Hospitals

Massachusetts Wakes Up To A Hospital Nightmare

January 31, 2024 Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. Educate! Health Care, Hospitals, Liberal class, Massachusetts, Private Equity

The group of fresh medical school grads knew something wasn’t right with Steward Health Care when they showed up in Dorchester, Massachusetts to start their residencies in Carney Hospital’s inaugural family medicine residency class during the summer of 2014 and learned the president who had recruited them had already been fired. Soon afterward, a Steward administrator admitted the new family medicine clinic and the pediatric ward they had toured on their recruitment visit were never actually opening, and that the nearby hospital at which residents were supposed to learn how to deliver babies was being shuttered entirely.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 111: Hospitals Under Siege

January 25, 2024 Leila Warah, Mondoweiss. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Hospitals, Israel, Land grabs, Occupation, Palestine, United Nations, Wars and Militarism

In Khan Younis, Palestinians continue to face constant Israeli attacks, including those on medical centers, further crippling Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and institutions. The Israeli military has put several medical complexes under siege in Khan Younis, the second-largest city in Gaza, located in the southern district. At Nasser Hospital, The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that “no one can enter or exit” because of the nearby bombardment . In addition to about 400 dialysis patients at Nasser Hospital who cannot access treatment, hundreds of wounded people, sick patients, and maternity cases are facing serious complications as a result of the lack of access to the hospital.

Hospital Workers Fired After Protesting Short Staffing Sue

January 20, 2024 Mark Kreidler, Scheer Post. Resist! Health Care, Hospitals, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Scott Byington got fired a few days before Christmas, but that’s not the half of it. Prior to being terminated over the phone, Byington, a registered nurse at St. Francis Medical Center just south of Los Angeles in Lynwood, had persevered through more than three years of wage freezes and drastic staff cuts imposed by his new employer. St. Francis has said Byington was among a group of workers who violated company policy when they hand-delivered a protest letter to the Ontario headquarters of the hospital’s owner, Prime Healthcare. In an interview with Capital & Main, Byington laughed while describing the number of ways in which the company’s claim can be disproved.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 103: Israel Attacks Southern Gaza Hospital

January 17, 2024 Mustafa Abu Sneineh, Mondoweiss. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Hospitals, Israel, Media, Operation Al Aqsa Flood

On Wednesday, the Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that Israeli forces committed 16 massacres in the Gaza Strip, killing 163 Palestinians and injuring 350 in the past 24 hours. Israel has killed at least 24,448 Palestinians and injured 61,504 others since October, the ministry added, warning that it detected the spread of hepatitis A, a liver disease, “as a result of overcrowding and low levels of hygiene in places of displacement in the Gaza Strip.” “We warn against stopping the laboratory blood test (CBC) at any moment due to the lack of its materials,” it added on its Telegram channel.

Israel’s War On Hospitals

November 21, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Genocide, Hospitals, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, War crimes, Wars and Militarism

Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return. Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 40: Israeli Forces Storm Al-Shifa Hospital

November 16, 2023 Mustafa Abu Sneineh, Mondoweiss. Educate! Belize, Gaza, Genocide, Hospitals, Israel, Palestine, War crimes, West Bank

Israeli forces and tanks stormed on Wednesday morning Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, following a late-night threat call to the hospital’s medical staff warning them of an imminent incursion inside the sprawling complex at “any minute”. Currently housing thousands of patients, doctors, and civilian families, Al-Shifa has been a primary target of Israel since the beginning of its war on Gaza. In recent days Israel and the US have been ramping up claims of alleged “intelligence” to support Israel’s allegation of a Hamas command center that it says lies beneath the hospital. Following the threatening call on Tuesday night, Al Jazeera reported that hospital staff warned Israeli forces that there were thousands of civilians and patients in the wards.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 38: Premature Babies Are Being Left To Die

November 13, 2023 Leila Warah, Mondoweiss. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Hospitals, Israel, Palestine

Israel’s ground invasion in the north of Gaza has continued to expand and intensify, forcing many civilians still located in the north to evacuate to the south of the besieged enclave. As thousands of civilians of all ages evacuated, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) described the experience as “precarious and unsafe.” “Men, women, and children, waving white flags, walk for dozens of kilometers past dead bodies lying on the streets and without necessities like food and water,” the organization said in a statement on Sunday. “The southern area is not equipped to cater to the massive number of people arriving with nothing but the clothes they are wearing, and the quantity of humanitarian aid coming in is largely insufficient.”

