TRUSTED MEDIA RELATIONSHIPS AND CONSISTENT RESULTS

Dejene Communications has established trusted relationships with industry, national and international reporters. We constantly monitor national and global media platforms and track issues critical to our clients so that we understand precisely what news and feature stories editors, reporters and producers are looking for.

We also rigorously prepare our clients for each interview and high-profile speaking engagement so that their messages are customized, compelling, crisp and always offer a fresh perspective that resonates with intended audiences and advances the client’s own strategic priorities.

The result is consistent top-tier placement and constant recognition of client executives and spokespersons as thought leaders and industry experts whenever and wherever their industry or company is covered in the media.

Below is a comprehensive list of significant media placements featuring Dejene Communications’ clients and highlighting their critical missions, accomplishments and most important objectives:

2024

Modern Healthcare: What health systems seek in Medicare Advantage plan partners (October 17, 2024)
Health systems are forging partnerships with certain Medicare Advantage plans, even as increasingly frequent battles over reimbursement rates and pay policies cause them to break ties with others.

Skilled Nursing News: OSF, Good Samaritan Execs: Improving Metrics Are the Glue Binding Nursing Home-Hospital Relationships (October 4, 2024)
That relationship between Good Samaritan and Sanford Health has helped clinical teams move people out of hospitals and coordinate care with access to more than 1,000 doctors.

Medical Economics: Finding solutions for physician burnout (October 1, 2024)
Sanford Health has used AI to categorize patient messages regarding prescription refills, appointments and work or school doctor’s notes.

Scientific American: Innovations from rural communities are improving health care (October 2024)
For Eliza Scott, who lives on a farm 2.5 hours away from the Bemidji clinic in rural Minnesota, virtual prenatal care with a home-monitoring kit from Sanford Health has made all the difference.

Skilled Nursing News: Construction Begins on Sanford Health Property (September 30, 2024)
Sanford Health’s long-term care property in Sioux Falls has a capacity for 500 residents and will eventually include 120 short-term rehab and skilled nursing beds.

Becker’s Healthcare: A ‘ripe opportunity’ for provider-led health plans (September 25, 2024)
Tommy Ibrahim MD, President and CEO of Sanford Health Plan, discusses the state of Medicare Advantage, and the status of payer-provider relationships in an evolving healthcare landscape.

Becker’s Healthcare: How the nation’s largest rural system is tackling cancer care deserts (September 24, 2024)
Rachel Wagemann, vice president of operations for Sanford Health’s Sioux Falls market, speaks about how the largest rural health system in the U.S. ensures its patients have access to cancer care.

Modern Healthcare: How healthcare finances are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (September 19, 2024)
Some industry players are still trying to move past the COVID-19 pandemic 4 1/2 years after health officials declared it a global health crisis, though the lingering effects are giving others a financial boost.

Modern Healthcare: Epic, Oracle assist VA with interoperability push (September 18, 2024)
Sanford Health is among a dozen major healthcare systems supporting the Veteran Interoperability Pledge – an effort by the Department of Veteran Affairs to boost information exchange between its own facilities and participating health systems.

Modern Healthcare: How Gen Z is being courted by post-acute providers (September 18, 2024)
Good Samaritan Society has been aggressively targeting Gen Z for its administrator-in-training program, a six-month intensive educational program that helps recent college graduates train for leadership positions within the nonprofit’s 130 skilled nursing facilities across a dozen states.

AMA: 100,000 patients, only 4 ob-gyns. Then this doctor took action. (September 18, 2024)
Dr. Johnna Nynas, an ob-gyn at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center in Northwest Minnesota, discusses how she’s bringing medicine and health care to rural pregnant women in her home state.

Fierce Healthcare: Biden administration unveils multi-agency patient safety programs, industry commitments (September 17, 2024)
Sixteen of the country’s largest health systems—including Sanford Health—said they would take actions “that support providing safe care and zero preventable harm for all.”

STAT+ HEALTH TECH: Q&A: For this South Dakota health system, leaning into telehealth means learning ‘webside’ manner (September 11, 2024)
Sanford Health’s Dr. Dave Newman shared how telehealth is changing how the provider is reaching rural patients.

Provider Magazine: Hope for Improving Vaccination Uptake (September 11, 2024)
DeeAndra Sandgren, chief nursing officer at the Good Samaritan Society, explains how successful vaccination efforts demand a building-wide effort built on trust and communication.

Provider Magazine: Health Care in the Heartland (September 11, 2024)
Rural nursing homes take their roles very seriously, despite the challenges they face. Said Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society, “We have often found that our Good Samaritan locations are a focal point and the health care hub within their rural communities. They are a vital part of the economic engine of the community.”

Modern Healthcare: Shortages inflate care delivery costs by $3.5M per health system (August 15, 2024)
Sanford Health has been stocking up on antibiotics, anticoagulants, chemotherapy treatments and respiratory drugs, among others, said Nathan Leedahl, manager of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based health system’s pharmacy operations. “There are some lifesaving drugs that only one or two companies make,” he said. “We continue to build out our on-hand supply so we are able to respond faster to shortages.”

Becker’s Payer Issues Podcast: Transforming Rural Healthcare: A Vision for Growth and Innovation with Dr. Tommy Ibrahim (August 14, 2024)
The President and CEO of Sanford Health Plan discusses his journey from clinical practice to leading a health plan, the challenges and opportunities in rural healthcare, and strategies for driving growth and innovation.

POLITICO: ‘No way to run a health care system’ (August 9, 2024)
“It keeps us up at night knowing that there isn’t a permanent solution,” said Dr. Dave Newman, chief medical officer of virtual care at Sanford Health.

Skilled Nursing News: Diversicare, Avamere, Good Sam Execs on Whether CMS’ Nursing Home Facility Assessments Are ‘Holistic’ or ‘Redundant’ (August 9, 2024)
The new facility assessments for nursing homes, which went into effect on Thursday, are prompting mixed reviews from nursing home operators regarding their utility.

HealthLeaders: How Math Makes a Health System Run Smoothly (August 8, 2024)
Sanford Health’s Dane Hudelson says his team of data analysts and tech experts does the behind-the-scenes work that improves all aspects of the health system.

The Washington Post: The battle over nursing home rules (August 7, 2024)
CMS says that operators must update their facility assessment when there is a “substantial modification,” but it doesn’t define what that term means, said DeeAndra Sandgren, the chief nursing officer at Good Samaritan Society.

HealthLeaders: Developing an AI Strategy for Revenue Cycle and Finance Operations (August 6, 2024)
Innovations Editor Eric Wicklund talks with Dane Hudelson, Senior Director of Enterprise Data & Analytics at Sanford Health, about in-house AI capabilities at the health system and strategy for future growth and innovation.

Modern Healthcare: Will home health deals add pressure to Medicare Advantage? (August 1, 2024)
Home health consolidation is playing out among national and regional providers as companies look for ways to expand their footprint and gain leverage with Medicare Advantage plans.

STAT: Disruptions loom for telehealth providers and patients as Congress inches closer to deadline (July 29, 2024)
Sanford Health has come to rely on virtual care to help serve large swaths of rural populations who may not live near any health care facility.

AMA: Value-based care helps Sanford Health meet rural patients’ needs (July 29, 2024)
“Value-based care in rural communities makes a lot of sense,” said Tommy Ibrahim MD, President and CEO of Sanford Health Plan. “Given challenges with recruitment and the types of chronic conditions we see in our rural communities and other social determinants, we see that if we can get upstream on these issues, we can have a positive impact on health.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Good Samaritan’s pending deal for second portfolio helps it close on midway point of massive reorganization (July 28, 2024)
Good Sam is about 18 months into an effort to bring its core operations back into a centralized stretch of the Midwest and Mountain West.

AMA: In 6 specialties, desire to step away or scale back is common (July 23, 2024)
Sanford Health is encouraging intentional and proactive conversations and investments in relationships between physicians and their leaders to try to better understand their needs.

AMA: How do you improve care? By empowering doctors to make change (July 18, 2024)
Leaders at Sanford Health knew that bringing a strategic plan to life would be an uphill battle if they didn’t invest in a people-focused culture to drive it.

The Wall Street Journal: The New Holy Grail for Weight-Loss Drugs Is Sleep Apnea (July 15, 2024)
Sanford Health Plan is also exploring covering the drugs for preventing heart attacks and strokes in people with cardiovascular disease.

Fierce Healthcare: Sanford Health, Marshfield Clinic Health System unveil $10B merger plan (July 10, 2024)
The two nonprofits are getting back in the saddle for a 56-hospital, cross-market deal they say will deliver integrated care and new population health efforts across the Midwest.

Sioux Falls Business: Sanford Health intends to merge with Wisconsin-based system (July 10, 2024)
The combined organization would retain the Sanford Health name and be based in Sioux Falls, with Sanford CEO Bill Gassen as its leader.

Modern Healthcare: Sanford Health, Marshfield Clinic in talks to combine (July 10, 2024)
Sanford Health and Marshfield Clinic Health System said Wednesday they are exploring a combination, following previous efforts of their own to expand.

HealthLeaders: Rural RPM Program is a Lifeline for Pregnant Women (July 3, 2024)
Sanford Health’s remote patient monitoring program in northern Minnesota is giving pregnant women access to critical care services and resources.

NEJM Catalyst: Care Innovations for Reaching Rural Populations (July 3, 2024)
The Chief Physician for Sanford Health discusses the unique challenges of rural health care and innovations that Sanford is pursuing to address those challenges, particularly around access.

Advisory Board: Making waves in rural health: Lessons from Sanford Health CEO Bill Gassen (July 2024)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health, explains how Sanford is leveraging technology and innovation to improve access, quality, and affordability in rural communities.

The Lancet Global Health: Erasing stigma around rare diseases (July 2024)
Tackling stigma will take a multifaceted approach. People with rare diseases often face discrimination and devaluation from the public, who often do not understand the disease in question.

STAT: AI and rural health care: A paradigm shift in America’s heartland (June 26, 2024)
Sanford CEO Bill Gassen: “While much of the nation is debating the future of AI, health care providers in rural America are pioneering new uses of it in their practices.”

Axios: Visa freeze worsens America’s nursing shortage (June 26, 2024)
Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer at Sanford Health: “[S]treamlining the immigration system for health care workers would help us tap into a global talent pool and bolster our nursing workforce — especially in rural areas where the nursing shortage is more acute.”

NPR: CDC report finds nursing homes lag behind in COVID vaccinations (June 22, 2024)
Sanford Health leveraged the fact that many of its nursing home patients have primary care clinicians also employed by the health system.

Modern Healthcare: How apprenticeships, float pools help providers fight labor costs (June 20, 2024)
Sanford Health began piloting an apprenticeship program this spring to improve turnover rates in entry-level positions such as laboratory assistants, pharmacy technicians and patient transporters.

HealthLeaders: 4-pillar culture and 3-legged stool: Sanford’s new CFO gets real on what it takes to build a ‘premier rural healthcare system’ (June 20, 2024)
Sanford Health CFO Nick Olson: “The more integrated we are, the more durable we, as an organization, can be to combat things like the pandemic that was in 2020, and the economic crisis that was in 2022, and there will be something else in the future.”

This Week Health: Keynote: Bridging Gaps with Virtual Care and Genomics in Rural Health with Brad Reimer (June 20, 2024)
Brad Reimer, CIO of Sanford Health, discusses his perspective on the evolving role of technology in rural healthcare.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Exemption window narrows, fears rising as staffing requirements appear less achievable (June 5, 2024)
According to Good Samaritan Society CEO Nate Schema, less than 5% of Good Samaritan Society facilities nationwide would meet the mandate. He said adding inflexible requirements is “dangerous and unnecessary.”

Modern Healthcare: Behavioral health patients a challenge to nursing homes (June 4, 2024)
Treatment for mental health disorders and behavioral health disorders differ, but both present unique challenges to post-acute care providers, including longer rehabilitation, said Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief medical officer for Sanford Health.

Becker’s Healthcare: AI is ‘more than a buzzword’ for Sanford Health amid transformation (June 4, 2024)
Just like tech companies, Sanford Health’s executive team has taken the strategy of moving quickly with innovation, learning from mistakes, and iterating on what works well.

Provider Magazine: International Solutions for Workforce Shortages (June 1, 2024)
DeeAndra Sandgren, chief nursing officer at Good Samaritan Society, said that staff generally are grateful for the help and the opportunity to have new colleagues who share their passion for resident care.

KFF Health News: An Obscure Drug Discount Program Stifles Use of Federal Lifeline by Rural Hospitals (May 30, 2024)
Sanford Health, a largely rural health system headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, considered converting a handful of smaller critical access hospitals into rural emergency hospitals. In the end, switching did not make sense.

CNN: Pregnant in a town of 400 (May 28, 2024)
Hear how Dr. Johnna Nynas, an innovative OB/GYN at Sanford Health Bemidji, is making care more accessible for patients.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health addresses physician burnout via the EHR (May 22, 2024)
Leaders at Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health are focusing on a common area to reduce physician burnout: the EHR.

Modern Healthcare: Sanford Health Plan CEO eyes growth for government plans (May 21, 2024)
Sanford Health Plan CEO Dr. Tommy Ibrahim shared how the organization’s niche in rural healthcare and strength as the largest rural healthcare system in the country is an important strategic advantage.

Modern Healthcare: Cybersecurity execs share healthcare’s biggest vulnerabilities (May 20, 2024)
Brad Reimer, chief information officer at Sanford Health, emphasized the need for providers to have streamlined internal processes to handle cybersecurity incidents.

Provider Magazine (podcast): Organizational Culture in Long Term Care (May 14, 2024)
Host Debbie Stadtler sits down with Aimee Middleton, chief operating officer at the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, to discuss the critical role of organizational culture in long term care.

CNN: Champions for Change Returns for the Eighth Year Running on CNN (May 6, 2024)
Sanford’s Dr. Johnna Nynas is passionate about getting pregnancy care to women in rural towns like the one she grew up in, and is using innovative methods to provide vital access to medical care.

Becker’s Health IT: The next 5 years of AI in healthcare (April 26, 2024)
Jared Antczak, chief digital officer at Sanford Health: “AI really holds a lot of potential to help us bend the cost curve, and transform and disrupt the way we deliver care while also improving quality at a lower cost.”

McKnight’s Long Term Care: Staffing rule a CMS ‘fairy tale’ that will ‘exacerbate’ nursing home access issue (April 23, 2024)
At the proposed standards, a Good Samaritan Society analysis showed the provider would need 207 additional RNs and 400 new aides.

Modern Healthcare: Nursing homes blast higher staffing minimums (April 23, 2024)
Good Samaritan President and CEO Nate Schema said the mandate will force the nonprofit to focus on filling clinical positions at the expense of other positions that are also important to residents.

POLITICO: 80 percent of nursing homes must add staff under new rule (April 22, 2024)
Overall the rule will cost long-term care facilities $43 billion over 10 years, not counting exemptions that facilities can qualify for.

The Washington Post: Biden administration imposes first-ever staff minimum for nursing homes (April 22, 2024)
In a 71-bed facility in Pipestone, Minn., the operator, Good Samaritan Society, would have to hire five more registered nurses and five certified nurse assistants to its total roster of staff, said Nate Schema, Good Samaritan Society’s president and CEO.

Becker’s Healthcare: Why health system AI predictions can fail (April 18, 2024)
“One of the things with AI that’s really nuanced is you have to ensure that the dataset used to train the model is representative of the population that model is intended to serve,” said Jared Antzcak, chief digital officer of Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, S.D.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care: Advocates work behind scenes to stop, reshape staffing rule as finalization nears (April 16, 2024)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society, outlined how his organization had closed 14 nursing homes since the pandemic, “primarily due to challenges hiring staff in rural areas.

Forbes: Why We Must Support Telehealth – It Is Vital In Rural Areas (April 15, 2024)
In North Dakota, Sanford Health’s Dr. David Newman said virtual care is often the only way some of his patients in the Western part of the state can get sub-specialty care, such as with behavioral health.

AMA: How are patients really doing? One way to find out: Send a text (April 11, 2024)
A single mother of three young children was a frequent visitor to a local emergency department in the Sanford Health system for depression. The care team enrolled her in a low-tech, text-based remote patient-monitoring program at Sanford Health. It saved her life.

KFF Health News: Congress Likely to Kick the Can on Covid-Era Telehealth Policies (April 10, 2024)
Sanford Health’s David Newman, an endocrinologist and Sanford’s medical officer of virtual care, said 10% to 20% of his patients are seen virtually during the summer, as compared with about 40% in the winter months because “the weather can be so bad” that roads are impassable.

AHCJ: Remote supervision of medical trainees allows expanded rural care — at least for now (April 3, 2024)
Said David Newman, M.D., chief medical officer of virtual care for Sanford Health in Fargo, N.D.: “This has really been great for patient care as well as really been a good lifestyle situation for the residents and the attendings.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: How rural America is shaping the future of healthcare. (April 1, 2024)
Sanford Health built a digital bridge across electronic medical systems. Interoperability saves an hour of paperwork for each patient who’s discharged to a Good Samaritan Society long-term care center, giving caregivers time back to spend at the bedside.

Science: Should doctors screen all kids for type 1 diabetes? (March 13, 2024)
Sanford Health launched a screening study in 2020 called PLEDGE, which so far includes 8,500 children across five states; currently costs are about $35 per test.

Modern Healthcare: Providers, vendors urge Congress to extend hospital-at-home (March 11, 2024)
Sanford Health, one of the country’s largest rural health systems, will begin offering home-based hospital care from Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, North Dakota, this summer.

AMA: What doctors wish patients knew about sickle cell disease (March 8, 2024)
Sam Milanovich, MD, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota, took time to discuss what patients need to know about sickle cell disease.

The American College of Surgeons: The Need to Prepare More Surgeons for Rural Practice Is Urgent (March 6, 2024)
Dr. Gary Timmerman at Sanford School of Medicine helped create South Dakota’s first new general surgery residency program in decades. It was funded by an initial $2 million grant from Sanford Health.

AMA: To address food insecurity, ask patients three questions (March 4, 2024)
In 2023, more than 6,100 patients were screened for food insecurity at the Sanford Southwest Children’s Clinic, which uncovered 1,201 parents whose responses indicated food insecurity—about one in five.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care: Wooing next-gen leaders: Good Samaritan’s Aimee Middleton. (February 29, 2024)
Middleton, vice president of operations for the Good Samaritan Society, has mastered the art of balancing professional drive with devotion to family.

Becker’s Hospital Review: 110 rural hospital and health system CEOs to know | 2024 (February 29, 2024)
Sanford Bemidji initiated leadership meetings with local tribal governments and community leaders to discuss opportunities to improve health disparities among Native American patients.

Becker’s Healthcare: ‘Mental health is health’: How Sanford is addressing patients’ needs across its massive footprint (February 27, 2024)
Sarah Prenger, Sanford Health: “If a patient is sitting at home, struggling, they can go online and request an appointment with a Sanford provider for therapy or psychiatry.”

AMA: Sanford Health video visits bring prenatal care to rural areas (February 20, 2024)
Sanford Health launched a remote patient monitoring pilot using AI-enabled non-stress tests to monitor fetal heart rate and the presence of contractions for patients who may be at higher risk of pre-term delivery.

