Fresno Bee: Creditors, Madera Hospital CEO Seek Repayment In Bankruptcy 
Madera hospital’s creditors want to be repaid through the bankruptcy process – including the hospital’s chief executive. Last month, the hospital’s creditors submitted to a federal bankruptcy court their plan to liquidate the hospital, which, if approved by the court, would start the process of selling off the hospital assets to pay back millions owed to the creditors. (Montalvo, 12/14)

Sacramento Bee: Fired Nurse Spoke Up For Patient Safety, Wins $41M: Attorney
A nurse’s 30-year career at a Los Angeles Kaiser Permanente hospital ended when she was fired after speaking up about patient safety and quality of care concerns, according to a lawsuit. Nearly two years after her firing in June 2019, Maria Gatchalian sued Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. for wrongful termination. (Marnin, 12/14)

Reuters: Healthcare Providers To Join US Plan To Manage AI Risks - White House 
Twenty-eight healthcare companies, including CVS Health, are signing U.S. President Joe Biden's voluntary commitments aimed at ensuring the safe development of artificial intelligence (AI), a White House official said on Thursday. The commitments by healthcare providers and payers follow those of 15 leading AI companies, including Google, OpenAI and OpenAI partner Microsoft (MSFT.O) to develop AI models responsibly. (Shalal, 12/14)

Modern Healthcare: Physicians Want AI To Reduce Prior Authorization Burdens: AMA
Physicians are excited but cautious about the use of artificial and augmented intelligence in medicine, according to a survey published by the American Medical Association on Thursday. AMA surveyed more than 1,000 doctors for their thoughts on AI, which the advocacy group defines as augmented intelligence. ... The survey revealed the majority of respondents see advantages to AI in healthcare but some are concerned over its potential effect on patient relationships and data privacy. (Turner, 12/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: New COVID Variant JN.1 ‘Better At Evading Our Immune Systems,’ CDC Says
Two new immune-evasive coronavirus variants are now responsible for more than half of the COVID-19 cases in the United States, contributing to a wave of infections just ahead of the holidays. The predominant omicron subvariant, HV.1, has been steadily circulating since early September. But it is being overshadowed by the rapid growth of the JN.1 variant, recently disaggregated from its parent BA.2.86. (Vaziri, 12/14)

CIDRAP: Almost A Third Of COVID Survivors Report Symptoms 2 Years Post-Infection
A meta-analysis of 12 studies shows that 30% of COVID-19 survivors have persistent symptoms 2 years after infection, the most common of which are fatigue, cognitive problems, and pain. For the study, published yesterday in the Journal of Infection, an international team led by a researcher from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, searched the literature for observational and case-control studies of long COVID 2 years after infection. The studies, published up to October 1, 2023, were from Europe, China, and the United States. (Van Beusekom, 12/14)

NBC News: There’s ‘Long Flu,’ Too: Influenza Can Lead To Long-Lasting Symptoms, Study Finds
Evidence continues to mount that Covid isn’t the only viral illness that can lead to persistent and sometimes debilitating symptoms. Research published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases finds that the flu virus may also have long-lasting effects on health. With the arrival of the pandemic and the resulting rash of long Covid cases, doctors had to rethink their ideas about viral infections, said senior study author Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. (Carroll, 12/14)

Reuters: US CDC Says There's Urgent Need To Increase Respiratory Vaccine Coverage 
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday issued an alert urging healthcare providers to increase immunization coverage for influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The health regulator said that low vaccination rates, coupled with ongoing increases in respiratory disease activity, could lead to more severe disease and increased healthcare capacity strain in the coming weeks. (12/14)

Reuters: AstraZeneca, Sanofi To Supply 230,000 More RSV Infant Shots To US Market 
The makers of a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) immunization for infants that has been in tight supply will deliver an additional 230,000 doses in January, the White House said on Thursday, after U.S. government officials met with the companies to discuss meeting winter demand. According to a statement from one of the drug's makers - France's Sanofi - the additional supply means the companies will deliver 1.4 million doses of the drug in the U.S. this year, over 25% more shots than they had originally planned. (Hunnicutt and Erman, 12/14)

