Stories we’re scanning:

Health Care

• Eustis out as Fairview CEO: MNA RN Barb Martin talks to the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press about Fairview’s decision to part ways with CEO Mark Eustis in the wake of the hospital system’s ongoing debt collection scandal involving Accretive.

Notes on Nursing

• Need A Nurse? You May Have to Wait (and Wait): NPR story sheds new light on national epidemic of unsafe staffing inside U.S. hospitals.

Labor Updates

• MNA Releases new (and Free!) e-book:  MNA recently published a new multimedia e-book called “Share This! Labor Unions and Social Media” in Apple’s iBookstore. You can download it for FREE on your iPad right now! Here’s the scoop: In light of its stunning success using Social Media during the largest nursing strike in U.S. history, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) has become known as one of the Labor movement’s leading voices on how to use Social Media effectively and strategically. ”Share This! Labor Unions and Social Media” is MNA’s free gift to the Labor community at large. Pulling back the curtain to reveal every best practice and strategic decision that has gone into MNA’s amazing Social Media success, this interactive, video-enhanced e-book allows Labor Unions to leverage Social Media to Engage Members, Impact Negotiations, Drive Mainstream Media Coverage and Shape Public Opinion.
  

Grab your free copy of MNA’s new e-book today!

HEALTH CARE

Art, Gardens & Basketball Courts -Yes.  Adequate Staff?  No Mention.   The striking new hospital buildings built by Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, and Lurie Children’s Hospital, in Chicago spare no funds to promise a luxurious patient experience.  Editor’s note:  The article curiouisly fails to discuss how much investment is put into providing enough professional staff.

How Rivals Built an ACO  The ultimate goal is to reduce healthcare costs and improve care by developing  and refining services that can be scaled and applied to the 300,000  HealthPartners and Allina customers who live in the alliance service area.

NURSING

Planetree Model Puts Patients and Staff First  Spitzer — whose job is essentially to make sure that patients, staff and families have whatever they need, whenever they need it — describes Fauquier as “having a different energy about it” since it adopted the Planetree model.

LABOR

Workers at 8 Twin Cities Hospitals Ratify New Contract    Members of a hospital workers union have voted “overwhelmingly” to ratify a new three-year contract with eight Twin Cities hospitals, union officials said on Wednesday.

More Men Enter Fields Dominated by Women   The trend began well before the crash, and appears to be driven by a variety of factors, including financial concerns, quality-of-life issues and a gradual erosion of gender stereotypes.

NFL Players File Collusion Claim   For the second time in 17 months, the Players Association has filed a collusion  claim against the NFL, alleging that owners sought to suppress wages in 2010  when there was no salary cap.

Stories we’re scanning:

Health Care

• U.S. Patients Report Inferior Care: Not only are sick Americans facing serious financial problems from high healthcare costs (43 percent), but many are experiencing problems with healthcare quality, according to a new poll released yesterday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NPR and the Harvard School of Public Health.
• CEOs Raking in the $$$: The healthcare industry saw the largest increases in executive pay out of all sectors, according to a Wall Street Journal and Hay Group CEO compensation survey.

Labor Updates

• MNA RN on CNN: MNA RN Jennifer Michelson talked Live with CNN from the streets of Chicago during the 2012 Staff Nurse Assembly. Take a look:

Target Violated Labor Laws; NLRB Calls for New Union Election     An administrative law judge from the National Labor Relations Board has overturned the union election last year at a Target store on New York’s Long Island and ordered a new election citing unfair labor practices.

General Mills Cuts 850 Jobs    General Mills expects the plan to result in total pretax charges of about $109 million, which will cover costs related to workers whose jobs are terminated and equipment.

Barbara Ehrenreich:  A War on Poverty, Indeed    ;Individually, the poor are not all that tempting to thieves. Mug a banker, and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor, and you’ll be lucky to get bus fare to flee the crime scene. But the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them.  The trick, however, is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators.

Viewing the World Through Eyes of Working Poor   A unique program is teaching Minnesotans compassion for the working poor, by putting them in the shoes of those who struggle on a daily basis.

HEALTH CARE

Patients Aren’t Great at Figuring Out If They Got Excellent Medical Care   The quality of medical care is a popular subject of debate, and oftentimes complaint.  Sometimes gripes are legitimate and sometimes they’re not. But a new study finds that patients’ opinions of the care they receive can be quite different from the actual quality of the medical care. More alarming is that opinions and experiences vary greatly by race.

Clinics Certified as Health Care Homes Now Serving 2M Minnesotans    DHS estimates that approximately 135,000 Medicaid recipients are served by a certified health care home. Minnesota is also one of eight states where the federal Medicare program has aligned with the state program to pay for health care homes. More than 225,000 Medicare beneficiaries are expected to be served by health care homes during the three-year project.

Media all over the country are touting the brave and peaceful action of NNU/MNA in Chicago on Friday as 2,500 nurses rallied in Daley Plaza to demand a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street to pay for health care and education on Main Street.

Health Care

What It’s Like to Be Sick in America  3 of 4 people who were sick said cost is a very serious problem, and half said quality is a very serious problem.  Nearly half of those with recent serious illness say they felt burdened by what they had to pay out of their own pocket for care.

Labor

Strike Notice at Canadian Pacific Railroad     The union representing nearly 5,000 engineers, conductors and traffic controllers submitted a 72-hour strike notice, giving workers the right to walk off their jobs as early as Wednesday