Hospital Employee Health – July 1, 2023

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.