsman, an intensive care unit charge nurse at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, is one of the many hospital workers who continue to treat severely ill COVID-19 patients, a year and a half into a pandemic that many knew would be a slog but most had hoped would ease by now. 鈥淚 think the reality has sunk in for me that we鈥檙e shifting into the year 2022, and it鈥檚 called COVID-19,鈥 Forsman said. (Bowen and Schencker, 10/7)
Kira Farrington entered the nursing workforce last year as the COVID-19 pandemic took the world in its grasp. As part of a condition of her hire at an HCA Healthcare facility in Asheville, North Carolina, she had to sign a contract that bound her to the system for two years and carried a penalty of to $10,000 if she left sooner. "That's just not feasible for me who's a fairly new nurse and single mom," Farrington said. "It's a financial burden." National Nurses United, a union representing more than 175,000 members nationwide, believes contracts like that are "exploitative" and is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. "The true intent of the contracts is to indenture nurses to the employers," the union said in a news release. (Christ, 10/7)
When Keith Schroth, chief finance officer for the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, pushed for a hefty pay bump for his son who works there, the center鈥檚 human resources director called the request 鈥渋nfuriating and ridiculous鈥 and urged her bosses to shoot it down. Jeremy Schroth didn鈥檛 get the raise, but he was named head of a new department, a move that also meant he would report to a new supervisor who worked closely with his father. The human resources director said she feared for her job after shooting down the raise and criticizing Jeremy Schroth鈥檚 work performance. She was fired in April. (Cranney, 10/7)
In obituaries 鈥
Mortimer Mishkin, a neuroscientist who received the National Medal of Science for his role in unlocking some of the most vexing mysteries of the brain, including how memories are made and kept, died Oct.聽2 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 94.His daughter Wendy Mishkin confirmed his death but did not cite a cause. (Langer, 10/6)
Early in her time as a medical student in the late 1950s, Paula J. Clayton watched a psychiatrist analyze a patient with clinical depression. The doctor, who had herself been analyzed by both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and now taught at Washington University in St. Louis, asked the patient to explain his dreams, and the two spent time discussing what they meant. But when the session was over, the doctor did something that Freud would never have done: She prescribed electroshock therapy. (Risen, 10/7)
