The powerful California Nurses Association has put Ebola on the bargaining table in its negotiations for a new contract with Kaiser Permanente. Contract talks have been going on for months and the nurses' most recent demands are all about Ebola — better training, more staffing, protective gear that goes beyond what's recommended by federal officials and even a special life insurance policy. "We'd like to have an extra supplemental coverage, for specifically Ebola, if we were to contract Ebola while we're at work," says Diane McClure, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente's hospital in Sacramento, where a patient suspected of having Ebola was treated in August. He later tested negative for the virus.
The messy handling of the first Ebola case in the U.S. prompted the nation's largest nurses' union to urge stricter federal safety standards for hospitals. National Nurses United wants at least two full-time nurses assigned to each Ebola patient and full-body hazmat suits—and, above all, a concerted effort by the federal government to ensure rules are followed. "There is no enforcement," NNU Co-President Jean Ross said in a recent interview. "There is no one to say, 'You will do what the CDC says.'" At least one federal agency is considering new regulations that, while not specifically targeted toward Ebola, would raise standards for workplace safety from infectious disease.
Could robots be the next line of defense in the fight against Ebola? Roboticists the world over have started pondering that question in earnest, with a number of intriguing possibilities emerging: Mortuary robots to respectfully transport those who've died from the virus and are still highly contagious. Waste-handling bots to dispose of biowaste from Ebola patients. Robots that deliver humanitarian supplies to widely infected areas. Early next month, robotics experts and medical and relief workers will convene at a workshop on safety robotics for Ebola workers to more formally explore ideas.
A recent survey of doctors by the Physicians Foundation finds that most give low grades to Obamacare. Some 46% of the doctors polled gave Obamacare a grade of "D" or "F" and 29% gave it a "C." Only 25 percent give it an "A" or a "B," including just 4% who gave it the highest grade. It's possible that some of the doctors who chose C really meant to say that it was at least reasonably good. But in modern America, thanks to grade inflation, a C is generally considered a very bad grade. Thus, it seems likely that a large majority of doctors have strongly negative view of the program.
Confidential draft documents from the state's health care waiver negotiations show the state and federal government are millions of dollars apart in federal funding expectations for the state's health care subsidy program. Known as the state wrap, the program seeks to fill in the gap between some of the higher subsidies that were available under Massachusetts health care reform in 2006, and the lower subsidies offered under the Affordable Care Act. Yet documents show there is at least a $415 million gap in funding expectations between the two groups.
Someday, doctors will have our data at their fingertips and will use it to prevent drug reactions, nip diabetes and cancers in the bud and lengthen our lives while preventing unpleasant and costly hospital stays. But for most doctors, that free-flowing information highway is a beautiful dream that doesn't pay the bills. Many hospitals don't have any incentive to improve the clunky $30 billion federal electronic health records program: They still make most of their money by filling beds. Most doctors still get paid through procedures and visits. So a new 10-year plan for fixing the system from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT may have a hard time getting off the ground.