Chris Hedges: The Horror, The Horror

November 13, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Hospitals, International Law, Israel, War crimes

Doha, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead. We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 18: 32 Health Centers Forced Out Of Service

October 25, 2023 Mustafa Abu Sneineh, Mondoweiss. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Hospitals, Israel, Operation Al Aqsa Flood, Palestine

At least 140 Palestinians were killed in violent Israeli air strikes between Monday night and Tuesday morning in the besieged Gaza Strip, as Israel stepped up its bombardment of houses and infrastructure on the 18th day of its war on Gaza. Since October 7, at least 5,300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes and ground missiles on the Gaza Strip, including 2,055 children, 1,119 women and 217 elderly people, and 18,000 injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The number of displaced Palestinians topped 1,400,000 people, while Israel committed massacres against 597 Palestinian families by targeting their homes and residential buildings, killing at least 3,813.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 12: Calls For Gaza Ceasefire Mount

October 18, 2023 Yumna Patel, Mondoweiss. Educate! Hospitals, Human Rights, Israel, Operation Al Aqsa Flood, Palestine, War crimes, Wars and Militarism

Calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza are mounting, in the wake of a devastating Israeli hospital bombing on the night of Tuesday, October 17, which Gaza health officials have described as a “massacre.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire on Wednesday morning, October 18, as he condemned the “collective punishment” of Palestinians. Along with calls for a ceasefire, Guterres called for the immediate entrance of emergency humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been prevented by Israel for more than a week, despite numerous warnings from UN and human rights agencies that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic due to lack of food, water, and power.

Nonprofit Hospitals Reap Big Tax Breaks; States Scrutinize Spending

July 12, 2023 Andy Miller and Markian Hawryluk, KFF Health News. Educate! Health Care, Hospitals, Pennsylvania, Tax Evasion

Pottstown, Pennsylvania — The public school system here had to scramble in 2018 when the local hospital, newly purchased, was converted to a tax-exempt nonprofit entity. The takeover by Tower Health meant the 219-bed Pottstown Hospital no longer had to pay federal and state taxes. It also no longer had to pay local property taxes, taking away more than $900,000 a year from the already underfunded Pottstown School District, school officials said. The district, about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, had no choice but to trim expenses. It cut teacher aide positions and eliminated middle school foreign language classes.

How Effective Is The Government’s Campaign Against Hospital Mergers?

October 31, 2022 Allan Sloan and Carson Kessler, Pro Publica. Educate! Federal Trade Commission, Health Care, Hospitals

In recent months, federal antitrust regulators have notched some notable achievements, blocking four hospital mergers. Those actions follow the announcement of a major change in antitrust philosophy, embodied by President Joe Biden’s executive order last year aimed at promoting competition. That order criticized hospital consolidation for the ways in which it has left “many areas, particularly rural communities, with inadequate or more expensive healthcare options.” Suddenly, antitrust regulators seem to have swagger. News articles have described the Federal Trade Commission, whose job is to stop anti-competitive behavior, as being “unleashed” under its aggressive new chief, Lina Khan. Republicans have responded with complaints of “radical” policies.

After Platinum Health Took Control, All Hospital Workers Were Fired

October 25, 2022 Sarah Jane Tribble , In These Times. Educate! Health Care, Hospitals, Privatization, Worker Rights and Jobs

The news, under Noble Health letterhead, arrived at 5:05 p.m. on a Friday, with the subject line: “Urgent Notice.” Audrain Community Hospital, Paul Huemann’s workplace of 32 years, was letting workers go. Word travels fast in a small town. Huemann’s wife, Kym, first heard the bad news in the car when a friend who’d gotten the letter, too, texted. “Your termination was not foreseeable,” said the letter, dated Sept. 8 and signed Platinum Health Systems, adding that the firing was permanent “with no recourse” and that the “medical facility will be shuttered.” “I don’t know what my next steps are,” said 52-year-old Huemann, who supervised the laboratory at the Audrain hospital. The future for the Huemanns, hundreds of other workers, and thousands of patients in two small Missouri towns began to unravel long before that afternoon.

Help Three Native American Women Save Their Hospital

May 16, 2021 Charmaine White Face, Popular Resistance. Resist! Hospitals, Indian Health Service, Indigenous Activism, South Dakota

When Donna Gilbert asked me to be a part of her lawsuit, I immediately said yes. After having survived three other lawsuits, I should have been leery. But when peoples’ lives are at stake, it is not hard to make a hard decision. Initially it was the Oglala Sioux Tribal Court (OST). It was my son’s idea to go to the Tribal Court because we knew what the outcome would be. The OST court would dismiss our case because the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board (GPTCHB) was under the jurisdiction of the state of South Dakota and was not a Tribal Organization. But we needed this verified by a court. We also knew that the other federal courts would acknowledge the Tribal court ruling, or were supposed to. It would be a win for the OST Court and for the patients who use Sioux San Hospital. As it turned out, the federal District Court and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals both ignored and disregarded the OST court ruling.

The Rural South Lost 13 Hospitals In 2020

March 25, 2021 Olivia Paschal, Facing South. Educate! Health Care, Hospitals, Rural, South

For the Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, the last straw was the COVID-19 pandemic, which strained the critical access hospital's already-precarious finances past the breaking point. In Florida, two hospitals closed inpatient non-emergency services after being bought out by the HCA hospital chain. In Tennessee and West Virginia, financial problems combined with the strain of the pandemic led two more rural hospitals to shut their doors. Of the 20 rural hospitals that closed in 2020, 13 were in the South, according to data from the Sheps Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which defines a closed hospital as one that no longer offers inpatient services.

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