Iowa news
A Closer Look: Chris Mitchell, President and CEO of the Iowa Hospital Association
Chris Mitchell was appointed president and chief executive officer of the Iowa Hospital Association in August and began his new role in mid-October. Mitchell, who was selected by the IHA Board of Officers and Trustees following a national search, was most recently executive vice president of advocacy and public affairs for the Michigan Health and Hospital Association. Mitchell began his career as an administrative fellow with the Michigan Health and Hospital Association in 2006; he held leadership roles in government relations, political affairs and advocacy, and was named to the executive vice president position in January 2019. He succeeds Kirk Norris, who recently retired after 34 years with the Iowa Hospital Association. (Business Record)
Meatpacking jobs are attractive to immigrants. COVID-19 made the work even riskier.
Amner Martinez still doesn’t know all the details from when his 74-year-old father Concepcion got dangerously sick with COVID-19 near the beginning of the pandemic. Martinez’s father works at the Tyson Foods plant in Perry, Iowa, the site of an outbreak in spring 2020 that affected 730 workers. Martinez said his father, who he called a workaholic like himself, didn’t tell him just how sick he was until he was recovering. (KOSU)
MercyOne, Genesis partner to expand population health, value-based care network
MercyOne and Genesis Health System announced that they have entered an agreement for Genesis to join MercyOne’s Partnered Provider Network. The partnership was developed to pursue collaboration opportunities and will be positioned as Incirca Health Network powered by MercyOne and Genesis Health. The multiyear agreement will focus on leveraging the joint expertise in population health and expand value-based health care through their respective regions. The Incirca Health Network offers personalized, convenient access to health care through MercyOne’s Partnered Provider Network. (Business Record)
National news
Where people go wrong with ‘incidental’ COVID-19 hospitalizations
The current state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. in many ways differs from earlier surges, with breakthrough infections now a norm and not the exception. With that has come a rise in what health experts call incidental COVID-19 hospitalizations, referring to patients who are primarily admitted for other ailments and test positive as part of routine screening. New York and Massachusetts have recently shifted their reporting on COVID-19 hospitalizations, asking hospitals to distinguish between those admitted primarily because of the virus and incidental cases. About 42% of COVID-19-positive patients at New York hospitals as of Jan. 8 did not have COVID-19 included as reason for admission, according to state data. (Becker’s Hospital Review)
Medicare proposes to sharply limit coverage of the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm
Aduhelm was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June in a decision criticized by many experts because clinical trials showed it had significant safety risks and unclear benefit to patients. Whether Medicare ends up covering Aduhelm is considered pivotal to the future of the drug, which is priced at $28,200 a year per patient. (The New York Times)
Health care workers can’t get off the COVID-19 rollercoaster
Accelerate, incline, peak, fall, plateau — repeat. It’s the sequence of COVID-19 health care workers have experienced several times. The pace and degrees of incline vary depending on the state or region, but the rollercoaster’s order is always the same. Some of the minutiae are familiar to real-life rides. Toward the peak is when cameras flash, capturing split-seconds of health care professionals’ alarmed faces. Eventually the track dips downward and the workers fall, never to ground level but somewhat closer. They take a breath. The photos and headlines recede, no longer capturing how “burnt out” they are. (Becker’s Hospital Review)