CIDRAP: Moderna's RSV Vaccine For Older Adults 84% Effective And Safe, Clinical Trial Shows 
Today, researchers from Moderna and around the globe report positive phase 2/3 results for its experimental respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for people 60 years and older, with an efficacy of 83.7% and a good safety profile. (Van Beusekom, 12/14)

East Bay Times: Bay Area Homelessness Nonprofit Offers Necessities To 'Reduce Stress'
Abode is hoping to raise $25,000 through Wish Book to provide 125 move-in kits to 125 households. The funding would pay for essential furniture, kitchenware, hygienic supplies and bedding. One household can range from one to six people. Multiple counties would be served, including Santa Clara, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Cruz. (GQLShare, 12/15)

CalMatters: California Homeless Housing Projects On Hold
King City, population 14,000, wanted to show that even small towns can try to solve homelessness. The Monterey County community last year partnered with Los Angeles-based developer Shangri-La Industries to land a grant from Homekey, California’s $3.1 billion program to help cities build affordable housing for their homeless residents. (Kuang, 12/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why Is S.F. Spending $113,000 Per Cabin For Homeless? Nonprofit Says It Could Build For Much Less
When the nonprofit Dignity Moves opened 70 homes for the homeless on a vacant lot in near San Francisco Civic Center in 2022, unhoused residents who moved into the village praised it as a dignified, caring place to get a second chance. Elected officials celebrated the site, saying they wanted to replicate it throughout the city as a cost-effective, fast and humane solution to getting people off the streets. By all accounts the project was a success. (Toledo and Arroyo, 12/15)

CapRadio: Sacramento County To Open Second Tiny Home Village For Unhoused Residents In South Sacramento
Sacramento County’s second tiny home village, or Safe Stay Community, is set to welcome unhoused residents starting next week. The collection of 45 tiny homes at 7001 East Parkway will provide temporary shelter and an array of social services for people who live in tents and vehicles in the surrounding South Sacramento neighborhood near Florin Road and Highway 99. (Nichols, 12/14)

Los Angeles Times: Homeless Camp Sweeps Result In Police Citations As Often As Housing Offers, Survey Finds 
A countywide sample of unsheltered homeless people surveyed on their mobile phones reported that police were more likely than outreach workers to be their initial contact during sweeps of homeless encampments and that they were as likely to be cited as to gain housing. More than half of 346 people participating in the survey experienced an encampment sweep which the researchers defined as “forced relocation” from where they were sleeping. Most were moved more than one time during the six months of the study. (Smith, 12/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Starts Wastewater Surveillance To Tackle Drug Overdose Crisis
San Francisco has begun testing wastewater for traces of fentanyl, xylazine and other illicit drugs in an attempt to better track and address the local drug overdose crisis that has led to a record 752 deaths this year. The new wastewater surveillance program, announced by public health officials Thursday, will also track the presence of cocaine, methamphetamine and amphetamine, as well as naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug often referred to by the brand name Narcan. (Ho, 12/14)

Los Angeles Daily News: Love, Loss And LA’s Deadliest Drug: 3 Families Struck By Fentanyl’s Wrath 
A transgender teen from Santa Clarita, a Mexican American artist from Long Beach, and a former Skid Row resident and mother. They led very different lives, but died at the hands of the same killer: fentanyl. (Harter, 12/14)

Los Angeles Times: California Moves To Tighten Rules To Protect Countertop Workers
State regulators estimated that as many as 800 of the industry’s more than 4,000 workers could end up with silicosis if California failed to take protective action, and up to 160 were likely to die of the suffocating disease, according to a presentation at Thursday’s meeting of the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. That would amount to “an industrial disaster” on a scale not seen in nearly a century, Cal/OSHA said in a report laying out the need for the measure. The new, temporary rules adopted by the board are expected to go into effect by the end of this month. (Alpert Reyes, 12/14)