MedCity News: These 3 Pieces of Wisdom Could Help Hospitals Avoid Failure When Adopting New Tech (February 19, 2024)
Jared Antczak, chief digital officer at Sanford Health, said that his health system always tries to begin its digital initiatives by defining a problem that needs to be fixed.

Modern Healthcare: Training bottlenecks stymie nursing homes (February 15, 2024)
Instructor shortages and regulatory hurdles are creating training logjams for certified nursing assistants as nursing homes struggle to find enough of them to meet increased demand.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford’s big ‘win-win’ digital investment (February 14, 2024)
Sanford Health has focused digital technology investment in areas with clear opportunities to add capacity and support growth.

McKnights Long-Term Care News: After downsizing, Good Sam goes big with first-of-kind new campus (February 14, 2024)
The new community will be known as Founder’s Crossing and include 510 units, including up to 180 skilled nursing and short-term rehab beds by 2028.

Skilled Nursing News: Why Good Samaritan Society Is Investing $200M in New CCRC After Nursing Home Pullback (February 13, 2024)
Aimee Middleton, VP of Operations at Good Samaritan Society: “We’re making good on our promise a year ago to reinvest those funds from the location sales right here into America’s heartland.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Needle-moving innovations from 86 health system execs (February 13, 2024)
Brad Reimer, Chief Information Officer of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “…(O)ver the last year, we launched a 70-plus room AI-powered ‘smart hospital’ pilot to reduce administrative burdens for our nursing staff, increase productivity and improve patient care quality.”

Modern Healthcare: Sanford Health unveils blueprint for integrated senior living (February 13, 2024)
Sanford Health and Good Samaritan Society are looking to integrate on-site care into senior living through a $200 million South Dakota community, as providers increasingly partner with senior living operators to keep residents healthy.

Reuters: Webinar – Drive growth through patient-centered digital initiatives in healthcare (February 8, 2024)
Jared Antczak, Chief Digital Officer at Sanford Health, emphasized how Sanford is leveraging AI tools and remote patient monitoring technologies to bring care closer to home for patients who live in rural areas and reduce “windshield time” for providers traveling to and from remote sites.

HealthLeaders: How to create AI programs with clinical ROI (February 7, 2024)
Jared Antczak, chief digital officer at Sanford Health: “Financial ROI is important, but it’s not the only factor that health systems should be focusing on.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Where will patients go when nursing homes close? Consider this uncomfortable possibility (January 30, 2024)
Many of the patients the 5-star Good Samaritan Society-Bloomfield cares for now might not move to some other, far-away nursing home should the mandate come into play and force their small-town facility to close.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: ‘Crying wolf’ or dying breed? Incentives often ignore plight of rural skilled nursing operators (January 29, 2024)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of South Dakota-based Good Samaritan Society: “What we’ve been challenged to see here as we operate in some much more rural communities is that the [incentive] value isn’t the same in those communities when you’re serving a Medicaid population of at least 50 or 60%”

Politico: Covid killed 170,000 in nursing homes. Most residents still haven’t gotten the latest shot. (January 26, 2024)
Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, who oversees the Good Samaritan Society, South Dakota-based Sanford Health’s long-term care provider, said yearslong relationships with patients were powerful enough to overcome vaccine skepticism. In some Sanford-owned facilities, he said uptake is over 90 percent.

HealthLeaders: How Sanford Health’s New CFO Plans to Invest and Foster Long-Term Success (January 23, 2024)
New CFO Scott Wooten: “Right now we’re investing huge in automation and AI to streamline how we do our work.”

Axios: Axios House at the 2024 World Economic Forum: Building Trust in Innovative Health Technology (January 19, 2024)
The healthcare workforce shortage is a “chief challenge” for Sanford President and CEO Bill Gassen, and immigration issues are having an impact. He added that AI is now helping to address some of the workforce shortage.

AMA: Weighing a rural physician residency program? 6 things to know (January 19, 2024)
Dr. Eastan Marleau—a third-year general surgery resident at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota—offered some insight on life in a rural program.

Becker’s Healthcare: What excites 101 health system executives for the next year (January 18, 2024)
Jeremy Cauwels, M.D., chief physician of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “We know that a patient who is more engaged with their provider is more likely to seek preventive care, adhere to medication and treatment plans and follow up as directed.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Rural nursing homes’ livelihood may depend on non-existent staff (January 15, 2024)
Good Sam has developed a nursing council to be more responsive to staff needs as it designs new incentives. The company also relaunched its administrator-in-training program to develop stronger building leaders, who are shown to improve staff retention.

Modern Healthcare: Health systems invest in new facilities, services to grow revenue (January 8, 2024)
Cutting costs isn’t always the answer for health systems looking to secure long-term revenue growth.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Empty beds, untenable staffing needs push the nation’s rural nursing homes closer to the brink (January 8, 2024)
The leader of the nation’s largest nonprofit skilled nursing provider says access to post-acute and long-term care is at a ‘tipping point’ in rural America

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: On staffing, operators say they’ll ‘find a way’ but agency boom, admission restrictions threaten (January 5, 2024)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society: “It doesn’t add up to think that RNs are going to magically appear now that we have a mandate in place. It simply would create an untenable situation if that mandate was to go through in its current form.”

Skilled Nursing News: Executive Outlook 2024: Nursing Homes’ Road From Recovery to Stability Under Threat (January 4, 2024)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society: “Where we can bring together a continuum of services and infuse innovation, the result is a game-changer for our seniors because it simplifies the health care experience.”

GenomeWeb: Genetic Risk Scores, Antibody Screening on Horizon for Type 1 Diabetes, Experts Say (January 3, 2024)
Sanford Health, a rural hospital system headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has one of a handful of research programs conducting Type 1 diabetes risk screenings in the U.S.

Becker’s Healthcare: Federal government takes aim at AI transparency in healthcare (January 3, 2024)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health: “We applaud the efforts to convene a diverse group of healthcare organizations to coalesce around landmark voluntary commitments that will be fundamental to the future of AI …”

2023

Modern Healthcare: New services help post-acute, hospital partnerships (December 27, 2023)
Nursing homes and home healthcare companies are branching into new lines of business to increase revenue as demand for post-acute care rises and Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements stagnate.

The Washington Post: A broken immigration system keeps workers out of jobs the U.S. needs to fill (December 21, 2023)
The leaders of Sanford Medical Center had waited all summer to learn the fate of the 59 nurses planning to move across the world to their isolated state capital.

MSNBC: ‘Immigration is an economic issue’: Broken immigration system worsens U.S. nursing shortage (December 21, 2023)
The broken immigration system in the U.S. is hurting a North Dakota medical system trying to improve a nationwide nursing shortage. Chief nursing officer for Sanford Health, Erica Deboer, and former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp join to discuss.

Becker’s Healthcare: The pebbles in hospital leaders’ shoes (December 21, 2023)
Jeremy Cauwels, M.D., chief physician of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “In 2023, one pebble in our shoe was a challenge that hospitals across the country experienced — difficulty discharging patients to long-term care settings due to workforce shortages.”

Forbes: How This Startup Is Using 10 Million Patient Records To Reduce Bias In Healthcare AI (December 21, 2023)
Jared Antczak, chief digital officer, Sanford Health: “We have full control over the data … That was attractive to us to ensure that we had a hand on the wheel.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Podcast – Dr. Emily Griese, Vice President of Operations at Sanford Health Plan (December 18, 2023)
Dr. Emily Griese, vice president of operations at Sanford Health Plan, discusses her background, top priorities right now, how her organization will evolve over the next couple years, and one change that she or her team has made that yielded great results.

HealthLeaders: Biden Administration Touts Collaboration in Forming AI Governance (December 15, 2023)
Sanford Health President and CEO Bill Gassen: “As the largest rural healthcare provider in the country, we were honored to help lead this effort on behalf of our patients, two-thirds of whom live in rural communities in America’s Heartland.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Healthcare leaders applaud White House’s AI principles (December 15, 2023)
Sanford Health President and CEO Bill Gassen underscored the effect of President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, emphasizing the potential of these technologies to enhance various facets of healthcare, including quality, accessibility, affordability, equity, patient experience, clinician well-being and industry sustainability.

POLITICO: AI’s arrived in rural health (December 11, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health, a South Dakota-based health system with hundreds of locations across the upper Midwest, isn’t waiting for the future of artificial intelligence. His health system is bringing the tech to every corner of its operations.

The Washington Post: How a South Dakota nursing home vaccinated almost all of its residents (December 7, 2023)
Good Samaritan Society – Canton, is a standout in coronavirus vaccinations. The numbers are astonishing: 94 percent of residents have already received the updated coronavirus shot, far above the national average of 27 percent.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Skilled nursing providers embrace bill nixing staff mandate, despite uncertain fate (December 7, 2023)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society, the nation’s largest nonprofit provider of skilled nursing care, has more than 1,500 job openings across its mostly rural facilities.

Skilled Nursing News: Bipartisan Legislation Aims to Block CMS Staffing Proposal – Most Recently With Senate Bill (December 6, 2023)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, said bipartisan support for the bill reinforces that the minimum staffing proposal is “out of touch with reality.”

The Washington Post: How to boost covid vaccination rates in nursing homes? Look to the Dakotas (December 5, 2023)
Jeremy Cauwels, the chief physician of Sanford Health, … told me that most of his system’s nursing homes, which operate under the name Good Samaritan Society, had at least a 50 percent uptake of the updated coronavirus shot. In some facilities, more than 90 percent of residents received it.

Bloomberg: Nurse Shortages Are Set to Get Even Worse With Mass US Visa Delays (December 5, 2023)
The visa backlog indefinitely postpones arrival of 10,000 nurses.

Becker’s Healthcare: CEO influencers on welcoming new leaders into the fold (December 5, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): We have built a culture of safety at Sanford Health that encourages everyone — from front-line providers to C-suite leaders — to speak up, raise their concerns and understand the positive impact of their actions and decisions on the lives of others.

Modern Healthcare: Could Sanford Health’s rural hospital-at-home program be a model? (December 1, 2023)
Sanford Health, one of the nation’s largest health systems in rural America, could advance the hospital-at-home movement when it launches it first acute home care program in North Dakota.

CBS News: Miles from treatment and pregnant: How women in maternity care deserts are coping as health care options dwindle (November 27, 2023)
Dr. Johnna Nynas, an OB-GYN physician for Sanford Health, works across the border in northern Minnesota … in an area surrounded by maternity care deserts facing similar difficulties as North Dakota. She is working with other health care organizations to bring more virtual care and education to people facing obstacles to proper maternity care.

CHEManager: Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies unveiled its new $2 billion large-scale cell culture manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. (November 14, 2023)
Once completed, the new facility will serve large-scale clients across Europe and the United States and also create 725 manufacturing jobs in North Carolina by the end of 2028.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Brad Reimer, Chief Information Officer at Sanford Health (November 11, 2023)
CIO Brad Reimer discusses top priorities he is focusing on right now, advice for leaders, and issues he and his organization are solving with innovation.

Endpoints News: Commercial-stage manufacturing key for CDMOs as biotech funding pullback continues (November 9, 2023)
CDMOs need to strengthen their commercial, large-scale manufacturing capabilities for 2024 in what looks like another challenging year for manufacturers, Fujifilm Diosynth CEO Lars Petersen said.

American Medical Association: Solving physician burnout calls for reimagining care delivery (November 9, 2023)
The Sanford Health Summit on the Future of Rural Health Care brought together health system CEOs, industry experts, prominent tech leaders and front-line caregivers for candid, wide-ranging conversations about the future of rural health care.

Fierce Healthcare: J&J books manufacturing space at Fujifilm Diosynth’s upcoming mega-plant in North Carolina (November 8, 2023)
With a year and change still left before Fujifilm Diosynth cuts the ribbon on a massive biomanufacturing facility in North Carolina, the CDMO has already lined up its first client.

WTVD-TV: FUJIFILM holds site unveiling as construction continues on Holly Springs facility (November 7, 2023)
In 2021, FUJIFILM announced it would expand operations in Holly Springs, a $2 billion project which is the largest life sciences investment in state history.

AHA Advancing Health Podcast: Improving Maternity Care for Indigenous Populations (November 7, 2023)
Tina Pattara-Lau, M.D., maternal and child health consultant with the Indian Health Service Office of Clinical and Preventive Services, and Johnna Nynas, M.D. obstetrics and gynecology specialist at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center, explore common disparities and systemic barriers indigenous people face in pregnancy and postpartum.

Becker’s Healthcare: What 1 hospital CEO thinks of Biden’s AI order (November 6, 2023)
Sanford Health president and CEO Bill Gassen emphasized the importance of striking a careful balance in potential federal AI regulations, saying they should establish essential healthcare AI boundaries without imposing unnecessary restrictions that could impede innovation in critical areas.

Becker’s Healthcare: 23 payer executives’ top priorities for 2024 (November 6, 2023)
John Snyder, president and CEO of Sanford Health Plan (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “Last year we implemented a preventive care virtual visits program for our membership that has proven to be an incredibly important touchpoint for identifying where our members are encountering barriers to care and then collaborating with them on how to re-engage.”

STAT News: Treating Rural America: The telehealth solution (November 2, 2023)
With hundreds of miles between them and their patients, Sanford doctors are using virtual appointments and remote monitoring technologies to make sure everyone is able to access care.

Becker’s Healthcare: 60 health system CEO influencers for 2023 (November 1, 2023)
[Sanford CEO Bill] Gassen aims to strategically position Sanford Health as the top rural health system in the nation moving forward, with the goal of further expanding access to care and ensuring that a patient’s home address does not impede their ability to receive personalized, compassionate care.

HealthLeaders: Biden’s AI Plan Spurs ‘Cautious Optimism” in Healthcare (November 1, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health: “We believe that emerging AI technologies have the potential to positively transform the future of care delivery [and] advance rural health equity and are key to the industry’s long-term sustainability.”

Becker’s Healthcare: 3 health system CEOs’ plans to future-proof their workforce (October 26, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford: “The most important thing we can do, before talking about recruiting and training the new workforce, is valuing the workforce we have today.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Health tech vital for rural healthcare, but not a ‘silver bullet,’ summit panelists contend (October 25, 2023)
The Summit on the Future of Rural Health, which was organized by Sanford Health, included panel discussions on several technology topics, including how tech can be deployed so caregivers work “smarter, not harder.”

ASCO: Overcoming the Challenges of Treating Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer Living in Rural Communities (October 25, 2023)
Kirk Wyatt, MD, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Sanford Health, Fargo, N.D.: “I am one of five practicing pediatric oncologists in North Dakota. We all know each other and work collaboratively to ensure patients get the care they need as close to home as possible, including in surrounding states.”

Modern Healthcare: Nursing home rollout of new COVID-19 vaccine ‘a mess’ (October 24, 2023)
The Health and Human Services department said it is working to ensure the new COVID-19 vaccine gets to long-term care facilities, following complaints that some nursing homes are struggling to obtain doses for their residents.

mHealth Intelligence: Connected Healthcare Strategies to Boost Rural Access, Digital Equity (October 24, 2023)
“One of the biggest factors that determines health outcomes — you would think things like smoking, or diet, or physical activity — but the biggest factor when you look at everything combined is zip code,” said Jared Antczak, chief digital officer for Sanford Health.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Parkinson says proposed staffing mandate a ‘death sentence’ for rural nursing homes, offers answers (October 19, 2023)
Summit: Long-term care industry advocates pulled no pessimistic punches Wednesday when asked about likely outcomes facing rural operators if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ proposed minimum staffing mandate becomes a rule.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: ‘New Deal for a new workforce’ urged by top nursing home leader (October 19, 2023)
Summit: The government and providers must invest at an unprecedented level to confront the workforce problems dogging the skilled nursing sector.

Skilled Nursing News: AHCA CEO: ‘Enormous Problems’ for Rural Skilled Nursing Providers Demand Innovation (October 18, 2023)
Summit: Good Samaritan Society executives have voiced concerns to Skilled Nursing News, regarding the threat to nursing home access posed by the challenges facing rural operators.

American Medical Association: How Sanford Health keeps pressing on to prevent doctor burnout (October 17, 2023)
At Sanford Health’s recent annual retreat, the AMA provided Jennifer Bickel, MD, chief wellness officer from Moffitt Cancer Center, to speak on recognition and feeling valued.

Skilled Nursing News: ‘Sirens Going Off’: Providers Warn of Mass Closures, Vast Nursing Home Deserts Due to Staffing Mandate (October 17, 2023)
Nate Schema, CEO of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, says the organization’s facilities located in “deep rural communities” will struggle the most with the 24-hour RN rule.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Hitting the road for rural respect (October 17, 2023)
In some towns where the population hovers at or below 1,000, there simply aren’t enough working people to keep buildings staffed at a level that can meet their aging community’s needs.

Becker’s Healthcare: Health system executive roles are evolving: 68 leaders share 2024 changes (October 16, 2023)
Jeremy Cauwels, M.D. chief physician of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): In rural America, we need to meet our patients where they are. The next year will be a doubling down on this commitment.

Modern Healthcare: Staffing, high costs jeopardize inpatient maternity services (October 13, 2023)
A growing number of hospitals have been forced to cut inpatient maternity services as costs rise and staffing changes persist.

The Washington Post: Abortion bans complicate medical training, risk worsening OB/GYN shortages (October 13, 2023)
Heather Spies, an OB/GYN who trains family medicine and general surgeon residents at Sanford Health, a hospital system in Sioux Falls, said the Sanford system is ensuring its residents are trained in basic obstetrics and gynecology care, including labor and delivery and miscarriage care.

McKnight’s Newsmakers Podcast: The first 90 days and beyond: Ramping up staff retention in rural nursing homes (October 10, 2023)
Some of the most effective workforce retention strategies aren’t necessarily “rocket science,” says Aimee Middleton, vice president of operations for the Good Samaritan Society, the nation’s largest nonprofit nursing home provider.

Skilled Nursing News: LPN Exclusion in CMS Staffing Mandate a ‘Convoluted Mess’ for Nursing Homes (October 9, 2023)
The Good Samaritan Society’s CEO Nate Schema characterized the LPN exclusion as “insulting” and argued that they should be included alongside RNs in meeting the 0.55 hour per day threshold.

Modern Healthcare: How 3 hospital systems are addressing adverse events (October 5, 2023)
Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician, shares how one of Sanford’s medical centers set an internal record of going more than 70 days without a serious safety event.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Bill would block federal nursing home staffing mandate (October 3, 2023)
The Good Samaritan Society president and CEO Nate Schema said he was “excited” by the possibility of the bill postponing any mandate until there is a stable workforce and less threat to care access.

Reuters: Rural Health Pathway to Progress Report (September 26, 2023)
The Reuters Events-produced Rural Health: Pathway to Progress report uses insights from over eight different leaders to detail the pathway to higher quality care provision for the 60 million people that comprise rural America.

Becker’s Healthcare: 86 hospital and health system diversity, equity and inclusion officers to know | 2023 (September 22, 2023)
Natasha Smith, head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Sanford Health: Trainings focuses on gender affirming care, culturally relevant care, unconscious bias, microaggressions, empathy-building and psychological safety.

