Hospital Employee Health – July 1, 2023
July 1, 2023
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Emergency Departments Inundated with Crowding, ‘Boarding,’ Violence
Amid an epidemic of violence, America’s EDs have become overwhelmed by long waits and “boarding,” a haphazard way station for the lost: psychiatric patients, walking wounded, those arriving by emergency transport, and those who deferred treatment during the pandemic, all awaiting an inpatient bed or a transfer. The American College of Emergency Physicians and many other co-signing medical groups described the problem in a letter to President Biden.
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COVID-19: CMS Ends Vaccine Mandate for HCWs
The end of the COVID-19 national Public Health Emergency brought a highly controversial issue to a relatively quiet hiatus: Healthcare workers are no longer federally mandated to receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has ended the requirement, which in any case did not apply to boosters or the bivalent vaccines.
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ID Doc: COVID-19 Can Be Controlled, Not Eradicated
Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, is associate division chief of the HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. She has followed the COVID-19 pandemic closely. Hospital Employee Health sought Gandhi’s thoughts on the end of the Public Health Emergency.
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AOHP Researchers Track Down Needlestick Hazards
Following an alert from an occupational health manager at a U.S. hospital, researchers with the Association of Occupational Health Professionals in Healthcare found a longstanding sharps injury problem with prefilled syringes that were designed as safety devices.
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CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Exits
After conceding the CDC made mistakes and errors in the pandemic response — then launching an ambitious effort to reinvent the agency — director Rochelle Walensky, MD, has announced she will resign at the end of June 2023.