Literature Review

Inside a $300M push to save failing hospitalsModern Healthcare, by Kara Hartnett; 1/19/24When Madera Community Hospital declared bankruptcy and suddenly closed its doors a year ago, an agricultural community of 68,000 Californians lost its sole source of emergency and specialty care.

Healthcare ranks second among industries with workers frustrated by low pay: survey McKnights Senior Living, by Kathleen Steele Gaivin; 1/19/24Healthcare workers rank second among those frustrated about their industry’s pay, according to a recent analysis from USA Today Blueprint. ... The research included 3 million Glassdoor reviews of 500 large employers in 25 industries. ... Only workers in the education field are less satisfied with their pay than are workers in healthcare, according to the findings.

Head chef at Jersey Hospice cherishes the privilege of cooking for end-of-life patientsBNN, by Mahnoor Jehangir; 1/19/24The head chef at Jersey Hospice, Sam Sherwood, has a deeply personal mission. His role is not merely a professional one, but a labor of love, driven by the memory of his father who passed away just days before Sherwood took the helm of the hospice kitchen. For Sherwood and his team, preparing meals for patients in end-of-life care is more than just a job; it’s a calling.

Widespread health care disparities revealed: Hardships for minority kids start at birthUSA Today, by Adrianna Rodriguez; 1/18/24Black and Hispanic children receive universally worse medical care than their white peers, starting from the moment they’re born and spanning across all specialties, according to a comprehensive five-year review. ... They found widespread racial and ethnic disparities in care, treatment and health outcomes across all pediatric specialties, including neonatology, primary care, emergency medicine, critical care, surgery, mental health, developmental disabilities, endocrinology and palliative, or end-of-life, care, ...

KKR-backed BrightSpring targets $3 billion valuation for long-awaited US IPOReuters; 1/17/24KKR-backed BrightSpring Health Services set a target of an around $3.01 billion valuation on Wednesday for its long-awaited initial public offering in the United States. The company, which caters to patients facing complex or chronic medical conditions, is moving towards a listing after previously pursuing it in 2021.

Home-based leaders are focusing on culture, creative benefits to mitigate staffing challengesHome Healthcare News, by Joyce Famakinwa; 1/16/24One of Accurate Home Care’s biggest strategies for combating the nursing shortage is positioning the company as the employer of choice and focusing on culture. ... “We have to focus heavily on culture, and we have to focus heavily on purpose, and try to attract those who have a heart for home care, and the money is secondary to them,” [Bill] English said [president and CEO of Accurate Home Care]. “Those are the nurses that we went after. Today, we were voted as one of the top 200 workplaces in Minnesota by the Star Tribune.”

Moving beyond death anxiety to reflections on mortalityPsychology Today, by Shoba Sreenivasan and Linda E. Weinberger, reviewed by Lybi Ma; 1/15/24For the healthy, it may be considered macabre to contemplate their mortality; it may seem fatalistic, negative, and something that pulls one away from the present joy of living today. Yet, it can also remind us of the inevitable and consider how we want to spend today as well as whatever time we have left.

The 100 club: U.S. centenarians are set to quadruple by 2054chartr, by U.S. Census Bureau; 1/12/24... As life expectancies increase and birth rates decline, the US is anticipated to trend older in the coming decades, with the median age already reaching a record high of 38.9 in 2022. Zooming out, the global population is generally aging at a much faster pace too. Indeed, in 2020, the number of people aged 60+ outnumbered under-5s, and there are an estimated 772k centenarians the world over at present.

Rural nursing homes' livelihood may depend on non-existent staffMcKnights Long-Term Care News, by Kimberly Marselas; 1/15/24... Rural skilled nursing providers have been among the most deeply affected by pandemic-era losses, a fact acknowledged by a provision in the mandate that gives them two extra years to hire needed staff. ... Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association, has called staffing “the metric that will matter most” for rural healthcare over the next five to 10 years.

UnitedHealth Group posts $5.5B profit in fourth quarterBecker's Payer Issues, by Jakob Emerson; 1/12/24UnitedHealth Group recorded double-digit growth in revenue year over year across its core lines of business at UnitedHealthcare and Optum, according to the company's fourth quarter earnings report released Jan. 12. UnitedHealth Group total revenues in 2023 were $371.6 billion, up 14.6% year over year. In the fourth quarter, revenues were $94.4 billion. For 2024, the company projects revenues of $400 billion.Notable mention: Andrew Witty, CEO.

Bayard Rustin: Why MLK's right-hand man was nearly written out of historyHistory.com, by Thaddeus Morgan; 1/2/24Bayard Rustin was an indispensable force behind the civil rights movement, and openly gay. ... To the hundreds of thousands who were bused to Washington for the [August 28, 1963] March [on Washington for Jobs and Freedom], Rustin was synonymous with the movement. After all, he was the march’s chief organizer.Editor's Note: Learn more by viewing Rustin, the biographical drama film released via Netflix on November 3, 2023.

Sutter Health announces its first-ever Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer; Dana Beckton to drive diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and initiativesGlobeNewsire; 11/29/23... Beckton will lead the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategy for the California-based integrated health system, while serving as a key member of Sutter’s Executive Leadership Team. She will work directly with Sutter Health President and CEO Warner Thomas and interim Chief Human Resources Officer Gail Lerch to drive DEI programming and initiatives.   

Rural hospitals are caught in an aging-infrastructure conundrumFortune, by Markian Hawryluk and KFF Health News; 1/11/24Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital in the 800-person town of Hugo, Colorado, is facing a classic Catch-22: He could boost his rural hospital’s revenues by offering hip replacements and shoulder surgeries, but the 64-year-old hospital needs more money to be able to expand its operating room to do those procedures.