Becker’s Healthcare: How cardiology could change in 50 years, per 8 leaders (September 19, 2023)
Tom Stys, M.D. interventional cardiologist at Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “Computer and robotic assistance will continue to make procedural and surgical technologies in management of cardiovascular disease safer, more effective and available to a much broader spectrum of patients.”

KFF Health News: Rural Nursing Home Supporters Fear Proposed Staffing Standards Will Trigger More Closures (September 15, 2023)
Some families that rely on the Good Samaritan Society home in Syracuse fear the regulation could hasten its demise.

NPR: Rural nursing home operators say new staff rules would cause more closures (September 14, 2023)
The Good Samaritan facility currently has 82 employees, with 10 vacant full-time positions. The company said it spent $150,000 in the past year raising pay at the facility.

Becker’s Healthcare: What will — and won’t — change about nursing in 50 years (September 13, 2023)
Kelly Hefti, vice president of nursing at Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “Amid all of these amazing technological advancements, one thing that won’t change is the fact that we’ll still need incredible, caring, compassionate individuals who are called to the profession of nursing.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health’s CEO eyes growth (September 7, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health: “We have great resolve around the strategic aspiration of the organization, which is to be the premier rural health system in the United States.”

Modern Healthcare: Health systems turning to ‘gig nurses’ to ease staffing issues (September 6, 2023)
Gig workers are making their way into hospitals in the form of nurses picking up shifts and working alongside staff clinicians caring for patients.

Becker’s Healthcare: Podcast with Sanford Health President and CEO Bill Gassen (September 6, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO at Sanford Health discusses his background, top priorities right now, how his organization will evolve over the next couple years and one change that he or his team has made that yielded great results.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Unfunded staffing mandate’s financial requirements a ‘fantasy,’ observers say (September 5, 2023)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society, said he supported the increased transparency as far as it would reveal how well states support skilled nursing.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Providers find few silver linings, stew over minimum staffing demands (September 5, 2023)
Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society: “Requiring an RN onsite for 24 hours every day is 100% more challenging than the overall hourly requirement.”

POLITICO: Nearly 3 in 4 nursing homes would have to add staff under CMS proposal (September 1, 2023)
The proposed rule would set minimum staffing requirements for the first time.

The Washington Post: Nursing homes face minimum staff rule for first time (September 1, 2023)
Nathan Schema, president and chief executive officer of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society: “I just can’t understand how CMS is effectively trying to fix the roof while the house is on fire. It’s the beginning of the end for small town nursing homes.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: CMS issues first-ever nursing home staffing mandate (September 1, 2023)
Good Samaritan Society president and CEO Nate Schema said this morning that the RN provision would be “untenable” for many of his facilities, even those that already staff above a 3.0 minimum standard.

Modern Healthcare: CMS issues nursing home staff minimums rule (September 1, 2023)
Eighteen months ago, President Joe Biden stood before Congress during the State of the Union address and vowed that his administration would be the first to set national standards for staffing levels at nursing homes.

Modern Healthcare: CMS nursing home staffing report emboldens industry (August 31, 2023)
A report commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services falls short of recommending the government mandate of more nurses to improve quality.

Provider Magazine: Innovative Ideas in Long Term Care with Aimee Middleton (August 31, 2023)
Aimee Middleton, vice president of operations at the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, discusses how innovation is critical in all parts of long-term care and how we can use new ideas to tackle challenges today.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: CMS vows to move forward with staffing proposal ‘soon’ despite ‘inconclusive’ research (August 30, 2023)
“The CMS staffing study posted today reinforces what we’ve known all along — a one-size-fits-all approach for staffing is shortsighted and out-of-touch with reality,” said Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Good Samaritan Society.

Skilled Nursing News: CMS Study Undercuts Potential Nursing Home Minimum Staffing Mandate (August 29, 2023)
“If CMS proceeds with an unfunded one-size-fits-all minimum staffing mandate, our nation’s seniors living in rural areas will pay the price,” Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, told SNN.

Wall Street Journal: Screens, Lack of Sun Are Causing an Epidemic of Myopia (August 26, 2023)
“Kids are busy with structured activities and when they’re given the opportunity to have free time, they often choose inside activities like electronics,” says Dr. Jennifer Haggar, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine.

Becker’s Hospital Review: Where 17 CEOs are focused for the rest of 2023 (August 25, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “We are building a pipeline of the next generation of physicians and nurses through strong partnerships with medical and nursing schools in our region to strengthen the rural healthcare workforce of the future.”

Becker’s Healthcare: The most challenging IT roles to fill in healthcare (August 14, 2023)
One way Sanford Health is working to retain and attract IT employees is by growing and training its own talent, as well as being intentional about how its IT staff members understand their roles.

Becker’s Healthcare: Health systems face IT labors shortages, yet some are eliminating jobs (August 11, 2023)
According to Brad Reimer, CIO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health, hospital and health system IT departments are lacking talent in cybersecurity, digital, cloud and data.

American Medical Association: Training new general surgeons to thrive in rural practice (August 10, 2023)
Dr. Gary Timmerman, professor and chair of the University of South Dakota (USD) Sanford School of Medicine Department of Surgery in Sioux Falls, has been on a mission to produce rural surgeons who “really love where they’re at.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford looks to gen AI, predictive models to alleviate administrative burdens (August 10, 2023)
Sanford Fargo Medical Center is applying predictive models and risk stratification to its electronic medical record to inform clinical decision-making.

Becker’s Healthcare: CEOs pinpoint where-to-win growth opportunities (August 8, 2023)
Sanford Health president and CEO Bill Gassen sees virtual care as a key growth opportunity, with the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based system investing $350 million to transform how it will deliver care.

Politico: Neither patient advocates nor industry are happy with pending nursing home rules (July 31, 2023)
Industry leaders worry the rule’s requirements will be too expensive amid workforce shortages and say that would lead to facility closures.

Provider Magazine: Aiming for Advocacy Success with Tom Syverson (July 27, 2023)
Tom Syverson, director of government and external affairs at The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, discusses how to advocate for the industry and what facilities need most.

American Medical Association: How 3 health systems lead on value-based care? Not by slashing costs (July 26, 2023)
Luis Garcia, M.D., president of Sanford Health Clinical Division, described how his organization used augmented intelligence (AI) — often called artificial intelligence — and machine learning to identify high users of care.

Skilled Nursing News: Outdated VBP Measures Ignore Realities at Nursing Homes of Staffing Crisis, Leadership Turnover (July 25, 2023)
Aimee Middleton, vice president of operations at The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society: “In the rural community of Miller, South Dakota, our position for a night shift nurse has been open for three years. Where we cannot fill open positions, we are forced to make difficult decisions like hiring [agency workers] at triple the cost.”

HealthSystemCIO Podcast: Sanford Health CDO Jared Antczak on Removing Friction, “Webside Manner,” and Healthcare’s Biggest Flaw (July 20, 2023)
Sanford Health CDO Jared Antczak: “In 2021-2022, we launched a virtual care initiative which invested $350 million in our system to ensure that the communities we serve are able to receive accessible, affordable, and equitable care. Over the last 12 months, we’ve had more than 110,000 virtual visits across Sanford Health.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Labor costs are crippling hospitals. Here’s how 47 executives are tackling them. (July 18, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health: “Our operational discipline at Sanford Health plays an integral role in ensuring we maximize the impact of our fully integrated system by prioritizing patients and identifying system efficiencies without sacrificing quality or access to necessary services.”

Becker’s Healthcare: 126 hospital and health system CFOs to know | 2023 (July 13, 2023)
Michelle Bruhn, executive vice president, CFO and treasurer of Sanford Health, has worked within the Sanford Health system for over 20 years.

Becker’s Healthcare: Great Hospitals in America 2023 (July 12, 2023)
Sanford USD is the largest hospital in South Dakota and a teaching hospital for the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine.

Becker’s Healthcare: How hospital CEOs are committing to healthcare affordability as costs go up (July 12, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health: “One specific initiative we’ve been focused on that has allowed us to improve health outcomes and reduce more costly care and utilization is our care management work with health guides.”

NBC News: Plane crash survivor and nurse reflect on unbreakable bond (July 12, 2023)
Jeff Kloster survived a small plane crash in 2021, after which Sanford Health nurse Alicia Pederson helped him back to good health. They formed an unbreakable bond through this experience.

Skilled Nursing News: OMB Still Analyzing Nursing Home Staffing Mandate, with Flurry of Stakeholder Meetings (July 11, 2023)
Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society CEO Nate Schema: “Across our skilled nursing facilities, nearly 1,700 open positions remain unfilled, which means we would need to hire an average of 13 employees in every building to meet current staffing needs.”

The World: Nursing shortage due to green card delays has the health care industry scrambling
(July 10, 2023) Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer at Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the US, joins The World’s Carol Hills to share why this staffing backlog is significant and what impacts will spawn out of the inability to meet demand.

Becker’s Healthcare: ChatGPT, virtual nursing, remote monitoring: Top digital health trends so far in ’23 (July 6, 2023)
Jared Antczak, chief digital officer at Sanford Health: “At Sanford Health, the digital health trends we’ve been focused on in 2023 are the opportunities where we can leverage digital solutions to enhance consumer engagement and simultaneously alleviate workforce challenges, particularly across the rural footprint we serve.”

Becker’s Healthcare: How Sanford Health’s comms leader changes the ‘flyover country’ perception (July 6, 2023)
Erika Batcheller, vice president of media relations and corporate communications: “As a large, integrated health system we have a tremendous array of assets and expertise to draw upon to ensure that we’re part of the critical conversations underway to solve healthcare’s most pressing problems.”

Becker’s Healthcare: The IT workers health systems need the most (July 6, 2023)
Brad Reimer, CIO of Sanford Health: “”We are facing many of the same workforce challenges as others across the healthcare industry, including a shortage of talent. The demand for these roles is increasing at a pace faster than the rate of new college graduates entering the workforce.”

Fierce Pharma: Fujifilm Diosynth taps company veteran Lars Petersen to drive CDMO toward $1.4B in annual revenue (June 30, 2023)
Fujifilm has tapped a new leader on its quest to deliver 200 billion yen ($1.4 billion) from its Bio CDMO business by March 2025.

Becker’s Healthcare: 20 top critical access hospitals in 2023 (June 29, 2023)
The National Rural Health Association named Sanford Mayville Medical Center among the top 20 critical access hospitals in the nation in early June.

Becker’s Healthcare: How health systems, colleges and universities are working to solve the nursing shortage (June 29, 2023)
With nearly $3 million from the Department of Labor, Sanford will “improve first-year retention for new nurses and increase the number of nurses in the registered nurse career pathway in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa by expanding paid internship programs” and providing tuition support.

Wall Street Journal: Green-Card Backlog Fuels Shortage of Nurses at Hospitals, Nursing Homes (June 26, 2023)
Because of the green-card freeze, 200 foreign nurses who were scheduled to begin work this year at rural hospitals across the Sanford Health network won’t arrive until at least next year.

AMA: What it takes for health systems to lead on LGBTQ+ patient care (June 26, 2023)
Michael Burson, a senior social worker at the Sanford Roger Maris Cancer Center in Fargo, North Dakota: “What we’re seeing is that there is a deep and urgent need in the LGBTQ community.”

KFF Health News: Black, Rural Southern Women at Gravest Risk From Pregnancy Miss Out on Maternal Health Aid (June 22, 2023)
Obstetrician Johnna Nynas was able to solicit help from the internal grant team at Sanford Health, which operates a regional system including a health plan as well as hospitals, clinics, and other facilities in the Dakotas, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Becker’s Healthcare: The next 5 years of health system growth from 66 executives (June 21, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health: “We are investing in bold initiatives to transform care for communities across the rural Midwest and build the workforce we need to deliver the best possible care to our patients.”

Becker’s Healthcare: ‘People, skills, budget’: What health system CIOs need from IT departments (June 21, 2023)
Brad Reimer, CIO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health: “We are facing many of the same workforce challenges as others across the healthcare industry, including a shortage of talent in cybersecurity, digital, cloud and data.”

Becker’s Healthcare: The top 100 hospitals for GI care in 2023, per Healthgrades (June 15, 2023)
Healthgrades has named Sanford Health among the top 100 hospitals for gastrointestinal care in 2023.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Rural seniors may ‘pay the price’ of federal staffing minimum: AHCA board member (June 13, 2023)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society is exiting the pandemic as a much different organization than what it was just five years ago.

Scripps Media: For some with severe eating disorders, treatment requires long flights and longer drives (June 1, 2023)
Sanford Health in Fargo holds the only major eating disorder treatment facility for hundreds of miles.

Modern Healthcare: Takeaways from the Digital Health Transformation Summit (May 26, 2023)
The healthcare industry is ready to adopt new technology and shift to consumerism but is skeptical of the changes without governance and guardrails.

mHealth Intelligence: Enhancing Patient Access, Experience at Virtual Care’s Front Door (May 26, 2023)
Brad Schipper, president of virtual care at Sanford Health: “The reality of it is if we don’t break these barriers down … these individuals seeking care just do not receive the care at the right time or the right place.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Rural healthcare in 2030: What 4 experts say it may look like (May 19, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO, Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “By 2030, the patient experience in rural and urban areas must fundamentally change.”

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, Chief Physician, Sanford Health (May 19, 2023)
Jeremy Cauwels, M.D. discusses programs Sanford Health is implementing to improve patient outcomes and how his organization will evolve over the next couple of years.

Becker’s Healthcare: The plan to beat inflation from 68 health system executives (May 17, 2023)
Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “Sanford Health has leaned into solving the challenges of rural care delivery by prioritizing investments in our workforce and new innovative care delivery models.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Hurry up and wait: How green card freeze could impact US hospitals (May 16, 2023)
Sanford Health has already onboarded 270 international nurses. Another 400 were expected to arrive and assume the positions they have accepted from Sanford this year.

HRSA: How TNGP grants have facilitated the growth of virtual services across 250,000 square miles and 1.5 million patients served by Sanford Health (May 15, 2023)
Susan Barry, vice president of virtual care operations: “The vast majority of the counties that Sanford Health serves across the upper Midwest are federally designated provider shortage areas.”

Politico: How a green card freeze will exacerbate the nursing crisis (May 14, 2023)
Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer for Sanford Health, the nation’s largest rural health system, said the State Department’s visa freeze will likely affect 44 percent of the 800 international nurses they expected to join their health system over the next two to three years.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Feds bolster nursing pipeline with $78 million in awards (May 12, 2023)
The grants will allow Sanford to improve first-year retention for new nurses and increase the number of nurses in the Registered Nurse career pathway in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa by expanding paid internship programs.

HealthLeaders: Sanford Health’s $3 million nursing grant will help rural healthcare for generations to come (May 12, 2023)
Sanford Health’s grant is part of a $78M U.S. Labor Department investment to strengthen and diversify 25 nursing programs nationwide.

Axios: Visa backlog will stall international nursing workforce (May 12, 2023)
Sanford Health, which operates Good Samaritan Society senior living centers in more than 20 states, expects the freeze will delay the moves of about 160 nurses they have already hired from abroad who were expected to arrive this year.

STAT: The hospital lightning round (May 8, 2023)
Admissions and outpatient visits bucked the trend and fell in Sanford’s first quarter this year, while ER visits and surgeries increased modestly.

Healthcare IT News: Talent over certification: A new federal cyber workforce plan (May 5, 2023)
Brad Reimer, CIO at Sanford Health: “Health IT teams are facing many of the same workforce challenges as others across the healthcare industry, including a shortage of talent in cybersecurity, digital, cloud and data.”

AMA: Telehealth a lifeline for endocrinology patients in rural areas (May 4, 2021)
For endocrinologist Dr. David Newman, a diabetes and metabolism specialist with Sanford Health in Fargo, virtual technology has been a lifesaver in treating the unique patient population he serves in North Dakota and other areas.

Becker’s Healthcare: How 9 systems are making meaningful efforts to boost provider well-being (May 3, 2023)
Luis Garcia, M.D., president of Sanford Clinic and Sanford World Clinics (Sioux Falls, S.D.): “Our clinician wellness councils bring together different compatible groups including midcareer clinicians, international clinicians and women in medicine, among others, to share their personal experiences with each other and challenges that have shaped their practice.”

APHA This Nation’s Health: Nursing homes struggle to hire staff, keep up with expenses (May 1, 2023)
At The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, staff is down 15%. Resident incomes are low, so almost all payments come through Medicaid, and staff losses are magnified because of a shortage of qualified workers.

Modern Healthcare: CMS may reimburse for virtual reality treatments (May 1, 2023)
On April 1, CMS designated a new durable medical equipment designation for virtual reality company AppliedVR’s RelieVRx therapy, which treats chronic lower back pain.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Jared Antczak, Chief Digital Officer, Sanford Health (April 29, 2023)
Jared Antczak, chief digital officer at Sanford Health, discusses his career in rural healthcare, the new focus on consumerism in healthcare, how he’s creatively finding new solutions to old problems, and more.

Scientific American: Telehealth Is Proving to be a Boon to Cancer and Diabetes Care (April 1, 2023)
Sanford Health, which serves a widespread rural population from its base in Sioux Falls, S.D., estimates its patients who used virtual care were spared two and a half million miles of driving in 2022.

NEJM Catalyst: How Hospitals Improve Health Equity Through Community-Centered Innovation (March 15, 2023)
Sanford Health, which is headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and operates 46 medical centers in the upper Midwest, has worked with leaders of Tribal Nations for over 20 years to strengthen their relationships with Native American communities across the Dakotas. Sanford leaders say this and other efforts to build trust with the Native American community have made a positive difference.

Kaiser Health News: It’s ‘Telehealth vs. No Care’: Doctors Say Congress Risks Leaving Patients Vulnerable (January 31, 2023)
The $1.7-trillion spending package Congress passed in December included a two-year extension of key telehealth provisions, such as coverage for Medicare beneficiaries to have phone or video medical appointments at home. Virtual visits now account for about 20% of Sanford Health’s appointments, reports Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, Sanford Health’s chief physician.

Fortune: Doctors and patients are sold on telehealth. Congress is still unsure about its long-term future (January 27, 2023)
Medicare patients weren’t covered for telehealth visits until the pandemic drove Congress and regulators to temporarily pay for remote medical treatment just as they would in-person care. “We absolutely need those provisions to become permanent,” said Brad Schipper, president of virtual care at Sanford Health.

Healio / Endocrine Today: Is universal screening for type 1 diabetes ready for prime time? (January 26, 2023)
Conclude co-authors Kurt Griffin M.D. and David Pearce M.D.: “So, is population screening for type 1 diabetes ready for prime time? Yes, but an integrated health system, such as Sanford Health, is necessary.”

Kaiser Health News: Wave of Rural Nursing Home Closures Grows Amid Staffing Crunch (January 25, 2023)
National closures largely stem from a shortage of workers, including nurses, nursing assistants, and kitchen employees. The nursing home in Postville, Iowa, was one of 10 care centers shuttered in the past year by the Good Samaritan Society.

HealthLeaders: Wave of Rural Nursing Home Closures Grows Amid Staffing Crunch (January 25, 2023)
The lack of open nursing home beds is marooning some patients in hospitals for weeks while social workers seek placements.

