Category: Health Care
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Open Letter to the Sentara Community
by Dr. Robert H. Sease As a lifelong resident of Harrisonburg, a retired physician and a volunteer hospital chaplain, I feel compelled to write about the current and ongoing situation at our local hospital. My father, my two uncles, my brother and myself have a combined 180 years of medical service to this community, so…
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Mentally Ill in Jails, Part 3: Costs, Legislative Initiatives, and a Modest Proposal
By Dick Hall-Sizemore (Note: This is the third, and final, post in a series examining the issue of mentally ill people being held in jails. Earlier posts can be found here and here.) Costs. In comments to the previous installments, several readers brought up the issue of the cost of providing services for the mentally ill…
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Bacon Bits: Jerry Reed Tribute Edition
When you’re hot you’re hot. How hot is the data center industry in Northern Virginia? It’s so hot that vacant land in parts of Prince William County is nearing $1 million per acre. “They are just building like crazy,” said Tim Leclerc, Prince William County’s assistant finance director, as reported by the Prince William Times.…
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Biggest U.S. Orthopedic Facility Projects Exclude Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Beckers just published a list of the 14 largest orthopedic projects in America in 2021. None of them are located in Virginia. Virginia’s COPN law and its administration make such projects highly unlikely here. Every Virginia hospital that did not propose such a project would oppose it. And in the monopolized metro…
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Mentally Ill in Jail, Part 2 — State and Local Efforts to Address the Issue
by Dick Hall-Sizemore (Note: This is the second installment of a discussion on mentally ill people in Virginia’s jails. Part 1 of this series set out the scope of the problem.) Although senior policymakers are aware of the large number of mentally ill people in jails and acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, the state…
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Mentally Ill in Jails, Part 1–The Scope of the Problem
By Dick Hall-Sizemore (Note: This was not intended to be a long post, but, during its development, it grew like Topsy. Being painfully aware of my tendency to be wordy and the limitations of a blog regarding long essays, I have broken the post into three parts or installments. The first examines the extent of…
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New COVID Data Dump
by James A. Bacon New Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association (VHHA) data shows the impact of Governor Ralph Northam’s executive order banning elective surgeries last year. Hospital discharges across Virginia plunged from nearly 17,000 per week when the first COVID-19 cases were reported in the state to less than 12,000 — a drop of 31%.…
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A Cautionary Tale of Rural Healthcare and a Peek Inside a Health System Board Meeting
by James C. Sherlock Revised 12 April at 1:34 PM I ran across a fascinating story buried deep in a massive Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) database on Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) inspection reports. The report I will share with you is a cautionary tale both of rural healthcare and of the way hospitals view…
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COPN Drives Richmond’s Tuckahoe Orthopedics to Be Acquired to Survive
by James C. Sherlock This is pretty straightforward. COPN is driving a physician shortage in Virginia because doctors are not granted the independence to practice the way they want to with the facilities and equipment they need and that in turn is depressing their incomes. Reversing Robin Hood, COPN takes from the physicians and gives to…
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Sentara CEO Kern Among 10 Highest Paid Nonprofit Executives in America
by James C. Sherlock Sentara CEO Howard Kern is well paid. We will compare his compensation to those of the highest paid non-profit CEOs in the nation and to the CEO of the largest for-profit healthcare system in the country. Turns out he is extremely well paid. We should all have his agent. …
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COPN Monopolies Depress Income for Virginia Healthcare Professionals Without Lowering Costs
by James C. Sherlock Virginia is among the richest states in the country. We are ranked ninth among states with the highest median household income in the 2019 (latest) Census Bureau American Community Survey. Virginia median household income was $74,222 and the U.S. as a whole was $62,843. But Virginia has a Certificate of…
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Relaxing Restrictions on Pharmacists
by James A. Bacon Under a bill signed by Governor Ralph Northam today, pharmacists will be able to provide a wider array of services to adults such as writing prescriptions for the flu, administering COVID vaccines, and prescribing controlled substances for HIV. A separate bill signed into law will expand the scope of practice for…
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Roving Bands of Whites Steal COVID Shots?
by Steve Haner Call out the militia! Roving bands of white people are rushing to Danville to steal COVID vaccines from more deserving blacks and Latinos! That’s the big news according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, although it lacks the courage to write that headline directly. The story dominates the print front page and the on-line…
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New Antitrust Laws Promise Scrutiny of Virginia’s Healthcare Monopolies
by James C. Sherlock I have written here extensively on the necessity to enforce federal antitrust laws against the anticompetitive activities of some of Virginia’s regional healthcare monopolies. I am happy to report federal legislative changes from the past year that will strengthen the enforcement of those laws. First, the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and…
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The Business and Politics of Senior Care in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock We write here often about senior care, the companies that provide it and the politics around that business. It is useful to understand the continuum of care to make sure we also understand the different financial situations which companies in different parts of that industry find themselves and the way they…