Bloomberg: Another Wildfire Risk: Toxic Soil Metals Going Airborne
Extreme heat from California’s climate-driven wildfires is transforming a metal common in soil into an airborne carcinogen that can be inhaled by firefighters and people living downwind of conflagrations, according to first-of-its-kind research. In a study published Dec. 12 in the journal Nature Communications, Stanford University scientists discovered what they described as widespread and dangerous levels of toxic chromium in areas of Northern California severely burned by wildfires in 2019 and 2020. (Woody, 12/14)

CapRadio: California Is Starting A Reproductive Health Corps To Increase Abortion Access Across The State
When Bethany Golden arrived at the Yale School of Nursing in 2000 for her master’s degree in nurse midwifery, she was eager to get started. “The first thing I asked was, ‘when are we going to learn how to do abortions?’” she said. “I was shocked to hear, ‘well, you won't.’” Twenty-three years later, Golden said nursing programs and medical schools across the country still don’t give students robust, clinical education on how to perform abortions. Instead, physicians, nurses, and other members of primary care teams must pursue additional education on their own or learn on the job. (Wolffe, 12/15)

Berkeleyside: Dozens Of Berkeley Restaurants Went Years Without Health Inspections. Why?
A few days before they left for a holiday weekend last spring, inspectors in Berkeley’s Environmental Health Division got a major assignment from their boss. Twelve people had fallen ill in early May after attending a weekend of wedding events in the South Bay, including one catered by a Berkeley restaurant that had not received a health inspection in four years. An investigation found the restaurant was not the source of the foodborne illness outbreak. But Environmental Health staff and leaders also knew it was far from alone in having gone years between inspections. (Savidge, 12/14)

CalMatters: L.A. Company Hired Children To Cut Poultry With Sharp Knives, Regulator Says
At two Los Angeles-area poultry processing plants, U.S. Department of Labor investigators found grueling working conditions for at least eight child workers. Children as young as 14 stood for as long as 12 hours a day, bent over tables in a cold warehouse as they cut and deboned poultry as fast as they could, said Nisha Parekh, an attorney with the Labor Department. (Reyes-Velarde, 12/14)

USA Today: Biden Touts Prescription Drug Savings For Older Americans
Medicare enrollees next year could save on dozens of medications under a federal law that penalizes pharmaceutical companies if they raise prices faster than the rate of inflation, the Biden administration announced Thursday. Officials with Medicare, the federal health program for adults 65 and older, issued a list of 48 drugs including blood thinners, antibiotics and cancer medications administered at a doctor's office, clinic or hospital, saying that potential savings on these "Part B" medications would range from $1 to $2,786 per dose, beginning Jan. 1, depending on an individual's coverage. (Alltucker, 12/14)

Bloomberg: Biden Touts Drug Rebates As Bid To Crack Down On ‘Price Gouging’
President Joe Biden looked to rally support among seniors with an event highlighting new government caps on prescription drug prices, saying the effort would help “crack down on price gouging.” “Simply it’s a rip off,” Biden said Thursday at the National Institutes of Health, targeting pharmaceutical makers who raise the price of drugs at a faster rate than inflation. “They’re ripping off Medicare. They’re ripping off the American people.” (Jacobs and Sink, 12/14)

Politico: Applesauce Pouches Linked To Lead Poisoning May Have Been Contaminated On Purpose, FDA Foods Chief Says 
Tainted cinnamon applesauce pouches that have sickened scores of children in the U.S. may have been purposefully contaminated with lead, according to FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones. “We’re still in the midst of our investigation. But so far all of the signals we’re getting lead to an intentional act on the part of someone in the supply chain and we’re trying to sort of figure that out,” Jones said in an exclusive interview. “My instinct is they didn’t think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,” Jones said. ... U.S. and Ecuadorian authorities have traced the cinnamon to Negasmart, which supplies Austrofoods, the food manufacturer in Ecuador. (Brown and Hill, 12/14)