Becker’s Healthcare: What will save rural health care? (January 25, 2023)
Rural hospitals and healthcare facilities face amplified financial challenges amid persisting workforce shortages, rising costs and leveling reimbursement. Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health discusses how Sanford’s landmark $350 million virtual care initiative aims to expand access to convenient, high-quality care regardless of zip code.

Modern Healthcare: Hospital price transparency: fines or full compliance? (January 24, 2023)
Hospitals’ compliance with the 2021 price transparency law has improved over the past year, but some operators remain reluctant to publicize their pricing data or do not have the resources to do so.

NBC News: Small-town nursing homes closing amid staffing crunch (January 22, 2023)
The Iowa facility joined a growing list of nursing homes being shuttered nationwide, especially in rural areas. Said Nate Schema, CEO of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society: “It’s an absolute last resort for us, being a nonprofit organization that would in many cases have been in these communities 50 to 75 years or more.”

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Economy, reimbursement woes accelerate hospitals’ departure from skilled nursing (January 17, 2023)
After at least five years of strategic reductions, hospitals and health systems appear to be accelerating their departure from the skilled nursing and senior care sectors.

Skilled Nursing News: Inside Good Samaritan’s Strategy to ‘Reimagine’ Care Through Its Restructuring (January 16, 2023)
The nonprofit announced the plan to trim about 30% of capacity from its large portfolio of skilled nursing facilities and other senior care communities. Exiting 15 states will enable the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society to invest more resources into creating an integrated model with parent company Sanford Health, with a goal to deliver “cutting-edge care” to older adults regardless of where they reside.

Healthcare IT News: Sanford Health’s CIO talks virtual care, workforce challenges, modern data ecosystem (January 13, 2023)
Brad Reimer faces health IT challenges and crafts plenty of innovations, including a $350 million telehealth program. He shares how his and his team’s work is positively changing the huge health system.

Skilled Nursing News: Nursing Home Giant Good Samaritan Society to Exit 15 States, Focus on Core Markets (January 12, 2023)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, one of the largest skilled nursing providers in the United States, plans to consolidate its operations from 22 states to seven.

Star Tribune: A new drug aims to delay diabetes, and child in Minnesota is among the first to try it (January 12, 2023)
Screening can identify kids falling into Type 1 diabetes, and now there is a drug to do something about it. A Walker, Minn. child now returned to Sanford Health’s Bemidji Medical Center for the last of 14 infusions of a drug that has been in the making for decades.

Skilled Nursing News: Executive Outlook 2023: Reimagine How We Deliver Skilled Nursing Care (January 4, 2023)
Good Sam is reimagining care in part through a $350 million virtual care initiative, as well as leveraging its place within an integrated health system in new ways.

2022

AMA: 13 health systems that are innovating to move medicine forward (December 30, 2022)
Throughout this trying third year of the COVID-19 pandemic—which has piled inflation, staffing shortages and the “tripledemic” to health care’s growing list of challenges, the AMA has recognized the outstanding efforts of AMA Health System member. Sanford Health struggles to recruit health professionals, but, notes Sanford’s Luis Garcia MD: “Once doctors and others are “exposed to our culture, to our health care system, to our communities—people stay.”

News Nation Live: Frostbite, hypothermia a real risk as temps plummet (December 22, 2022)
Frostbite symptoms include redness, numbness or pain, “even evolving into sort of a waxy feeling” on the skin as it gets even colder. During an appearance on News Nation’s “Live,” Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said it doesn’t take a lot of time for frostbite or hypothermia to set in.

Becker’s Healthcare: Harvest time, competing with the coasts on salary: The world of a rural health system CIO (December 15, 2022)
Running health IT for a rural health system presents a unique set of challenges — and opportunities. Sanford Health has the flexibility — and cultural understanding — to give its local IT workers late start times during harvest season if they’re working remotely from the family farm.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: With DONs in hot demand, providers act to broaden pipelines (November 28, 2022)
Skilled nursing providers are pulling out all the stops to recruit, up-train and retain what is arguably the most important clinical worker in any nursing home: the director of nursing services. “The last three to four years, we’ve seen kind of a slow increase in the turnover percentage of that director of nursing position,” Rochelle Rindels, MSN, Good Sam’s vice president of nursing and clinical service.

AMA: Innovation in Rural Areas (November 27, 2022)
Jeremy Cauwels, MD, chief physician at Sanford Health, and Kenric Maynor, MD, discuss innovation in rural health care.

The Atlantic: Inside the Mind of an Anti-Paxxer (November 22, 2022)
Paxlovid can be a lifesaving treatment for COVID. Why do so many patients turn it down?

AMA: 3 priorities mark Sanford Health’s proactive approach to burnout (November 21, 2022)
U.S. health systems aspiring to help put a dent in the all-time high rate of physician burnout must ensure they have a “cohesive strategy” in place, according to Luis Garcia, MD.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Jared Antczak, Chief Digital Officer (November 9, 2022)
Jared Antczak, Chief Digital Officer at Sanford Health, discusses the unique perspective Sanford has as the largest rural health system in the US, leveraging technology to bring modern urban care to rural America, what parts of healthcare are prime for disruption, and more.

Healthcare Tech Outlook: Transforming the Digital Healthcare Experience – Starting from Rural America (November 1, 2022)
According to Jared Antczak, Chief Digital Officer at Sanford Health: “Great digital experiences make complex things simple, and we know that healthcare can be overly complex.”

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: John Snyder, President, Sanford Health Plan (October 30, 2022)
John Snyder, President of Sanford Health Plan, discusses his focus on being an efficient partner to Sanford, Medicare Advantage, roadblocks he’s anticipating going into the last part of 2022.

Politico: Congress has a plan for endangered rural hospitals. Most aren’t interested. (October 27, 2022)
The Rural Emergency Hospital designation, a new payment model set to take effect in January, was supposed to be a lifeline for a battered system contending with the pandemic.

Modern Healthcare: Digital health decisionmakers on picking from thousands of options (October 21, 2022)
As the digital health investment market recedes, healthcare organizations find themselves choosing among competing tech solutions from companies eager to gain market share.

Becker’s Healthcare: Where health systems are spending their AI dollars (October 20, 2022)
Hospitals and health systems are largely using artificial intelligence for purposes like patient scheduling and disease prediction.

ACCC Cancer Buzz Podcast with: Leveraging Data to Tackle Workforce Shortages (October 17, 2022)
Erica DeBoer, the Chief Nursing Officer at Sanford Health, talks about the system’s data-driven approach to manage clinical workforce scheduling and staffing needs.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Good Sam CEO and President Nate Schema on LTC’s changing identity (October 17, 2022)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society just marked its 100th anniversary, but its leaders are looking forward to a future in long-term care that will, in many ways, look much different.

HealthLeaders: Sanford Health Clinic President on the Way Forward (October 17, 2022)
Luis Garcia, MD, shares strategies the rural health system has implemented in tackling current workforce shortages and issues.

Skilled Nursing News: Nursing Home Industry Recovery Requires More Pain and Innovation (October 17, 2022)
Had the government not stepped in when it did in the early days of the pandemic, the industry “would’ve gone broke.”

Becker’s Healthcare: How the AMA’s Recovery Plan is helping provider organizations reduce clinician burnout and improve organizational well-being (October 14, 2022)
Clinician burnout affects both clinician and organizational well-being as well as patient care.

Skilled Nursing News: Good Samaritan CEO: ‘We’ve Still Got a Long Way to Go’ With Thousands of Open Positions (October 12, 2022)
The not-for-profit senior care giant has gotten off the ground a national certified nursing assistant (CNA) online program for the 22 states where it operates.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Business of long-term care ‘has never been worse’ as occupancy, staffing challenges continue (October 12, 2022)
Although the general workforce has recovered, assisted living is still down 40,000 workers, and the skilled nursing sector is down more 200,000 workers.

Becker’s Healthcare: The smartest decision 48 health system executives, leaders made in the last year (October 5, 2022)
Hospital and health system leaders had to make many critical moves in the last few years to meet the needs of their communities during the pandemic.

Modern Healthcare: Executives navigate digital-driven industry changes (October 4, 2022)
New digital-focused models of care are increasingly becoming the norm in medicine. To keep up, leaders are revamping organizational strategies—a tall order in a sector often resistant to change.

Healthline: Send A Letter, Save A Life: Suicide Prevention Through Caring Contacts (October 3, 2022)
Jeffrey Leichter, PhD, LP, a licensed psychologist and lead administrator for behavioral health integration at Sanford Health, adds that the program has immense benefits for the clinic’s geographically scattered patients. “As a group, people in rural communities wait much longer to seek mental health care than people in urban communities because there’s a fear of thinking others will believe there’s something unchangeably wrong with them.”

Modern Healthcare: Dueling Opinions: Where are we making progress on staffing issues? (September 6, 2022)
More so than many industries, healthcare has grappled with the “great resignation” and staff burnout during the pandemic. But the news isn’t all bad.

HFM Magazine: How four health systems are using revenue cycle management robotics (August 31, 2022)
Health system executives say that they were already using automation before the pandemic, and the pandemic led them to speed up the adoption process.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health CFO Michelle Bruhn shares current challenges, optimism for future (August 31, 2022)
Hospitals and health systems across the nation are currently navigating rising operating costs, supply chain issues and staffing shortages. Many CFOs expect an upcoming recession. In spite of this, Michelle Bruhn, executive vice president, CFO and treasurer for Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health, remains optimistic.

Modern Healthcare: Behavioral health provider shortage strains systems, communities (August 31, 2022)
Sanford Health, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based health system, has a behavioral health internship program and a master’s degree-track for social workers, said Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician at Sanford.

Becker’s Healthcare: 10 chief digital officers on what layoffs mean for digital health industry (August 30, 2022)
The market for startups offering tech-heavy services like virtual care and data analytics has slowed, leading many of the firms to cut jobs in 2022.

MedCity News: 3 rules rural health systems must follow for virtual care success (August 29, 2022)
Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the country, held a conference last week to discuss how rural providers can weather the obstacles they face and create resilient telehealth and remote patient monitoring models of care. Rural health systems should be the champions of virtual care delivery, according to Jim Weinstein, Microsoft’s senior vice president of health equity and innovation.

mHealth Intelligence: Rural Healthcare System Launches New Virtual Care Center (August 25, 2022)
Sanford Health has created a virtual care center to limit access issues and enhance rural healthcare through various telehealth-enabled resources and services.

HealthLeaders: Sanford Health Announces Launch of Virtual Care Program, Satellite Clinics (August 24, 2022)
The South Dakota-based health system has broken ground on a 60,000 square-foot virtual care center, part of a $350 million initiative launched in 2021 to extend telehealth and digital health services across the Upper Midwest.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health breaks ground on 60K-square-foot virtual care center (August 24, 2022)
Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health has started construction on a 60,000-square-foot virtual care center the health system says will expand services to its largely rural patient population.

Modern Healthcare: 5 takeaways from the Future of Rural Health Care Summit (August 24, 2022)
Digital health experts from the public and private sectors gathered Tuesday at Sanford Health’s Summit on the Future of Rural Health Care.

Fierce Healthcare: Rural America is fertile ground for healthcare innovation, experimentation, tech leaders say (August 24, 2022)
Rural health systems and hospitals are poised to be the next hubs of tech innovation, leveraging digital health and virtual care to serve patients across thousands of square miles and over state lines.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health calls summit on future of rural healthcare (August 23, 2022)
An expert panel explored how technological innovations can catalyze the transformation of rural healthcare in the U.S.

Modern Healthcare: Data on demand – Using analytics to tackle operational challenges (August 16, 2022)
Executives at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health sit on the health system’s artificial intelligence oversight committee and are directly engaged in the decision-making process about initiatives, said Douglas Nowak, vice president of enterprise data and analytics. Their involvement holds everyone accountable to get the job done, he said. Sanford’s 62-person analytics team relied on its experience from the past seven years to create operations models in response to the pandemic within just a few days, Nowak said.

mHealth Intelligence: Exploring Clinical Care Use Cases, Digital Health Literacy Gaps in RPM (August 12, 2022)
Advances in remote patient monitoring have unlocked new patient care strategies, including hospital-at-home programs and digital chronic care management, but key barriers must be mitigated.

Hospice News: Sanford Health, Good Samaritan Society’s Mobile Clinic Offers Support to Hospice Patients (August 10, 2022)
South Dakota-based Sanford Health is collaborating with the Good Samaritan Society to serve patients in their homes through a mobile clinic, which among other services offers additional support to patients in hospice.

CuraLink: A Conversation with Dr. Jeremy Cauwels (August 1, 2022)
Sanford Health’s Dr. Cauwels discusses the role of modern health technology is playing in overcoming key barriers in rural health delivery.

Skilled Nursing News: The Math Doesn’t Work: Nursing Home Staffing Woes Unsolvable Without Immigration Action (July 27, 2022)
Many in the sector believe there is one obvious solution that has yet to gain meaningful traction, in part due to legislative gridlock: immigration.

McKnight’s Senior Living: ‘Clinic without walls’ for long-term care residents ‘one of many benefits’ of Good Samaritan–Sanford Health merger (July 25, 2022)
The program is meant to bring clinical care to older adults in their homes, whether that means an assisted living community, a nursing home or a private home.

Modern Healthcare: Health systems face ‘perfect storm’ of financial challenges (July 19, 2022)
Inpatient admissions and emergency department visits are still well below pre-pandemic levels—and patients who are coming into the hospital are staying longer, driving up costs.

Skilled Nursing News: Non-Clinical Staffing Shortages Create Pipeline Issues for Critical Nursing Home Positions (July 14, 2022)
Nursing home leaders expect non-clinical staffing shortages to have a crippling long-term impact on the talent pipeline and career interest in the space – both on a clinical and supervisory level – as many young people make the choice to enter the workforce via other industries.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Erica DeBoer, Chief Nursing Officer (July 13, 2022)
Erica DeBoer, Chief Nursing Officer at Sanford Health, discusses her career journey, the importance of teamwork, providing care to rural communities, and more.

Skilled Nursing News: Good Samaritan CEO: Nursing Homes Face Triple Threat on Road to Recovery (June 30, 2022)
Providers are being challenged operationally, clinically and financially — at least in part due to rising labor and care costs, among other factors.

Skilled Nursing News: CMS Updates Nursing Home Medicare Requirements of Participation Guidance, Furthers Biden Reform Agenda (June 29, 2022)
One familiar theme emerged: concern over new requirements and regulatory pressures at a time when the sector is still facing Covid-related challenges and a labor crisis.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford to hire more than 700 foreign nurses by 2025 (June 16, 2022)
The health system is partnering with the international nursing agency Connetics USA for recruitment and onboarding support.

HealthLeaders Magazine: Stop Workforce Shortages – Three Ways (June 13, 2022)
As critical staffing shortages threaten patients’ access to care, healthcare leaders share ways they are recruiting and retaining their employees.

Becker’s Healthcare: Hospitals ‘innovate aggressively’ to stay relevant (June 9, 2022)
Hospitals will likely look very different a decade from today as more brick-and-mortar institutions embrace virtual care, “hospital at home” and remote patient monitoring. Brad Reimer, CIO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health, said he believes data is the life blood of key initiatives, including interoperability, artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives.

Becker’s Healthcare: 10 Minnesota systems to collaborate on gun violence solutions (June 8, 2022)
All have declared gun violence a public health crisis and are partnering on creative solution.

Modern Healthcare: Health systems’ innovation funds eye behavioral health (June 7, 2022)
Mass General Brigham is exploring the idea of building a neurological behavioral incubator in the western suburbs of Boston.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Jeremy Cauwels, MD, chief physician, Sanford Health (June 6, 2022)
Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, Chief Physician at Sanford Health discusses improving access to care, what the role of Chief Physician entails, the importance of being engaged in whatever you’re involved in, and more.

American Hospital Association: How Some Hospitals Are Grappling with the Workforce Shortage (June 5, 2022)
Sanford Health is rolling out an augmented intelligence software tool co-developed with the tech firm Flexwise Health to most effectively schedule its 10,000-plus nurses.

HealthTech Magazine: What Are Medical Deserts, and How Can Technology Alleviate Them? (June 2, 2022)
Medical deserts create a shortage of care in both rural and urban areas due to geographical and economic causes, but AI-infused health IT tools and telehealth can help. Jared Antczak, Sanford Health’s chief digital officer, notes that in addition to a lack of broadband internet or cellular connectivity, device access and digital literacy are all social determinants of health and can contribute to medical deserts.

Becker’s Healthcare: 5 health system CFOs reveal investments that yielded great returns (May 24, 2022)
Financial challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and workforce shortages forced hospitals to be strategic with their investments in the last year. Sanford Health made unprecedented investments in employee compensation increases and bonuses totaling $167 million. This included historic increases for providers, nurses and other front-line caregivers.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health’s chief digital officer wants urban care for rural America (May 20, 2022)
Jared Antczak, is excited about the future of healthcare and wants to transform the digital experience to make it something patients rave about

Modern Healthcare: Conflicts of interest complicate hospital boards (May 17, 2022)
Some boards have committees that identify conflicts of interest among board members and executive staff.

Becker’s Healthcare: Where tech innovation is needed most in healthcare (May 16, 2022)
Healthcare has faced rapid change in the last few years amid the pandemic, and digital transformation is not slowing down. Reports Sanford Health’s Brad Reimer: “All those systems, in a utopian world, need to work in concert with each other to really gain the benefit of improving patient quality care, the patient experience and the provider experience.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Interim leadership in healthcare: Pros and cons (May 16, 2022)
At hospitals and health systems, interim leadership is brought in when an executive position becomes vacant, whether that be through a resignation, promotion or other means. Reports Sanford Health’s Jennifer Grennan: “We approach succession planning through a leadership development lens and have specific strategies and programs in place to invest in our leaders and create pathways for professional growth.”

Becker’s Healthcare: Data is the ‘lifeblood’ of the digital health economy: Sanford CIO on how to keep up (May 13, 2022)
Digital technologies and data analytics have become vital to health systems aiming to run efficient organizations, reduce burnout and provide excellent patient care.

Becker’s Healthcare: How CIOs can win the battle for talent systemwide (May 11, 2022)
Brad Reimer, CIO of Sanford Health, has staffing issues for the entire system top of mind as he keeps an eye on strategic planning.

Becker’s Healthcare: 10 executives on quality improvement measures deserving more attention (May 11, 2022)
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused quality leaders to seek innovative solutions to not only maintain but reinvigorate quality efforts, with renewed attention on maintaining measures as hospitalizations have dwindled since the omicron surge.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Dr. Todd Schaffer, President and CEO of the West Region at Sanford Health (May 3, 2022)
Dr. Todd Schaffer, President and CEO of the West Region at Sanford Health, discusses how his military experience has shaped the way he leads.

Becker’s Healthcare: 6 health system execs on how to battle labor shortages beyond pay (April 29, 2022)
Although compensation increases have played a key role in retaining and recruiting healthcare employees amid a major workforce shortage; perks such as mental health services and education financial assistance have also helped meet staff needs. Said Sanford Health CEO Bill Gassen: “Our highest purpose at Sanford Health is taking the best possible care of our patients and residents, and to do that, we need to take the best possible care of our people, especially our front-line caregivers.”

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Bradford Reimer, CIO at Sanford Health (April 27, 2022)
Sanford Health’s Chief Information Officer discusses how technology is changing rural healthcare delivery, cybersecurity and the battle for IT talent.

