Good morning and welcome to Monday’s New York Health Care newsletter, where we keep you up to date on what’s happening this week in health care news and offer a look back at important stories from the past week.
Happy Halloween! As New Yorkers today put on their scariest costumes to get scared, squeeze in last-minute trips to haunted houses and watch horror movies, hospitals in some parts of the state are preparing for a possible nightmare scenario.
More than a year after Gov. Kathy Hochul initially declared a state of emergency due to health care staffing shortages, some facilities say their staffing levels have yet to fully recover from pandemic-era layoffs, including those left because of the health worker vaccine mandate .
Nursing homes and home care, which struggled with staffing issues even before Covid hit New York, they are said to have seen those issues worsen during the pandemic. This has caused some long-term care facilities to close units or even close their doors. And some hospitals, which have faced massive staffing challenges, are now dealing with the lingering fallout from long-term care shortages and closures — all while bracing for a resurgence of Covid-19, flu and RSV cases this year. autumn.
Michael F. Stapleton Jr., president and CEO of UR Medicine Thompson Health, told POLITICO that the loss of more than 1,600 nursing home beds in the Finger Lakes region during the pandemic — along with home care shortages — has made it difficult for hospitals like his to discharge patients seeking long-term care. With “nowhere to send them,” he said, those patients are staying longer in hospitals, reducing facilities’ capacity for new patients.
“These numbers just keep going up. When those numbers go up, we cannot take patients out of [emergency department] and we end up with these really horrible ‘boarding’ situations in our ED,” he said in an interview Friday, calling it “a recipe for disaster.”
Stapleton said the issue “is widespread throughout Western New York.” and called for more focus on the issue at the state level. “We need some energy around solving this nursing home problem — finances can definitely have an impact on this. We have to do everything we can in this state to bring people back and get staff to bed,” he said. “These are some of the things that can go a long way.”
Department of Health spokesman Cort Ruddy said in a statement that the agency is “monitoring regional hospital capacity and engaging hospital and health care systems that may see higher-than-normal patient volumes in their emergency departments and hospital units.” Hochul, meanwhile, announced last week that her administration was providing guidance to hospitals and local health departments.
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EMERGENCY CAN – POLITICO’s Shannon Young: The state of emergency declared this summer after an outbreak of monkeypox that infected hundreds of New Yorkers has ended. Gov. Kathy Hochul did not extend the emergency declaration when it expired Thursday. The executive order, among other things, expanded the list of providers that could administer monkeypox vaccines.
The end of the emergency came amid a drop in new daily cases. New York City reported a seven-day average of just one new case a day since Oct. 24 — down from 73 when the emergency was first declared in late July.
“As we continue to aggressively address public health threat posed by monkeypox, we are encouraged by vaccination rates and the declining rate of infections reported nationwide,” Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said in a statement. “The expiration of this executive order, however, does not diminish our determination to fight this disease or our continued efforts to encourage vaccination among those New Yorkers most at risk.”
IN OTHER NEWS:
— Albany Medical Center Physicians issued guidance on pediatric respiratory viruses in response to rising cases.
– New York State Nurses Association announced a five-year collective bargaining agreement with Westchester Medical Center.
– Department of Health is accepting applications for $41 million in grants for organizations to provide breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screenings in their communities.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: This review is for you! Submit news tips, health tips, ideas, critiques and corrections [email protected].
NOW WE KNOW – “Children are twice as likely to die on Halloween than any other day of the year as they trickle down our streets,” according to CNN.
TODAY’S TIP – The CDC offers tips on how to stay safe and healthy this Halloween.
BE SURE TO FOLLOW Shannon @ShannonYoung413 on Twitter. And for all New Jersey health news, check out Daniel Hahn, @danieljhan_.
STUDY THIS – Via Fortune: “Vaccination against COVID reduces the risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death if you catch the disease — but according to new research, it may also dictate which set of milder and more common symptoms of the virus you will experience. ‘put an end to it. by standing up. It is thought that a large proportion of cases are still asymptomatic.’
More than 150 people died in a surge of Halloween crowds in South Korea, The Associated Press reports.
Reports STAT on the concerns caused by the “death of the patient in [a] closely followed the Alzheimer’s trial.”
“Flu season in the US is off to a brisk and early start, with hospitalization rates the highest for this time of year in more than a decade, federal data showed,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
Kaiser Health News looks at what happens when monkeypox “collides with strained public health systems” in rural communities.
“Arizona Attorney General has agreed not to implement a near-total abortion ban until at least next year,” the AP reports.
BuzzFeed News reports that “the health risks associated with working in the cannabis industry are largely unknown, but the death of a 27-year-old man reveals the potential risks”.
Pharmacies are seeing shortages of amoxicillin, NBC News reports.
POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein Michigan Democrat campaign poll reports: Abortion bans are bad for business.
Program supported by the World Health Organization that provides vaccines, tests and treatments for Covid-19 to the world’s poorest countries, is shifting its focus from emergency response to long-term management of the disease, POLITICO’s Carmen Paun reports.
POLITICO’s Megan R. Wilson reports that the main industry group for biopharmaceutical companies is reeling from the departure of its CEO — just as the Biden administration is poised to begin implementing key drug pricing provisions and the balance of power may shift in Congress.
Top FDA officials are becoming more vocal in their warnings that if Congress fails to act this year on an overhaul of the regulation of lab-developed diagnostics and tests, the agency could pursue rulemaking instead, POLITICO’s David Lim reports.
MISSED A SUMMARY? Catch up on the New York Health Care Bulletin.
