Hospital operators in Orange County and around the state are breathing easier, thanks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s drive to make California more business friendly.
Nursing groups, on the other hand, are dismayed with the governor.
The state Department of Health Services recently said it was giving hospitals a three-year reprieve from meeting a ratio of one registered nurse for every five patients in medical and surgical units starting on Jan. 1, as the state’s staffing law required.
Instead, officials plan to take a look at the law’s effects.
California officials have said that 11 hospitals around the state have closed or eliminated departments such as emergency rooms and psychiatric wards, which employ a lot of nurses.
Predictably, the healthcare industry groups on opposing sides had different takes on the governor’s move.
The California Health-care Association, on its Web site, said it “applauds” the reprieve.
The association, which represents hospitals, has contended that the state’s nursing shortage would make it difficult for hospitals to be able to ramp up and meet those staffing requirements.
“Cutbacks in hospital services are becoming all to common as hospitals strive to comply with these regulations,” said Duane Dauner, the hospital trade group’s president, in a release.
On the opposing side, the California Nurses Association went off on the decision, charging that Schwarzenegger “has showed that he is more concerned with hospital industry profits than with the safety of all of us who will one day be patients,” said Deborah Burger, the union’s president.
The union contends recent hospital closures weren’t related to nursing ratios, “but to long-term economic problems that far predate this patient safety law,” Burger said.
California Nurses Association sponsored the ratio law, which was signed five years ago by Gov. Gray Davis, making California the first state in the nation to tell its hospitals how many nurses they had to hire to take care of their patients.
Several Orange County hospitals have said that they were ready to meet the law, but had some mild concerns about finding and hiring enough nurses to make sure they met the ratio while other nurses were on lunches and breaks.
Alacer: Flu Fighter
Alacer Corp., a Foothill Ranch-based vitamin products maker, is using media hype about flu shot shortages to promote sales of vitamin C.
Privately held Alacer’s core product is a vitamin C supplement.
Vitamin C can help the body’s immune system by stimulating antibodies and white blood cells that are needed to fight flu.
In a press release, Alacer said that some of its distributors and retailers are ordering more vitamin C-based products, including the company’s Emer’gen-C, a powder that’s mixed with water and creates mineral ascorbates, a form of vitamin C.
The flu shot shortage’s been a hot topic in the past few weeks,officials estimate that the country only has around 61 million doses of vaccine out of an anticipated 100 million for the flu season.
The situation was exacerbated last month, when Chiron Corp., an Emeryville-based vaccine maker, lost the license for its British vaccine plant.
Foundation Grants
The HealthCare Foundation for Orange County, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit, awarded more than $717,000 of grants aimed at improving the health status of low-income families in central OC.
One of the larger grants, $335,101, went to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, and Santa Ana-based Latino Health Access to fight childhood obesity.
Other big grants included $245,250 to a joint project of UCI Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of Orange County, and a $200,000 grant to CHOC, Kaiser Permanente and the Mobile Asthma Outreach Coalition.
The foundation’s Healthy Orange County program provided grants from its Hospital Legacy Fund to a range of community-based groups offering health services to needy families.
The foundation said that those funds, which were augmented by grants from the California Endowment and the California Wellness Foundation, provided support for training and technical assistance for CalOptima, the Orange-based agency that administers the county’s Medi-Cal program, the Coalition of Orange County Community Clinics and the Health Funders Partnership of Orange County.
Bits and Pieces:
Novation LLC, Dallas, signed a deal with I-Flow Corp., Lake Forest, to make I-Flow’s On-Q Painbuster pain relief system available to healthcare groups that buy supplies from it. Novation serves more than 2,300 healthcare groups nationwide Dr. Carey Cullinane, a surgeon and cancer geneticist who practices with Breastlink, a Fountain Valley medical practice, is speaking this week at a medical conference at South Korea’s Chung-Ang University. Cullinane plans to address the role that genetics plays in identifying, counseling and managing families at high risk to develop breast cancer Pro-Dex Inc., Santa Ana, made a presentation at the Westergaard SmallCap Conference in New York earlier this year. Pro-Dex’s products include motion control and miniature rotary drive systems used in hospitals, dental offices, medical engineering labs and scientific research facilities.