Perficient: Brent Teiken Recognized by Modern Healthcare for Excellence in Governance at Sanford Health (April 21, 2022)
Brent Teiken, general manager for Salesforce practice at Perficient, is recognized for his achievements on the Sanford board promoting diversity and navigating various challenges.

Horizon Magazine: Improving rare disease treatment and care (April 20, 2022)
HEQ speaks with Dr David A. Pearce from the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium about the unmet needs in rare disease treatment and how innovative therapies may offer patients new hope. Pearce is also president of research at Sanford Health.

Modern Healthcare: Mask mandate ruling was ‘irresponsibly abrupt,’ hospital exec says (April 19, 2022)
Sanford Health continues to adhere to CDC masking guidelines for workers, visitors and patients.

Skilled Nursing News: CMS to Phase Out Nursing Home TNA Program, Other PHE Waivers (April 7, 2022)
CMS expects facilities to redirect efforts back to meeting regulatory requirements and continue integrated practices to handle COVID-19 outbreaks moving forward.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health wants other systems to use its homegrown AI tool for nurse scheduling (February 28, 2022)
If it can work at a large integrated rural hospital system like Sanford, it can work anywhere.

Becker’s Healthcare: Sanford Health launches ad campaign to reach rural patients (February 25, 2022)
Sanford is rolling out the campaign across billboards, television ads, social media and landmarks across its patients’ communities — including on grain bins on farms.

The New York Times: Who’s Requiring Their Workers to Be Vaccinated? (February 23, 2022)
The New York Times surveyed 500 top corporations about their Covid-19 policies as some workers prepare to return to offices. Sanford Health required that all of its workers obtain an exemption or start getting shots by November 1.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Foreign nurses in long-term care: Sure thing or fleeting promise? (February 22, 2022)
Bad news for thousands of would-be immigrants over the last two years could be great news for labor-strapped nursing homes. Nate Schema, president and CEO of the South Dakota-based Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, said that an international nursing strategy is one of several key doors operators have been able to open during the current staffing crisis.

NPR: The pandemic pummeled long-term care – it may not recover quickly, experts warn (February 22, 2022)
Nursing homes and other long term care facilities have lost a record number of residents and staff to COVID-19 – representing about a quarter of all COVID deaths in this country.

Skilled Nursing News: Solutions Forged in Crisis Provide Glimpse of Future SNF, Hospital Alignment (February 13, 2022)
Temporary solutions to solve the capacity crisis could have long-term implications on the way skilled nursing facilities and hospitals can better align moving forward. For Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, strengthening their relationships with their hospital partners began well before the pandemic, through a merger with Sanford Health.

Associated Press: Hospitals begin to limp out of the latest COVID-19 surge (February 8, 2022)
The ebbing of the omicron surge has left in its wake postponed surgeries, exhausted staff members and uncertainty over whether this is the last big wave or whether another one lies ahead.

Horizon Magazine: Solving the puzzle of rare diseases through international collaboration (February 7, 2022)
As the largest consortium in rare diseases research in the world today, IRDiRC has taken international rare disease collaboration to new heights. Incoming IRDiRC head Dr. David Pearce – who will also continue as president of Innovation, Research and World Clinics at Sanford Health – is an expert on Batten disease (a genetic disorder of the nervous system).

NPR: There’s a critical shortage of nursing home staff (February 6, 2022)
With the omicron variant causing a surge of COVID-19 infections in assisted living facilities, more staff are having to stay at home, making the jobs of those still working a lot harder.

Becker’s Healthcare: 50 states of population health (February 3, 2022)
We asked a healthcare leader in the most populous city in every state to name the most pressing health concern facing their patients. Then we asked what they were doing about it. Reports Sanford Health’s Bryan Nermoe: “ In the fall of 2021, Sanford Health announced a transformational $350 million gift to establish a cutting-edge virtual care initiative.”

NEJM Catalyst: The Virtual Future of Health Care Delivery in Rural America (February 2, 2022)
Sanford Health will extend its virtual care offerings to bring 24-7 access to acute and specialty care to patients in rural, underserved parts of the Midwest.

Healthcare IT News: CIOs’ 5-year plans for precision medicine and emerging technologies (January 24, 2022)
Sanford Health believes precision medicine will be the future of healthcare, so it continues to make significant investments in this space.

McKnight’s Long-Term Care News: Good Samaritan’s Nate Schema: Integration creates deep ‘bench’ (January 24, 2022)
Vertical integration will provide needed advantages as nursing homes face mounting clinical and operational challenges, predicts Nate Schema, president and CEO of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society.

Senior Living News: CEO Series with Nate Schema (January 18, 2022)
Nate Schema began 2022 by stepping into the role of president and CEO of The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society. Three years ago, the organization integrated with Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the country, and Schema believes this has positioned the Good Samaritan Society to shape the future of the senior care industry and transform the aging experience. He is also excited about new opportunities to expand virtual care options and provide a seamless, connected experience for residents, staff and clinicians.

MPR: Amid another COVID wave, rural nurses face severe staffing challenges (January 18, 2022)
The omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to spread rapidly throughout Minnesota, and health care providers are swamped. That includes Sanford Health, which operates facilities across the state of Minnesota, from Bemidji to Thief River Falls down to Windom and Luverne. The health care system employs more than 18,000 nurses across four states. Sanford has been dealing with an unprecedented number of absences during the latest wave of the pandemic, with nurses bearing the brunt of the staffing challenges. Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer for Sanford Health, joined host Cathy Wurzer with the latest on the situation.

The Wall Street Journal: Patients Drive Hours to ERs as Omicron Variant Overwhelms Rural Hospitals (January 15, 2022)
Sanford Health, a hospital system that serves remote parts of the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, started in late 2020 to recruit nurses from overseas to alleviate staffing constraints that worsened during the pandemic. Sanford’s goal is to convince upward of 700 nurses from countries including the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil and India to move by 2024. The system plans to pair them with staff who can help them navigate harsh winters and other peculiarities of life in the Dakotas. The first eight nurses are set to arrive in Fargo, N.D., sometime this quarter.

The New York Times: New Virus Cases Begin to Slow in U.S. Cities Where Omicron Hit First (January 13, 2022)
“What we’re bracing for right now is really doing everything we can to avoid a work force shortage,” said Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, the chief physician for Sanford Health, in the Upper Midwest, where more than 400 employees across the hospital system were off work with the virus this week.

Skilled Nursing News: Good Samaritan CEO Eyes Innovation in 2022, But Sees Another ‘Tough Year’ Ahead (January 12, 2022)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society kicked off the New Year with a familiar face as Nathan Schema took the helm as the company’s top executive. Schema’s plans in the new role – as the non-profit giant enters its 100th year as an organization – includes bringing on more than 250 international nurses in 2023 through a partnership with placement company Connectics USA, further developing its partnership with Sanford Health and finding creative ways to make the work of long-term care staff “more sexy.”

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Cases Surge at Nursing Homes (January 11, 2022)
“It’s hard to find staff right now,” said Nathan Schema, chief executive of Good Samaritan, part of Sanford Health, a nonprofit that operates 155 nursing homes. “We don’t have those people waiting in the wings to pick up those extra hours.” The nonprofit’s staff cases of Covid-19 are at roughly five times the number they were before the holidays, he said, though numbers among residents have risen much less.

Star Tribune: Minnesota hospitals brace for omicron wave even as COVID-19 declines in ICUs (January 10, 2022)
Another surge would be ill-timed, because providers had to phase out two monoclonal antibody therapies that don’t work against omicron and have received scarce supplies of new antiviral pills, said Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician for Sanford Health, which operates hospitals in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Healthcare IT News: CIOs plan big investments in EHR optimization and pop health IT (January 10, 2022)
Hocks at Sanford Health says they are focused on keeping people healthy, well and out of the hospital by providing patients with innovative services to improve their health and manage chronic conditions. “We have partnerships with technology vendors to help our providers coordinate care across clinics and medical facilities and to connect our patients with community resources and social services that support health and well-being outside of the hospital and clinic settings,” he said.

2021

mHealth Intelligence: How Telehealth Will Continue its Evolution Beyond Pandemic Response (December 27, 2021)
For Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health, one of the largest rural health systems in the country, telehealth had been invaluable as a mode of mental healthcare delivery. “Unfortunately for us, and I think throughout the nation, especially in rural parts of the country, there is a critical shortage of mental health providers,” said Jeremy Cauwels, MD, Sanford Health’s chief physician, in a phone interview. “I think [telehealth] is a way that we [can] provide access to mental health that is far superior and far faster than the way that we could in rural populations.”

CNBC: Traumatized and exhausted hospital staff face new wave of Covid cases as omicron rips through U.S. (December 23, 2021)
At South Dakota-headquartered Sanford Health, hospital officials are watching Covid cases spike in other parts of the country and adjusting their own surge plans. “We’re taking this time to step back and prepare,” said Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer at Sanford. “What worked about our surge plan before and how do we fine-tune that so that we’re well prepared?” For Sanford, that includes drawing from a central labor pool it’s formed to ensure extra help at particularly busy times. The pool consists of more than 700 people across the system who get additional training and flexibility with their current roles to help fill in the gaps. That includes both clinical and nonclinical staff, who can help with certain nursing work that doesn’t require a license to give nurses a break or let them focus on more pressing needs.

Star Tribune: Minnesota dials back COVID-19 antibody strategy as omicron tops 50% of new cases (December 22, 2021)
Minnesota for the past month has used a scoring system to prioritize its limited antibody therapies, giving preference to people with COVID-19 who are older, pregnant or minorities or have diabetes or diseases of the lungs, kidneys or heart that elevate their risks for severe illness and hospitalization. Sotrovimab is now being reserved for people with COVID-19 whose combinations of demographics and disease history produce the highest score. Antibodies are more effective when given early, so doctors can’t wait for genomic sequencing results to identify the variants involved. While switching to one monoclonal antibody “is the right thing to do,” the other versions might have value regionally, said Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician of Sanford Health, a large provider of monoclonal antibodies in greater Minnesota and the Dakotas. “It will be very important to understand how fast omicron takes over individual counties in MN [and elsewhere],” he said in an e-mail. “A county that is still mostly seeing delta cases could treat patients well with any antibody.”

Star Tribune: Surgery delays grow severe amid COVID-19 hospital crowding in Minnesota (December 14, 2021)
Sanford Health’s Dr. David Wilcox urged more people to seek vaccinations, and to take steps to reduce viral risks at holiday gatherings. Sanford Bemidji Medical Center is full, and Sanford Medical Center in Fargo recently admitted a teenager, parent and grandparent from one family who were likely infected at the same gathering, he said. Sanford’s hospitals in Minnesota and the Dakotas were caring for 224 inpatient COVID-19 cases Monday, and 206 involved unvaccinated patients. Of 70 ICU patients, 67 were unvaccinated. “We can predict and prevent COVID-19,” he said. “We can’t predict when you are going to have a heart attack, when you are going to have a car accident, when you are going to fall and break your hip.”

Star Tribune: Minnesota employers confront ‘hurry up and wait’ on vaccine mandates (December 12, 2021)
The Minnesota Hospital Association says anecdotal feedback from hospitals suggests vaccine mandates have had relatively minimal impact on long-standing health care workforce issues. At South Dakota-based Sanford Health, the vaccine mandate policy hasn’t yet forced staff departures, but the ultimate impact should be “minimal,” said Mike Deuth, executive director of Good Samaritan Society, the health system’s long-term care division. Less than 1% of employees at Sanford, which operates hospitals and clinics across the Dakotas and greater Minnesota, have been suspended for not starting their vaccine series by Nov. 1, or had not received an approved exemption.

Becker’s Healthcare: The advice 12 healthcare leaders remembered most in 2021 (December 9, 2021)
The Corner Office series asks healthcare leaders to answer questions about their life in and outside the office. In each interview, leaders share the piece of advice they remember most clearly. Here are answers collected by Becker’s Hospital Review this year. Bill Gassen. President and CEO of Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.): Always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you — working in healthcare makes this pretty easy for me. I’ve learned so much by listening carefully in places where passion, intellect and diverse perspectives are shared daily. I have always sought to build a team around me with people who help make us better by contributing their unique talents and expertise. I am also a believer in servant leadership — a philosophy that tilts toward the deliberate sharing of influence and decision-making. It means putting the needs of employees and patients first and paying it forward by providing resources and encouragement to help the team develop and excel.

HealthLeaders: 5 Healthcare Execs Who Led Innovation in 2021 (December 8, 2021)
Like many hospitals and health systems, Sanford Health faced significant clinical and financial upheaval related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, longtime CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft resigned, ending a more than two-decade tenure at the integrated, nonprofit health system based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Bill Gassen, who worked for Sanford for over nine years in leadership roles including vice president of human resources integration and corporate services, chief human resources officer, and most recently chief administrative officer, assumed the position of CEO and immediately took charge of the organization. Gassen shares what it was like being elevated during the pandemic, how the pandemic altered the organization’s focus on growth strategies, and why the organization is poised to transform rural healthcare delivery.

HFMA: The COVID-19-induced surge in healthcare labor costs is testing hospitals and health systems (December 1, 2021)
In response to a labor crunch that’s been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and health systems have substantially increased their use of contract nurses. That spike in demand inevitably has led to big raises for nurses who can travel to areas of high need. Many of those nurses make double or triple the wages of the nurses on staff, causing a complicated dynamic for leaders striving to maintain a harmonious culture. As a large health system with facilities primarily in rural markets, Sanford Health doesn’t have access to the same labor pools that are available to organizations based in major metropolises. One of the most important things a provider can do in the near term is mitigate burnout by supporting its workforce. Sanford Health is working to expand partnerships with colleges to serve as a conduit for new hires. A year-long residency program helps put new nurses on a track to “become that high contributor and that professional leader at the bedside,” said Erica DeBoer, RN, chief nursing officer.

New York Times: As Thanksgiving Approaches, U.S. Virus Cases Tick Upward Once More (November 22, 2021)
Nationally, case levels remain well below those seen in early September, when summer infections peaked, and are below those seen last Thanksgiving. But conditions are worsening rapidly, and this will not be the post-pandemic Thanksgiving that Americans had hoped for. More than 90,000 cases are being reported each day, comparable to early August, and more than 30 states are seeing sustained upticks in infections. In the hardest-hit places, hospitalizations are already climbing. The new rise in cases comes at a complicated moment. In interviews across the country, Americans said they were not sure what to think. Dr. James Volk, a vice president for Sanford Health in Fargo, N.D., where coronavirus hospitalizations have been persistently high, said he felt that fewer people were seeking medical advice about how to approach the holidays this year. “I just think that people in general here have kind of moved on from that,” said Dr. Volk, who said he planned to stay home for Thanksgiving because of concerns about the virus.

Skilled Nursing News: Good Samaritan Names New CEO (November 3, 2021)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society on Wednesday announced its new president and CEO: Nathan Schema. Schema will assume the role on Jan. 1, as the non-profit giant enters its 100th year as an organization. Schema began his career in long-term care 15 years ago as an administrator-in-training in Mountain Lake, Minn. Since then, he has built his career at Good Sam most recently as its vice president of operations, serving the organization’s 24-state footprint. Sanford Health has given Good Sam “tremendous opportunities” to shape the future of post-acute and long-term care, Schema said, while also providing needed resources during the pandemic and worsening direct care worker shortage.

Becker’s Healthcare: Compliance with Sanford Health vaccination policy hits 99% (November 2, 2021)
Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for employees is working in terms of boosting the compliance rate and also resulted in a decline in coronavirus infections and sick leave among staff, according to a statement from Jeremy Cauwels, MD, chief physician at the organization. “Sanford Health was proud to be one of the first healthcare providers in the country to announce we would require all employees to get a COVID-19 vaccination to protect our patients, residents and our people,” he said. “The vaccine mandate has worked.”

Healthcare IT News: The next investment priorities for telehealth, RPM and connected health (November 1, 2021)
In 2020 alone, Sanford Health provided approximately 300,000 telehealth visits. As the nation’s largest rural health system, it is committed to making significant virtual care investments to deliver the right care to its patients when and where they need it, close to home. Sanford Health recently announced a transformational $350 million philanthropic gift that will support a clinical initiative to create a virtual care center and provide access to care in rural and underserved areas of the Midwest.

Healthcare IT News: Interoperability: Where it’s headed, and where IT leaders will be investing (November 1, 2021)
Five CIOs, a COO and a CMIO chart a course for the complex demands of data exchange, and discuss the technologies and strategies they plan to focus on in the next five years.

TIME Magazine: Making Breast Cancer Care More Inclusive (October 26, 2021)
The WISDOM study was launched in 2016 by Dr. Laura Esserman with the hope of bringing a more personalized approach to figuring out each woman’s risk for the disease, plus tailor a screening and treatment program appropriate for that risk.

FiercePharma: Fujifilm starts build-out for massive NC plant, the latest piece of its multibillion-dollar CDMO expansion effort (October 26, 2021)
Earlier this month, when Fujifilm Diosynth broke ground in North Carolina on a facility destined to become its showcase, the occasion was more about the company than the plant. While the $2 billion complex will eventually house 725 employees and is billed as the largest end-to-end biologics production plant in the world, it’s just one of several investments Tokyo-based Fujifilm has undertaken in its campaign to build CDMO capacity.

Star Tribune: Shopping for Medicare plans invites headaches but can spell savings for Minnesotans (October 18, 2021)
Sanford Health Plan is making its Medicare debut in Minnesota, and the lineup of health plans with no monthly premium continues to expand.

News and Observer: Fujifilm is building a 2M square foot plant. Then it has to find workers to fill it (October 15, 2021)
The property where Fujifilm Diosynth is building its planned $2 billion manufacturing facility in Holly Springs is so large you can barely see from one end to the other. But in just a few short years, that same view will be dominated by multiple football-field-sized buildings where new medicines and vaccines will be developed. It will be one of the largest construction projects in the state (around 2 million square feet of space), and will add 725 new jobs to Wake County in the next five years — a figure so coveted that state and local governments offered more than $100 million in incentives to seal the deal.

WRAL TechWire: $2B Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant moves closer to reality in Holly Springs (October 14, 2021)
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies is moving full speed ahead with its new $2 billion facility in Holly Springs, which the company has said will be the largest end-to-end biologics production facility globally upon its completion. The investment involves constructing the facility in Holly Springs, and to staff the new plant, the company will hire 725 positions that pay an average salary of just under $100,000, it said. A formal groundbreaking ceremony took place Thursday.

Wall Street Journal: A Pediatrician Joined the School Board During Covid-19. Her Face Mask Recommendations Could Cost Her the Job. (September 19, 2021)
A few months ago, Dr. Newman received a Hero Award from Sanford Health, the regional hospital system where she works, for her dedication and leadership in getting children safely back in school. As the school board prepared this summer for the new school year, the health department and Dr. Newman made recommendations including mandatory masking for all students, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in July. She said her motivation all along has been to try to keep children in school, safely. “I want to do what’s best for kids,” she said.