Reuters: Benefits Of Moderna And Merck Melanoma Vaccine Plus Keytruda Extend To Three Years 
An experimental messenger RNA cancer vaccine developed by Moderna and Merck & Co (MRK.N) paired with Merck's Keytruda cut the chance of recurrence or death from melanoma by half after three years, showing that benefits demonstrated a year ago have held up over time. (Erman and Wingrove, 12/14)

CIDRAP: Mpox Spread Via Nonsexual Contact Not Common, New Data Show
Though the 2022 mpox outbreak was primarily transmitted through sexual contact among men who have sex with men in the United States, close, nonsexual case contacts have contracted the virus, but data released today show that the risk is quite low. Another mpox study today showed that dose-sparing vaccine administration of the Jynneos vaccine appeared to have worked. (Soucheray, 12/14)

CBS News: Hundreds Of Young Children Killed Playing With Guns, CDC Reports
Hundreds of young children in the U.S. have been killed playing with guns over the last two decades, according to a study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vast majority of cases involved guns that were stored unlocked and loaded. The CDC report's authors say their new findings highlight the rising toll taken by accidental gun deaths that could be preventable. (Tin, 12/14)

Axios: Kids Killed In Gun Accidents Most Often Found Weapon In The Bedroom: CDC
Children and teens involved in unintentional fatal shootings most commonly found the gun inside or on top of a nightstand, under a mattress or pillow, or on top of a bed, according to a new federal study. (Reed, 12/14)

The Hill: Biden, Lawmakers Push For Gun Reform On Sandy Hook Shooting Anniversary
President Biden and several other Democratic lawmakers pushed for gun reform on the 11th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. “Eleven years ago, the souths of Newtown, Connecticut, and the nation were pierced forever when twenty-six lives were stolen at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a lone shooter,” Biden posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, adding that he and the first lady were praying for the families and survivors. (Irwin, 12/14)

The New York Times: The Guns Were Said To Be Destroyed. Instead, They Were Reborn. 
When Flint, Mich., announced in September that 68 assault weapons collected in a gun buyback would be incinerated, the city cited its policy of never reselling firearms. ... But Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon. (McIntire, 12/10)

The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat: Same Hospital, Child, Injury And Day. Different Bills
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the annual cost of family health insurance jumped to nearly $24,000 this year, the greatest increase in a decade. While insurance executives and employers may cite a plethora of reasons, one of the chief culprits is lack of oversight over the Wild West of health care prices. (Renee Y. Hsia, 12/14)

Los Angeles Daily News: What’s Wrong With Flavored Medicine? California Moves To Ban It. 
It’s been common practice for generations for pharmacists to add grape or other sweet flavors to antibiotics, flu syrups and various icky tasting medications to make it easier for young kids to tolerate their prescribed doses. The board has traditionally allowed it. Yet, as CalMatters reported last month, pharmacies have stopped offering this service as they await new rules from the state pharmacy board that apply tougher regulations to this simple practice. (12/13)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Why More Companies Should Hire Disabled People 
As we approach 2024 and businesses are looking to plan for success in the new year, many are facing persistent labor shortages. Tech layoffs grab headlines, but there are more than 8 million unfilled front-line jobs in sectors like hospitality, manufacturing and retail. (Jeff Dern, 12/13)

Sacramento Bee: If A Period Can Be Flushed Without Legal Consequence, Then So Can A Miscarriage
A 33-year-old Ohio woman who was 22 weeks pregnant when she suffered the loss of her pregnancy is now being charged with abuse of a corpse, a fifth-degree felony, because it happened over a toilet and the expelled material — uterine lining, blood clumps and, yes, what remained of an unviable fetus — clogged the pipes. (Robin Epley, 12/11)

Sacramento Bee: Cannabis Is A Threat To The City Of Sacramento, But Not In The Way You Think
Cannabis has been the city of Sacramento’s new-found pot of gold. With the most permissive regulatory environment in the region for cultivating, distributing and selling cannabis, the existing 4% tax on the industry now dwarfs all revenue from all parking lots city-wide. (Tom Philp, 12/12)