New York Times: Covid Deaths Surge Across a Weary America as a Once-Hopeful Summer Ends (September 6, 2021)
Exhausted hospital employees in North Dakota have been asked to cover extra shifts. “It’s as if you finish a battle, and before you truly get rested and really thinking about your personal well-being and recovery, you’re thrust back in,” said Dr. Michael LeBeau, the president and chief executive for the Bismarck, N.D., region for Sanford Health, a hospital system in the Upper Midwest where coronavirus hospitalizations increased 339 percent over four weeks in August.

Bloomberg Businessweek: Nurses Who Won’t Vax Threaten Staffing Shortages (August 26, 2021)
Other hospitals have looked at Houston Methodist’s mandate and decided to follow suit even when they’ve had a bigger vaccination gap to overcome. In June, Sanford Health executives were concerned to see that immunization rates among its almost 48,000 employees had stalled at around 50%. So in late July, Sanford announced a vaccine mandate for its 46 medical centers and other facilities across the Upper Midwest. Vaccination levels have since risen to about 70%, which CEO Bill Gassen attributes to the mandate, educational initiatives, and the rapid spread of the delta variant. By Gassen’s estimate, another factor working in Sanford’s favor is that its facilities are located in rural areas, where there aren’t many other employment opportunities. He foresees no more than 1% of his employees leaving over a vaccine mandate.

Star Tribune: Minnesota long-term care COVID-19 cases rise as federal vaccine mandate for workers approaches (August 20, 2021)
Staff vaccination rates are slowly increasing as long-term care operators continue COVID-19 vaccine education and as some long-term care facilities have already implemented their own vaccine mandates as they watched COVID-19 infections return. “It is not the raw number at this point; it is the trend line,” said Randy Bury, chief executive of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, which operates more than 200 long-term care facilities in 24 states, including Minnesota. “We are not going to go through this again, and we have a tool in the toolbox, and it works,” he said. Good Samaritan implemented a vaccine mandate in late July. Staff vaccinations have increased somewhat but still remain at 60% systemwide. Employees have until Nov. 1 to complete the series. Some in the industry fear employees will quit rather than get the shot. “Everybody always jumps to the staff issue. It is true, it is real,” Bury said. “We still did a mandate knowing all of that.”

New York Times: Nursing Homes Face Quandary: Vaccinate Staff or Don’t Get Paid. (August 19, 2021)
Earlier this month, Good Samaritan Society, which operates 142 nursing homes nationwide, announced that all 15,000 staff members must be vaccinated by Nov. 1 — a position the company took after seeing a rise in resident infections in homes where unvaccinated staff also tested positive. So far, staffing levels have remained steady, said Randy Bury, the company’s chief executive, who has argued in the past that such mandates would create safe, desirable workplaces. But he argued that the Biden administration’s new policy was misguided unless it was applied across the whole health care sector. “What’s the difference in a long-term care facility or in a hospital?” Mr. Bury said. “They’re susceptible to the virus if they come in contact with unvaccinated staff.”

Wall Street Journal: Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Draws Throngs as Covid-19 Surges (August 16, 2021)
Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician for Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, said he hopes this year’s rally will be a nonevent at hospitals. About 35% of the people who came to Sanford Health with Covid-19 during the pandemic were older people from long-term-care facilities who have now been vaccinated, he said. “I would really like a boring Sturgis motorcycle rally,” he said.

Wall Street Journal: Florida Nursing Homes Limit Visitors as Covid-19 Cases Flare (August 5, 2021)
Florida, which has lower-than-average staff vaccination rates, hasn’t done the same, but some private operators are, including the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, a part of Sanford Health and a major nonprofit nursing-home operator covering 22 states. “We’re not going to go backward,” said Nathan Schema, vice president of operations at Good Samaritan. “We have an answer, and that answer is to mandate the vaccine.”

Washington Post: As breakthrough covid infections rise, nursing home chains require that staffers be vaccinated (August 5, 2021)
One of the factors that made the industry reluctant to impose vaccine mandates on staffers previously was the fear of causing people to leave their jobs. Bury said leaders of Sanford and Good Samaritan Society expect that they will lose some staffers, but he added that acceptance of vaccines among nursing home workers has grown with time.

New York Times: Nursing Homes Confront New Covid Outbreaks Amid Calls for Staff Vaccination Mandates (August 4, 2021)
“We fought this virus, and we were winning with the vaccine,” said Randy Bury, chief executive of the Good Samaritan Society, a nonprofit chain that operates in 24 states. Late last month, the company became one of the largest long-term care chains in the country to order mandatory vaccines for staff, highlighting turmoil within an industry desperate to avoid a repeat of the devastation that swept through this highly vulnerable population.

Senior Housing News: Future of Nonprofit Senior Living Demands New Approaches to Staffing, Hospitality, Services (August 3, 2021)
Good Samaritan Society has a home health segment and is exploring providing virtual care, Vanden Hull said. Sanford Health recently announced a $300 million initiative to transform rural care delivery, in which virtual care will play a significant role. The initiative will connect Good Samaritan locations to primary care providers and medical specialists, in an attempt to provide better health assessments and outcomes while reducing costs and resources related to transportation. “It is where things are going to change in the future,” he said.

Becker’s Healthcare: Corner Office: How Sanford Health aims to boost rural healthcare access (August 3, 2021)
Bill Gassen was promoted to president and CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health in November, replacing Kelby Krabbenhoft at the helm of the 46-hospital system. Mr. Gassen has worked for Sanford Health since 2012, previously serving as chief administrative officer. As CEO, he said he is passionate about expanding access to rural healthcare and helping employees develop and excel.

Modern Healthcare: Healthcare workers are humans first, employees second (July 24, 2021)
Sanford Health started coordinating virtual meetings in April 2020 for its medical staff, who shared how they were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. The psychologist-led discussions aimed to be informal outlets for clinicians to learn from each other, as well as how the Sioux Falls, South Dakota.-based health system could take better care of its front-line staff. Those meetings, town-hall events and one-on-one conversations shaped a more comprehensive strategy around Sanford’s identification and prevention of mental health issues, Garcia said. The health system, for instance, has invested more in its wellness council, where physicians and advanced practice practitioners meet monthly to relay how its employees are feeling and how the organization can adapt.

CBS Weekend Radio: CBS News Weekend Round-up (July 16, 2021)
On the CBS News Weekend Roundup with host Allison Keyes, Allison speaks with Erica DeBoer at Sanford Health, the largest rural health care organization in the nation, about the nurses shortage across the country…especially in rural areas.

Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Pressure Employees to Get Vaccinated as Covid-19 Variants Spread (July 7, 2021)
Others said they are weighing the move. Sanford Health, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., hasn’t mandated its roughly 50,000 workers get vaccinated. Sanford continues to promote the shots and may rely on infection-control measures, such as masking and routine Covid-19 tests, as an alternative to vaccine mandates, if the approach can protect staff and patients in the hospital, said chief physician Jeremy Cauwels. “Our goal is to mandate safety, not necessarily to mandate shots,” he said.

CNN: These telemedicine companies are changing the future of doctor visits (July 2, 2021)
Meanwhile, Sanford Health in the Midwest — the largest rural health care system in the country — has taken a similar approach. However, instead of modifying devices for remote use, doctors taught patients how to use the same tools used for in-person visits to record their results at home. For patients with low-risk pregnancies, Sanford Health issued its own “home monitoring kits,” which included a fetal ultrasound monitor and a blood pressure cuff, making it possible for women to use virtual care for nearly a third of their prenatal care visits during the pandemic, according to Sanford Health.

Becker’s Healthcare: Going through a rebrand? Do these 4 things to get employees on board (July 1, 2021)
While employees’ voices and engagement are essential to a successful change, they also can be an asset to creating brand stickiness outside of the marketing department, Kimber Severson, chief marketing officer at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, S.D., told Becker’s.

AHA Blog Post: Why America’s International Sharing of Vaccines is Not Enough (June 30, 2021)
Engaging U.S. health systems to provide expert consultations to low- and middle-income nations receiving America’s donated vaccine will not only save hundreds of millions of lives – it will also strengthen sustainable global relations for decades to come. Now is the time for the U.S. to share its expertise and deliver on its promise to bring a shot of hope all those who most desperately need it.

USA TODAY: People hospitalized with COVID-19 now have one overwhelming thing in common. They’re not vaccinated. (June 16, 2021)
And at Sanford Health, which runs 44 medical centers and more than 200 clinics across the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, less than 5% of the 1,456 patients admitted with COVID-19 so far this year were fully vaccinated, said spokesperson Angela Dejene.

Bloomberg: J&J Shot’s Shelf Life Extended by FDA After Fear of Spoiling (June 10, 2021)
Organizations involved in the rollout, from CVS Health Corp. to Sanford Health to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association, said they have more J&J supply than they’ve been able to deploy as demand wanes. The groups had been exploring how to avoid waste as some J&J doses neared expiration at the end of June and in early July. Some health-care providers continue to see interest in the J&J vaccine at the community level. “We know there will be a role for the J&J vaccine moving forward,” said Nate Leedahl, manager of health system pharmacy at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health, the largest provider of rural health care in the country. “When it comes to emergency departments, hospital discharges, we see a clear utility for the one-and-done option.

USA TODAY: Michigan bet big on mass vaccine events for COVID-19. It didn’t work out as hoped. (June 9, 2021)
Systems like Sanford Health, which vaccinated people at more than 30 locations across rural Minnesota, were a big part of the rollout. Susan Jarvis, president of Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota, said hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices have plenty of space, clinical storage and expertise handling vaccines. “We knew that we had the infrastructure to give the shots,” she said.

CNBC: Data shows many Americans are either waiting to get the vaccine or won’t at all, even health care workers (May 17, 2021)
At South Dakota’s Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the country, the total vaccination across the health system is approaching 70%. Chief Physician Dr. Jeremy Cauwels says rates reflect attitudes toward the vaccine in the broader communities.

New York Times: Is It Covid or the Flu? New Combo Tests Can Find Out. (May 11, 2021)
This so-called quad test, now available at thousands of hospitals and clinics around the country, could detect not only the coronavirus, but two types of influenza and the respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V. The Sanford Health system, which includes 46 hospitals and 1,400 physicians in South Dakota, carries out 600 to 800 tests for the coronavirus a day in its clinics using antigen tests, which detect proteins made by the virus. But according to Rochelle Odenbrett, the senior executive director of laboratories, the organization is now in the process of replacing all of those tests with the quad tests used in its emergency settings.

Healthcare IT News: IT execs talk new strategies for analytics, patient engagement, telehealth and more (May 7, 2021)
Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted the importance of data analytics and data in general, said Lupu of Sanford Health.”At Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the country, our leaders have always recognized the importance and the power of data, but the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the meaningful benefits of investing in the resources and infrastructure needed for a strong data analytics department,” she said. For example, the data analytics team designed an algorithm to sort and pull relevant data from the records of more than 100,000 patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19, identifying those at highest risk of complications from the virus.

Texas Monthly: This COVID-19 Vaccine Plant Shows Texas Is Becoming Biotech’s Third Coast (May 1, 2021)
Fujifilm, a Japanese conglomerate with interests in biotechnology, electronics, and photography, has a contract with A&M’s CIADM (“cee-add-um” to insiders) that requires it to do the bidding of the federal government in the case of a national emergency. COVID-19 marked the first time it was drafted into service. Before COVID-19, Fujifilm’s College Station plant was working on cell therapies used to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, as well as other vaccines.

Healthcare IT News: Sanford Health builds EHR templates in Epic to eliminate note bloat (April 29, 2021)
Around half of primary care providers are using the standard note templates, resulting in short, efficient charting – with time in notes and note length below Epic’s overall average.

Star Tribune: COVID-19 vaccination rates fall short in parts of Minnesota (April 28, 2021)
Vaccinators across the state, including Mayo Clinic, CentraCare, Sanford Health and Essentia Health, report that it is taking longer to fill appointment slots despite an ample supply of vaccine. “When the eligibility opened up it was a bit like a dam breaking and we were at a gush,” said Alyssa Carlson, hospital pharmacy manager at Sanford Health Bemidji. “The river is very much flowing, it is just that the pace is not as strong as the initial break.”

BBC News: Billingham plant on track to make 60 million doses (April 22, 2021)
A factory on Teesside making the new Novavax Covid-19 vaccine is on target to make the 60 million doses ordered by the UK. Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Billingham began production in February ahead of approval for its use, which is expected within weeks. About 300 people have started around-the-clock shifts at the plant. The firm’s CEO Martin Meeson said the vaccine would be ready by the summer, adding he was “proud” of his team.

USA TODAY: Could we save lives by assigning each American a place in line for vaccines? (April 14, 2021)
At Sanford Health, a health care system with 46 hospitals in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, physicians and researchers built an algorithm that prioritizes incoming patients for either treatment or vaccination, based on their risk of getting severe COVID-19. The algorithm, built using health records from 100,000 patients, is baked into Epic and triggered when a patient tests positive for the virus. The algorithm also prioritizes for vaccination of vulnerable populations like Native American diabetics, leading the health system to contact patients via phone and mail with appointment scheduling information. Sanford estimated that its delivery of antibodies to more than 2,700 COVID-19 patients, a process that was guided by the algorithm, prevented 15 deaths and averted 80 hospital admissions.

Star Tribune: Minnesota prepares for any dropoff in COVID-19 vaccine demand (April 9, 2021)
Some health officials worry that a weakening interest in vaccine could come at a pivotal moment of elevated COVID-19 activity. North Dakota’s per capita ranking of vaccinations has slipped over the past month, and Dr. Doug Griffin, vice president of Sanford Health in Fargo, said he worries about the level of hesitancy among people who have yet to receive their shots. “We are concerned that we could see [a drop in demand] maybe a little sooner than we thought,” he said. The regional health system is moving as a result to make vaccines easier to access, offering its first walk-in COVID-19 vaccine clinics this week in Fargo and Moorhead.

Becker’s Healthcare: How 2 health systems made their COVID-19 vaccine rollout as efficient as possible (April 1, 2021)
Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health is also scheduling second dose visits when individuals are on-site to get their first dose, said Andrea Polkinghorn, BSN, RN, immunization strategy leader at Sanford. If individuals don’t show up for their appointments, a member of the scheduling team follows up a minimum of three times via phone. Some people haven’t shown up for their second dose — a very small number — because they really didn’t like the vaccine side effects. Overall, Sanford has given nearly 170,000 first and second dose vaccines, of which only .02 percent have reported significant adverse reactions, according to Ms. Polkinghorn.

Forbes: Rapid Genome Sequencing Can Save Babies With Rare Diseases, If They Can Get It (March 31, 2021)
Not many hospitals have the ability to invest in training, data storage, and analysis tools. But Kingsmore is working to expand the network of hospitals that can benefit from rWGS over the next couple of years. As one of ten hospitals in the Sanford Children’s Genomic Medicine Consortium, a program to increase the reach of genetics and genomics programs in pediatrics, the Rady has been able to offer their sequencing services to children’s hospitals across the country. “The purpose of the Consortium is to move forward the idea the genomics and genetics can help in all aspects of pediatric care,” says Gene Hoyme, the Consortium’s medical director. The program provides funding for clinical research and advocacy projects around the use of genomics.

HFMA Podcast: How Sanford Health System is communicating with patients about getting their shots (March 24, 2021)
Matt Hocks from Sanford Health System describes his organization’s strategy for communicating with patients about the vaccination plan.

Bloomberg: How the U.S. Is Vaccinating Its Way Out of the Pandemic (March 30, 2021)
You could feel the change at Sanford Health when the vaccines arrived. Its 46 hospitals in the Dakotas and Minnesota were ravaged from battling a deadly fall surge. “I didn’t know if you could ever have something feel like hope before, but I think that’s honestly what it felt like, said Jeremy Cauwels, Sanford’s chief physician. “It was palpable in the room that the vaccinations were going to get us to lower numbers in our hospitals, less stress on our doctors and nurses and all of our health care staff.”

NBC Nightly News: Inside Novavax lab amid race to develop Covid vaccine (March 23, 2021)
Promising early results secured Novavax a $1.6 billion contract from Operation Warp Speed to produce 100 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine effort. They hope to seek emergency use authorization in May.

Modern Healthcare: Sanford invests $300 million in rural health (March 19, 2021)
The Sioux Falls, S.D.-based system plans to create eight new graduate medical residencies and fellowships, which Sanford hopes will foster a network of specialists in underserved rural communities. “This effort will position Sanford Health as a global leader in rural care delivery, allow us to bring top clinicians to our region and enhance the health and well-being of the communities we serve,” Sanford CEO Bill Gassen said. Sanford is also planning a virtual hospital that aims to provide remote access to its specialists for consultations, patient monitoring, assisted living support and critical care. It will allow patients to get care closer to home and ideally improve outcomes, said Erica DeBoer, chief nursing officer for Sanford.

The News & Observer: Fujifilm Diosynth to invest $1.5 billion to build a vaccine plant in Holly Springs (March 18, 2021)
The Japanese contract drug manufacturer Fujifilm Diosynth will build a new manufacturing facility in Holly Springs and bring 725 jobs to the area over five years, following up on the company’s previously announced plans. The Economic Investment Committee of the state Department of Commerce announced Thursday that the company’s expansion to the Triangle would represent a $1.5 billion investment from Fujifilm Diosynth by 2025. Among a broad range of functions, the state-of-the-art facility will produce monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins and gene therapy solutions for pharmaceutical companies globally. Upon completion, the facility will be the largest monoclonal antibody manufacturing facility in the world.

Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: Featuring Randy Bury, president and CEO, Good Samaritan Society (March 15, 2021)
Randy Bury discusses vaccine efforts, his top priorities this year, and more.

Healthcare Dive: Hospital executives share lessons learned 1 year into the pandemic (March 15, 2021)
For Sanford Health in South Dakota, the biggest lesson was learning how it could leverage the “huge repository” of patient data, Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician, said. Doctors across the system are now devising their own projects to see how they can utilize the data to improve patient care beyond COVID-19. Cauwels explained that Sanford set up a registry of sorts with the information of the 95,000 COVID-19 patients it has treated. The analytics team then mined the data for trends and insights.

MSNBC: Couple married for over 50 years reunites thanks to Covid vaccine after year apart (March 11, 2021)
Kay and Orlin Wentz had spent the last year in separate nursing homes in Kearney, Nebraska. But after the couple of over fifty years got their Covid vaccines, Orlin surprised Kay. NBC News’ Cal Perry shares the story of their emotional reunion.

CBC: How Manitoba’s southern neighbour is among the leaders in the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine rollout (March 6, 2021)
North Dakota has gone from a hotbed of COVID-19 early in the pandemic to a leader in the campaign to get people vaccinated. How have they done it — and how can Manitoba learn from its neighbour to the south? Top public health officials in the state credit early preparation, collaboration with groups in different parts of the state and broad eligibility for vaccines for their success.

NBC TODAY Show: Meet 1 courier traveling hundreds of miles to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to rural areas (February 20, 2021)
One of the biggest challenges during the pandemic is making sure people all across the United States have access to COVID-19 vaccines. Reporting for Weekend TODAY, NBC’s Dasha Burns travels to South Dakota to see how one courier is getting doses to rural communities.

MSNBC: Vaccination success story: NBC’s @DashaBurns on how South Dakota has gone from a COVID-19 hot spot to becoming one of the top states for vaccinations per capita. (February 17, 2021)
These folks do this every single day to get the vaccine to communities like this one – Chamberlain is a community of 2,600 but they also went to towns much smaller than that.

NBC News: Covid vaccine couriers deliver doses to rural South Dakota areas, per capita rate one of best in U.S. (February 17, 2021)
NBC News’ Dasha Burns speaks to health officials in South Dakota about how they’ve been able to deliver the Covid-19 vaccine to the most rural areas of the state and improve their per capita rate to one of the best in the country.

NBC: North Dakota and South Dakota set global Covid records. How did they turn the tide? (February 9, 2021)
Dr. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician for Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said the hospital system — which operates in both states — recognized and addressed vaccination challenges early on. That played a crucial role in successful vaccine distribution efforts in both states.

Wall Street Journal: Demand for Covid-19 Vaccines Overwhelms State Health Providers (February 8, 2021)
Some states that have been slower to open eligibility have experienced less disruption. South Dakota planned to prioritize residents 65 and older until its three major health providers, who contracted to vaccinate residents, requested the state begin with an older population, said Andrea Polkinghorn, immunization strategy leader at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls. “We asked them to narrow that so that they don’t open the floodgates,” she said.

CNN: Coronavirus vaccine makes a long, cold journey to rural America (January 29, 2021)
The Pfizer/BioNtech coronavirus vaccine completed an arduous journey through development and approval — but still is left with hundreds of miles to go to reach waiting arms once it arrives in rural America. “Our couriers travel many, many miles. Our physicians, our staff travel miles,” said Susan Jarvis, president and CEO of Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota. The Sanford Health system has more than 400 clinics and senior care locations, many in small towns and isolated farming communities in the upper Midwest. In Bemidji, Minnesota, the last leg of the vaccine’s journey to a number of those communities starts when it’s unloaded from its ultra-cold storage and packed into coolers like those you might see at a cookout — except these have crucial data loggers attached.

WIRED: May I Borrow Your Covid Immunity? (January 29, 2021)
Still, health officials in different parts of the country are optimistic about the drug. Jeremy Cauwels, chief physician of Sanford Health, a network of hospitals in the Midwest, believes that the antibody treatments will prove their worth during these months as people are waiting for the vaccine—and after, for those who refused to get it and become ill.

Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Cases Decline in Nursing Homes, Offering Hopeful Sign for Vaccines (January 29, 2021)
Almost all of Good Samaritan’s nursing homes have received a first dose of vaccine, and about a quarter have received second doses, Mr. Schema said, with nearly all residents and around 50% to 60% of staff opting to get the shots.

Business Insider: How the Dakotas are successfully rolling out COVID vaccines — and 2 major lessons for larger states (January 26, 2021)
North Dakota and South Dakota are among the US states doing the best job of rolling out coronavirus vaccines, and their experience could provide valuable lessons as the rest of the country struggles to catch up.

New York Times: U.S. Coronavirus Cases Are Falling, but Variants Could Erase Progress (January 22, 2021)
North Dakota, which once had the country’s worst rates of coronavirus infection, has seen its cases slow in recent weeks. In November, 116 Covid-19 patients were being treated across three floors of a Sanford Health hospital in Fargo. On Thursday, there were 10 coronavirus patients in the hospital.

CNN: Lifesaving Covid-19 antibody treatments are plentiful, but still sitting on the shelf (January 21, 2021)
One health care system that has embraced the treatments is South Dakota-based Sanford Health, which manages 46 hospitals and 200 senior care locations in 26 states. Sanford said it has treated more than 1,400 patients to date with both Lilly and Regeneron antibody therapies.

Star Tribune: Minnesota’s COVID-19 vaccine providers defend performance (January 16, 2021)
While Minnesota’s vaccine tracker shows that the state has administered only 40% of available vaccine, Sanford Health has provided first doses to 70% of health care workers in its northern Minnesota region and is ready to expand. “We would love to get twice as much vaccine,” said Susan Jarvis, president of Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota, “and we could get it in people’s arms quickly.”

Associated Press: South Dakota Sees Fast Vaccine Delivery, Faces Rural Test (January 16, 2021)
While other states have seen clunky roll-outs and jammed lines for vaccine appointments, the distribution program in South Dakota has been relatively smooth. That’s thanks to a partnership between the Department of Health and the major hospital systems, which have handled the distribution and administration of shots.

San Jose Mercury News: Why West Virginia and South Dakota are beating California at the vaccine race (January 13, 2021)
South Dakota is now vaccinating 50,000 EMS and frontline public health workers, law enforcement and correctional officers. Like West Virginia, it confronts geographic challenges. Because the state is so large and lightly population, vaccinators may need to travel many miles to inoculate just a handful of people. What’s made it work is a unique spirit of cooperation among its three big three health systems, Avera, Monument and Sanford, said Dr. Mike Wilde, vice president medical officer for Sanford Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Star Tribune: Minnesota pushes for weekend shots to boost COVID vaccine rate (January 11, 2021)
Most hospitals in Minnesota have received the Pfizer vaccine, which comes in a five-dose vial and must be used in a few hours after it is thawed. Sanford, Allina Health and Mayo Clinic leaders said they have avoided wasting doses by finding other health care workers on hand if others canceled vaccine appointments.

CNN: Coronavirus vaccine appointment turns into surprise marriage proposal (January 2, 2021)
A Covid-19 vaccine appointment at a Canton, South Dakota hospital turned into a marriage proposal for one healthcare couple.

New York Times: An inoculation ends with a marriage proposal for a South Dakota nurse. (January 2, 2021)
When Eric Vanderlee, a registered nurse from Canton, S.D., went to administer the Covid-19 vaccine to his boyfriend, Robby Vargas-Cortes, an E.M.S. supervisor, he was met with a welcome surprise waiting up Robby’s left sleeve — an engagement ring. Their engagement offered a bright spot in a rather dim year.

2020

MSNBC: Vaccines reach rural frontlines in Minnesota (December 17, 2020)
Worthington, a small community of about 13,000 people, has been one of the hardest hit regions of the state.

NBC News: Rural Minnesota town becomes vaccine hub (December 17, 2020)
Worthington, MN is the vaccine hub for southwest Minnesota, and its rural healthcare facilities making the transfer process a very delicate one.

Star Tribune: Minnesota health care workers, elders receive first doses of COVID-19 vaccine (December 16, 2020)
Sanford Health completed its first vaccinations in North Dakota on Monday and in South Dakota on Tuesday and will start in Minnesota later this week following state training, said Jesse Breidenbach, Sanford’s senior pharmacy executive director. “We’re hopefully seeing a turning point here, where we’re going to defeat COVID over the next several months.”

CNN: Doctor shares story of being among first to be vaccinated (December 15, 2020)
“There’s much more hope. There is the ability to look in our patients’ eyes, and hold their hands, and say, ‘Things will become better.'” Said Dr. Rishi Seth, an internal medicine physician at Sanford Health.

CNN: North Dakota doctor receives Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine (December 15, 2020)
“We know at this time that the end is near,” said Dr. Schaffer. “We still have to be diligent in what we’re doing, but this gives us a fighting chance to defeat this pandemic.”

Business Insider: How one hospital system is relying on a fleet of Dodge minivans to make sure healthcare workers in remote areas can get their COVID shots (December 15, 2020)
Sanford’s courier network will be used to ensure COVID-19 vaccines reach the system’s frontline healthcare workers — and later, the general public — in rural areas that are far from its big hospitals equipped with expensive, ultra-cold freezers that will store Pfizer vaccines.

New York Times The Daily Podcast: America’s First Coronavirus Vaccinations (December 14, 2020)
It was like a scene from a movie. In North Dakota, health care workers lifted a bag of dry ice covering one of the state’s first shipments of the coronavirus vaccine and a cloud filled the room. The strict guidelines governing the vaccine’s storage make even opening the box a complex and time-sensitive process.

TIME Magazine: How the First COVID-19 Vaccinations Rolled Out at Hospitals Across the U.S. (December 14, 2020)
A few minutes before 7 a.m. on Monday, Jesse Breidenbach, senior executive director of pharmacy at Sanford Health, got a text informing him that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines were out for delivery on a truck in Fargo, N.D.

New York Times: Before vaccinations can commence, a logistical feat must be pulled off. (December 14, 2020)
All weekend, pharmacists and other staff from the Sanford Health hospitals here in North Dakota, a state devastated by the virus, had been checking their emails and following a FedEx tracking number as they watched the first vaccines course across the country.

Associated Press: First Batch of Coronavirus Vaccine Arrives in North Dakota (December 14, 2020)
A box of 2,925 doses of the Pfizer, Inc. vaccine packed in dry ice arrived at Sanford Health just before 7 a.m., a moment that the organization’s head of pharmacy said created “a tremendous amount of joy and happiness.” The hospital was to begin administering the vaccine Monday afternoon.

Bloomberg News: Covid Shot to ‘Win the War’ Rolls Out as U.S. Deaths Top 300,000 (December 14, 2020)
In Fargo, North Dakota, the Sanford Medical Center received its shipment three hours earlier than expected on Monday, said spokeswoman Angela Dejene.

New York Times: ‘A Shot of Hope’: What the Vaccine Is Like for Frontline Doctors and Nurses (December 14, 2020)
“That’s why today is so emotional,” said Dr. Seth, an internal-medicine physician with Sanford Health in North Dakota, a state that has been ravaged by the virus. “You’re still fighting a battle, but you’re starting to see the horizon.”

New York Times: Hospitals Prepare for First Shots as Virus Vaccine Shipments Blanket U.S. (December 13, 2020)
Officials with Sanford Health, which operates hospitals and clinics across the Upper Midwest, spent the weekend huddling about their Day 1 vaccination plans, trying to game out where the shipments were most likely to arrive first. On the snowy plains of Fargo, N.D., Jesse Breidenbach, the senior executive director of pharmacy for Sanford Health, refreshed his email again and again on Sunday, waiting to receive a FedEx tracking number that would confirm that some 3,400 doses were en route.

Bloomberg News: Hospitals Await First Shipments of Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine (December 13, 2020)
Jesse Breidenbach, senior executive director of pharmacy at Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health, exchanged celebratory text messages with colleagues when the news of the FDA’s approval broke Friday. That night, Sanford received an email from Pfizer that its order was being prepared. Five of Sanford’s 46 hospitals in the Upper Midwest will receive shipments in the coming week.

CNN: How vaccines will be distributed in rural areas of US (December 9, 2020)
Sanford Health System – which has over 400 clinics and senior care locations, many in small towns and farming communities in the upper Midwest – has prioritized making sure the vaccines that are delivered are kept safe until they are administered.

STAT: On the ground, the pledge to vaccinate 20 million against Covid-19 in December seems unrealistic (December 7, 2020)
Federal officials have pledged a massive distribution push within days of the expected FDA approval this month of the first two vaccines.

NBC: U.S. rural hospitals in “crisis situation” (December 6, 2020)
Overwhelmed hospitals in rural parts of the U.S. now face the daunting task of storing and distributing the coronavirus vaccine. Sanford Medical Center strategically placed eight freezers across North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota to reach those communities.

BBC: Covid tensions in US hotspot of North Dakota: ‘Grow up, mask up’ (December 5, 2020)
North Dakota is the US state with the highest rate of Covid cases per capita since the pandemic began, according to data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

NBC: South Dakota hospital using experimental antibody treatment (December 5, 2020)
Sanford Health, the largest provider of rural health care in the U.S., may have an answer to keep people with COVID-19 out of the hospital before a vaccine becomes available.

MSNBC: First look inside South Dakota hospital where ultracold storage units will freeze Pfizer vaccine (December 2, 2020)
Sanford Health serves rural, harder to reach locations.

MSNBC: Hospitals across U.S. prepare for distribution of Covid-19 vaccine (December 2, 2020)
Dr. Allison Suttle, chief medical officer at Sanford Health, said there has been an uptick in staff members that are willing to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

NBC: First look at the ultra-cold freezers that will sort vaccines in South Dakota (December 2, 2020)
Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines will need to be stored at extremely cold temperatures.

Wall Street Journal: CVS, Walgreens gear up to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to nursing homes (December 2, 2020)
Effort will need to navigate rollout details that may vary by state and potential reluctance by staffers to get the novel shots.

MSNBC: South Dakota Covid patients receive experimental antibody therapy (December 1, 2020)
South Dakota seeing most hospitalizations per capita in the country.

MSNBC: Bridge to the vaccine – SD hospital offers rare preventative antibody treatment (December 1, 2020)
NBC News’ Dasha Burns reports on a newly available antibody treatment at Sanford Health in South Dakota. Officials there say the therapy “really gives our patients hope.”

CNBC: Sanford Health launches new Covid-19 therapy centers (December 1, 2020)
A South Dakota health care system is launching new antibody therapy centers as coronavirus hospitalizations spike.

USA Today: Moderna becomes second company to request emergency FDA authorization for COVID-19 vaccine candidate (November 30, 2020)
Novavax expects to start its large, Phase 3 clinical trial in the United States and Mexico in the coming weeks – slightly later than the company had suggested before. The company has selected more than 100 trial sites, as well as some alternates, and expects to manufacture its vaccine at FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Bloomberg: Covid drugs from Lilly, Regeneron on race access, timing concerns (November 28, 2020)
Antibody therapies are aimed at keeping mild cases from worsening. Coronavirus-beset hospitals are also grappling with more infected staff, said Allison Suttle, chief medical officer at Sanford Health, a nonprofit health system based in South Dakota. Treatment that keeps patients from being admitted would offer a tantalizing reprieve. “That gives us a lot more breathing room in our hospitals,” she said, “that relieves a lot of the issues we’re having.”

Bloomberg: Hospitals race to set vaccine priorities for health-care workers (November 27, 2020)
Allison Suttle, a doctor and chief medical officer of Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health, hopes clinical trial data will reassure the system’s workers.

Bloomberg: Hospitals canceled surgeries to preserve staff during COVID-19 surge (November 25, 2020)
As beds fill with more than 85,000 Covid-19 cases, U.S. facilities struggle again to treat other patients.

Politico: Some help is on the way (November 25, 2020)
Eli Lilly and the Gates Foundation last month announced a deal to produce an unspecified amount of Lilly’s antibody therapy for poorer countries at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies’ facility in Denmark starting in April, months after its emergency use authorization in the U.S.

CBS: Surge in the heartland (November 23, 2020)
Virus spikes in South Dakota where leaders resist mask mandate.

Fortune: How Fujifilm pivoted fast to capture a key piece of the COVID treatment market (November 21, 2020)
One of the biggest advances in the fight against COVID-19 is repurposing portable, battery operated, bedside ultrasound scanners to instantaneously show which organs are hit by the disease.

CNN: South Dakota down to 18% of available ICU beds (November 25, 2020)
South Dakota in top five of states with highest number of cases.

STAT: As a new Covid-19 treatment arrives, hospitals scramble to solve logistical and ethical challenges (November 20, 2020)
Adding synthetic antibodies early enough in the course of an infection could help give our own immune system a leg up.

The Atlantic: “No one is listening to us” (November 19, 2020)
More people than ever are hospitalized with COVID-19. Health-care workers can’t go on like this.

NPR: The COVID-19 surge, according to frontline workers (November 18, 2020)
In the hardest-hit areas, there are simply not enough doctors, nurses, and other specialists to staff makeshift beds and wards.

CNN: North and South Dakota doctors face ICU and staffing shortages as coronavirus cases skyrocket (November 17, 2020)
Dr. Michael LeBeau, president of the Bismarck region of Sanford Health in North Dakota, said his facility has no ICU beds left.

HealthLeaders: How one rural health system is coping with the fall coronavirus surge (November 18, 2020)
Sanford Health’s chief operating officer shares how the health system is reacting to a surge of COVID-19 patients in the organization’s sprawling service area.

Wall Street Journal: Hospitals in Dakotas prep for post-Thanksgiving jump in Covid patients (November 18, 2020)
Sanford Health says it could see more than 200 additional hospital beds filled in the weeks following Thanksgiving.

CNN: Hospitalizations surging in North and South Dakota (November 17, 2020)
In South Dakota, the test positivity rating is averaging nearly 60%.

Wall Street Journal: As COVID-19 surges to new levels across US, states impose flurry of measures (November 12, 2020)
States are slapping new restrictions on daily life amid a resurgence of the coronavirus.

ABC: Hospitals buckle, new lockdowns issued amid rise in COVID cases (November 12, 2020)
The White House task force reported 42 states are in the red zone, with November on track to be the worst month for the U.S.

NPR: Many hospitals in largely rural North Dakota are at capacity (November 12, 2020)
COVID-19 cases in North Dakota are 60% higher than they were four weeks ago.

STAT: Rural hospitals can’t afford ultra-cold freezers to store the leading Covid-19 vaccine (November 11, 2020)
Four major health care systems, from North Carolina to Ohio, North Dakota, and California, told STAT they had bought additional ultra-cold freezers.

NBC: North Dakota allows Covid-positive healthcare workers to stay on job as nurses warn it’s ‘irresponsible’ (November 11, 2020)
North Dakota’s governor announced this week that the state will allow healthcare workers who have tested positive for Covid-19 to continue working in coronavirus units.

Modern Healthcare: New data drills down on comorbidities with highest COVID-19 risk (November 11, 2020)
Sanford Health’s analysis of the around 44,000 COVID-19 patients it has treated revealed some patterns that have helped the health system get ahead of the virus.

CIDRAP: COVID-related nursing shortages hit hospitals nationwide (November 2020)
The rise in cases has left Sanford Health locations such as its Bismarck, North Dakota, hospital with 1 staffed ICU bed available.

Wall Street Journal: COVID-19 is worse in the Dakotas now than it was in the Spring’s hot spots (October 31, 2020)
The percentage of tests for Covid-19 coming back positive in South Dakota has soared to 46%.

CBS: “It’s not like the flu”: A COVID-19 patient’s warning as Midwest sees record hospitalizations (October 29, 2020)
Hospitals in the Midwest and the Great Plains are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients — a 50% spike in the last month in the U.S.

Healthcare Business News: Intermountain Health to merge with Sanford Health (October 29, 2020)
Intermountain Healthcare and Sanford Health are merging as part of a strategic partnership to improve and make healthcare more affordable.

CNBC: Supply chains will become more local in the pharmaceutical industry, says health care CEO (October 27, 2020)
Martin Meeson, CEO of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that drug companies were working to make sure people had access to medicine.

AP News: Sanford Health, Intermountain agree to merge organizations (October 26, 2020)
The combined organization would run 435 clinics across seven states, provide senior care and services in 366 locations in 24 states, and insure 1.1 million people.

Becker’s Hospital Review: Intermountain, Sanford to merge into 70-hospital system (October 26, 2020)
Existing boards of trustees from both systems will join to form a combined board, and Gail Miller, chair of the Intermountain board, will serve as board chair of the merged organization.

HealthLeaders: Sanford Health, Intermountain Healthcare to merge (October 26, 2020)
The merger is expected to close in summer 2021, pending federal and state approvals.

MedCity News: Provider consolidation continues with Intermountain merging with Sanford Health (October 26, 2020)
The combined health system would operate 70 hospitals and employ 89,000 people.

Modern Healthcare: Intermountain, Sanford plan to merge into $15B system (October 26, 2020)
Two sizable not-for-profit health systems, Intermountain Healthcare and Sanford Healthcare plan to merge to form the country’s seventh-largest not-for-profit health system by revenue.

Star Tribune: Rural Minnesota provider Sanford Health merging with system based in Salt Lake City (October 26, 2020)
Health system would join with Intermountain, a similar hospital network.

Wall Street Journal: Hospital merger seeks to create regional giant in the West (October 26, 2020)
Hospitals are looking to expand their networks and gain more influence over where patients get care.

Provider: A step forward in wound care (October 1, 2020)
The federal Medicare waiver for telehealth services has been an unprecedented boon to clinical staff.

The Eagle: US Surgeon General Adams tours Fujifilm, talks vaccines (September 29, 2020)
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams toured Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in College Station Monday and said the country was “near the finish line” regarding creation of COVID-19 vaccines.

Wall Street Journal: COVID-19 test maker examines false-positive results in nursing homes (September 15, 2020)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society said it has gotten reports of false-positive results from Becton Dickinson equipment in three of its nursing homes.

Washington Post: Spiking coronavirus cases and falling oil prices delivered dual blow to North Dakota (September 10, 2020)
The energy-dependent state is seeing a faster growth in cases per capita than anywhere else in the US.

Wall Street Journal: Federal effort to expand COVID-19 testing in nursing homes hits snags (August 26, 2020)
Conflicting state and federal guidelines slow efforts to broaden testing.

Houston Business Journal: Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies Texas hiring hundreds, ramping up capacity for Operation Warp Speed (August 21, 2020)
A College Station-based contract manufacturer is assisting the federal government in its efforts to mass-produce Covid-19 vaccine candidates.

Modern Healthcare: Improving care delivery will be slow without rethinking financial incentives (August 14, 2020)
Interview with Sanford Health plan president John Snyder.

Wall Street Journal: Novavax, J&J Ink Covid-19 Vaccine Deals With U.K. for Tens of Millions of Doses (August 14, 2020)
The contract manufacturer, a partnership between Fujifilm Corp. and Mitsubishi Corp., named Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, will also make extra supplies that Novavax could provide in other markets, the vaccine maker said.

Financial Times: Pandemic provokes new wave of funding for health care startups (August 2, 2020)
Pandemic provokes new wave of funding for health care startups.

CNBC: President Trump announces $265 million award to Fujifilm for coronavirus vaccine manufacturing (July 27, 2020)
The site will support Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to accelerate the development, manufacturing and distribution of vaccines and treatments to fight Covid-19.

WRAL TV: CEO as excited about chance to work on possible coronavirus vaccine as about presidential visit (July 27, 2020)
Martin Meeson, chief executive of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, said being able to manufacture something that could become a vaccine for coronavirus is “a real honor.”

Reuters: Japan’s Fujifilm gets $265 million U.S. contract to boost output of potential virus vaccine (July 27, 2020)
The order widens a pact between the Department of Health and Human Services, the Texas A&M university system and Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies.

WRAL TV: Trump applauds speed of coronavirus vaccine development in Morrisville visit (July 27, 2020)
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, a contract manufacturer for vaccines and gene therapies, is working with Maryland-based Novavax, which recently won a $1.6 billion federal contract to develop a vaccine. The company has already started production of the first batch of Novavax’s NVX-CoV2373 vaccine candidate.

KBTX: Bio-manufacturing center at Texas A&M to produce COVID-19 vaccine candidate (July 27, 2020)
The order supports Operation Warp Speed, which aims to begin delivering millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determines candidates are safe and effective.

ABC 11: Trump to visit Triangle Monday to tout virus vaccine development (July 23, 2020)
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, a contract manufacturer for vaccines and gene therapies, is working with Maryland-based Novavax, which recently won a $1.6 billion federal contract to develop a vaccine.

News & Observer: With potential vaccine manufacturing under way, RTP company prepares for Trump’s visit (July 24, 2020)
As CEO of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, a Japanese contract drug manufacturer with a large presence in Research Triangle Park, Martin Meeson is leading a partnership between Fujifilm and the biotech company Novavax to manufacture one of the more promising vaccine candidates for the novel coronavirus.

WRAL TV: Morrisville firm working overtime to produce potential coronavirus vaccine (July 24, 2020)
While Novavax is the brains behind the effort, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, a contract manufacturer specializes in vaccine and gene therapy production, is the muscle.

The New York Times: FEMA sends faulty protective gear to nursing homes battling virus (July 24, 2020)
The controversy over inadequate protective equipment has come to embody with critics described as a haphazard federal effort.

InStyle: The Badass 50: Health care workers who are saving the day (August 2020)
“Our guiding principle has been to stick to the science of the virus,” says Dr. Allison Suttle of Sanford Health, one of the lead doctors in charge of managing her area’s COVID-19 response.

Becker’s Hospital Review: Fujifilm gets $265M contract from BARDA, partners with Novavax (July 29, 2020)
The money came from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a division of HHS.

Washington Business Journal: Novavax adds Fujifilm to growing manufacturing roster for Covid-19 vaccine (July 27, 2020)
The deal has already given Tokyo-based Fujifilm the green light to start production on its first batch of the drug substance at its manufacturing facility in Morrisville, North Carolina.

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals added beds to treat coronavirus patients. Will they keep them? (July 11, 2020)
Compared with their original plans for 2020, 27% of health systems increased the number of beds they have up and running.

Wall Street Journal: WHO allows for coronavirus transmission by tiny air particles, before symptoms (July 9, 2020)
United Nations agency revised its guidelines on how the new coronavirus spreads based on emerging research and under pressure from many scientists.

The New York Times: Grave shortages of protective gear flare again as Covid cases surge (July 8, 2020)
Five months into the pandemic, the U.S. still hasn’t solved the problem. The dearth of supplies is affecting a broad array of health facilities, renewing pleas for White House intervention.

The New York Times: The fullest look at the racial inequality of Coronavirus (July 5, 2020)
Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups.

Health Europa: COVID-19 ultrasound research receives funding boost (July 3, 2020)
US-based non-profit the Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) has partnered with Fujifilm Sonosite, a point-of-care ultrasound provider, to drive research into COVID-19.

DOTMmed HealthCare Business News: Reinventing the ICU for COVID-19 (July 3, 2020)
Dr. Diku Mandavia interviews Enrico Storti, the frontline ICU director at Maggiore Hospital in Lodi, Italy, near Milan. Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, is one of the oldest hospitals in Italy, founded by Duke Francesco Sforza in 1456.

New England Journal of Medicine: Letter from South Dakota (July 3, 2020)
Many rural communities in the Midwest had not experienced the surge of Covid-19 cases that devastated large U.S. cities, beyond distressing outbreaks at some of our food-processing plants and large nursing homes.

IT Online: Fujifilm Sonosite and EMF Partner in the Battle Against COVID-19 (July 2, 2020)
Industry leaders to research the growing importance of point-of-care ultrasound in COVID-19 care.

Wall Street Journal: Three months in, these patients are still ravaged by Covid’s fallout (July 1, 2020)
Doctors are studying coronavirus patients who are still experiencing symptoms or aftereffects of the disease, months after infection.

Wall Street Journal: One doctor’s quest to save her patient from COVID-19 (June 29, 2020)
At a Boston hospital filled with the dying, a surgeon pinned her hopes on the survival of a young, pregnant woman.

The New York Times: Here is some of what we’ve learned in six months of coronavirus (June 18, 2020)
Early in January, news reports referred to strange and threatening symptoms that had sickened dozens of people in a large Chinese city. Much remains unknown and mysterious, but these are some of the things we’re pretty sure of after half a year of this pandemic.

Healthcare Innovation: Sanford Health rolls out “OurNotes” phase of “OpenNotes” (June 17, 2020)
At South Dakota-based health system, patient input gathered during e-check-in can set the agenda for appointment

The New York Times: Why people are still avoiding the doctor (June 16, 2020)
At first, people delayed medical care for fear of catching Covid. But as the pandemic caused staggering unemployment, medical care has become unaffordable for many.

The Wall Street Journal: As US nursing home deaths reach 50,000, states ease lockdowns (June 16, 2020)
Facilities weigh coronavirus risk of allowing visitors against ills caused by prolonged isolation.

The New York Times: Slowing the coronavirus is speeding the spread of other diseases (June 14, 2020)
Many mass immunization efforts worldwide were halted this spring to prevent spread of the virus at crowded inoculation sites. The consequences have been alarming.

Wall Street Journal: Nursing homes say some protective gear sent by FEMA is unusable (June 11, 2020)
Complaints include gowns unsuited to health-care settings, gloves too small for adults; government and contractor say all are up to standard.

Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus vaccine candidates’ pivotal US testing to start this summer (June 10, 2020)
The last stage of testing for Moderna’s vaccine would begin in July, an NIH official says, followed by candidates from AstraZeneca and J&J.

Star Tribune: In Minneapolis, a quiet army of generosity gains strength (June 2, 2020)
The sheer scope of support, pouring in from Minnesota and the nation, has surprised and relieved exhausted Minneapolis communities.

DOTmed: Five minutes in healthcare – featuring Diku Mandavia (May 29, 2020)
Dr. Mandavia speaks about the coronavirus pandemic and the unique diagnostic benefits of point-of-care sonograms.

Washington Post: Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine (May 27, 2020)
There are already four endemic coronaviruses that circulate continuously, causing the common cold. And many experts think this virus will become the fifth — its effects growing milder as immunity spreads and our bodies adapt to it over time.

Kaiser Health News: Nearly half of Americans delayed medical care due to pandemic (May 27, 2020)
As the coronavirus threat ramped up in March, hospitals, health systems and private practices dramatically reduced inpatient, nonemergency services to prepare for an influx of COVID-19 patients.

Dallas Morning News: Dallas medical team rescues coronavirus patient after 30 days on life support (May 25, 2020)
Doctors at Texas Health Dallas relied on their experience with Ebola — and a treatment from the history books — to help a Dallas man recover.

Wall Street Journal: Study points to efficacy of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 (May 22, 2020)
Sick patients who got plasma transfusions from those who had recovered from the coronavirus infection had better survival rates compared with a control group.

Wall Street Journal: US to invest $1.2 billion to secure potential Coronavirus vaccine from Astra Zeneca and Oxford University (May 21, 2020)
Government to bankroll human trial and ramp-up of manufacturing capacity, hoping to get doses in October.

University of Minnesota. CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota proposes smart and strategic approach to COVID-19 testing (May 20, 2020)
For the role of testing to be optimized, other elements of the cascade—including infrastructure, processes, people, other essential components, and an action plan—must be in place, operational, and continually monitored.

STAT: 9 ways Covid-19 may forever upend the U.S. health care industry (May 19, 2020)
The pandemic could help bring about an end to the American tradition of tying health insurance to employment status.

Wall Street Journal: Moderna says initial COVID-19 vaccine results are positive (May 18, 2020)
Experimental coronavirus vaccine induced immune responses in volunteers, raising hopes that a weapon to slow the pandemic could be on the horizon.

Star Tribune: ‘Every hour is a battle’: A nursing home worker on the front lines of Minnesota’s fight against the coronavirus (May 16, 2020)
For the past two months, there has been little respite for the front-line health workers caring for the roughly 90,000 Minnesotans who live in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.

The New York Times: Hospitals knew how to make money. Then coronavirus happened. (May 15, 2020)
Surgeries are canceled. Business models are shifting. Some of the hardest-hit hospitals may close, leaving patients with fewer options for care.

STAT: Biotech’s new chief lobbyist says she’s a social justice advocate. Will the industry walk the walk? (May 14, 2020)
The veteran physician and scientist was named the new CEO of BIO, the powerful trade group that represents roughly 1,000 biotechnology companies across drugs, diagnostics, and agriculture.

Glamour: How Rep. Katie Porter is making it work in quarantine (May 13, 2020)
Three kids, three meltdowns, five meetings, and one American Girl doll held for ransom—how Rep. Katie Porter is negotiating life in isolation.

UNICEF: As COVID-19 devastates already fragile health systems, over 6,000 additional children under five could die a day, without urgent action (May 12, 202)
UNICEF launches #Reimagine, a global campaign to prevent the pandemic from becoming a lasting crisis for children.

Modern Healthcare: Providence goes from 700 video visits a month to 70,000 a week (May 9, 2020)
Telemedicine mitigates patient transportation issues and requires less time away from work. It can also free up physicians who want to spend more time at home with their families. “We won’t be able to take those things away from physicians now that they have seen how well this works,” said Dr. Allison Suttle, chief medical officer at Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford. “Patients also expect it to continue.”

The Wall Street Journal: Families delay children’s vaccines during pandemic (May 8, 2020)
Pediatricians warn delayed immunizations risk outbreaks of other highly contagious diseases such as measles.

The New York Times: After recovery from the coronavirus, most people carry antibodies (May 7, 2020)
A new study adds to evidence of immunity among those who have already been exposed to the pathogen.

USA TODAY: Coronavirus cases are likely artificially low in some states thanks to flawed testing (May 4, 2020)
As of May 3, South Dakota’s per capita testing rate was 42% higher than Minnesota’s, according to the USA TODAY Network analysis. “We felt the best way to mitigate the outbreak no matter where is to test everybody, regardless of symptoms,” said Mike Wilde, vice president and chief medical officer for Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls. “That way, any positives can be identified and isolated.”

USA TODAY: ‘It makes no sense’: Feds consider relaxing infection control in US nursing homes (May 4, 2020)
“Sometimes regulation hinders us from putting resources where we know they need to be,” said Dr. Gregory Johnson, chief medical officer of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, the largest not-for-profit provider of long-term care and senior services in the United States. During the pandemic, he said, his organization has “far exceeded” even the part-time requirement. Johnson said they began implementing visitor restrictions and other preventative measures in early March. As of Sunday, the Good Samaritan Society said 26 of its 143 skilled nursing facilities had at least one confirmed case of COVID-19. Johnson said the organization – which operates in 26 states – grapples with differing local, state and federal regulations and tries to surpass them. Too often, Johnson said, the public hears only about the nursing homes that are “bad apples.” “There are a whole lot of people out there in this business who are doing it because of a deep care and a deep commitment to mission,” he said.

The New Yorker: The Rush to Reopen (May 3, 2020)
Moreover, as the covid Tracking Project noted, in South Dakota, a state that is almost ninety per cent white, people of color account for close to seventy per cent of the confirmed cases—a reflection of the demographics of meatpackers, and of wider disparities.

Star Tribune: Mayo Clinic’s coronavirus research task force is in a desperate race against time (May 2, 2020)
When the Mayo Clinic — one of the world’s top research hospitals, with more than 4,000 full-time research personnel — tapped Badley to lead the task force that approves COVID-19 research proposals, he became the lead of one of the most aspirational projects in medicine. More than half of Mayo’s research staff is working on coronavirus-related projects. “Mayo can do big things,” said Dr. James Cerhan, a Mayo epidemiologist on Badley’s task force. “But this is once in a generation, once in 100 years, that we’ve had to organize like this so fast, both on the clinical and research sides.”

Wall Street Journal: Thinly Staffed Nursing Homes Face Challenges in Pandemic (May 1, 2020)
Nursing homes around the U.S. are facing a staffing crisis, as the coronavirus sidelines members of a workforce that was already thinly stretched in many facilities before the pandemic. Some of the largest nursing home chains had particularly tight staffing levels before the coronavirus hit, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found.

Wall Street Journal: U.S. Explores Emergency-Use Approval for Gilead Drug After Study Found It Helped Recovery From Covid-19 (April 29, 2020)
Federal health regulators are exploring whether to greenlight the emergency use of a Gilead Sciences Inc. drug in serious Covid-19 patients, after U.S. government researchers reported the therapy helped the patients recover faster. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said Wednesday that hospitalized Covid-19 patients taking remdesivir in the institute’s study had a speedier recovery than patients taking placebo, according to preliminary results.

Modern Healthcare: Nearly a third of Americans have put off healthcare during COVID-19 (April 28, 2020)
Delaying healthcare is a serious concern, said Dr. Allison Suttle, chief medical officer at Sanford Health. Measles immunizations, for instance, have dropped by about 50% in April year over year at the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based integrated health system, she said. “Some of those vaccines are administered on a very scheduled basis in six-month windows,” Suttle said. “Delaying care will increase healthcare costs, and if vaccinations are put off altogether and there is not a herd immunity to measles, there could be an outbreak.”

Wall Street Journal: Consensus Is Emerging That Children Are Less Vulnerable to Coronavirus (April 27, 2020)
Doctors are increasingly confident that children are less affected by the new coronavirus than adults, a finding that could aid governments considering next steps in reopening economies. Medical professionals recognized early in the global pandemic that children generally appeared to be less susceptible to falling ill from the new bug, with fewer confirmed cases, hospital admissions, serious complications or deaths than their parents or grandparents. Only 1.7% of nearly 150,000 infections were found in people under 18 years of age, according to a nationwide analysis of U.S. data published this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York Times: Can Antibody Tests Help End the Coronavirus Pandemic? (April 26, 2020)
The tests are not reliable enough to guide policy on lockdowns and reopenings, experts said. But they can help model the spread of the virus.

Washington Post: Bill Gates: Here are the innovations we need to reopen the economy (April 23, 2020)
It’s entirely understandable that the national conversation has turned to a single question: “When can we get back to normal?” The shutdown has caused immeasurable pain in jobs lost, people isolated and worsening inequity. People are ready to get going again. Unfortunately, although we have the will, we don’t have the way — not yet. Before the United States and other countries can return to business and life as usual, we will need some innovative new tools that help us detect, treat and prevent covid-19.

New York Times: Vaccine Rates Drop Dangerously as Parents Avoid Doctor’s Visits (April 23, 2020)
As parents around the country cancel well-child checkups to avoid coronavirus exposure, public health experts fear they are inadvertently sowing the seeds of another health crisis. Immunizations are dropping at a dangerous rate, putting millions of children at risk for measles, whooping cough and other life-threatening illnesses.

Star Tribune: Gov. Tim Walz announces plan to expand COVID-19 testing (April 23, 2020)
Gov. Tim Walz unveiled his much-anticipated “moon shot” testing strategy on Wednesday so that Minnesota can fully track the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused 179 deaths in the state, and diagnose all cases of people with the infectious illness. Standing with leaders of Mayo Clinic, the University of Minnesota and HealthPartners, the governor said that this $36 million agreement will result in the most aggressive COVID-19 testing program in the nation and allow for the diagnostic testing of as many as 20,000 samples per day — beyond the 5,000 per day that he had said was necessary.

Wall Street Journal: Hundreds Receive Plasma From Recovered Coronavirus Patients in National Study (April 21, 2020)
Six hundred severely ill Covid-19 patients have received blood plasma from recovered patients in a study researchers hope sheds light on whether the experimental therapy improves health outcomes and yields other useful data outside the scientific rigor of a traditional clinical trial. The patients are participating in a national expanded-access program authorized in early April by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

New York Times: The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead. (April 18, 2020)
Exactly how the pandemic will end depends in part on medical advances still to come. It will also depend on how individual Americans behave in the interim. If we scrupulously protect ourselves and our loved ones, more of us will live. If we underestimate the virus, it will find us.

New York Times: How Millions of Women Became the Most Essential Workers in America (April 18, 2020)
One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential. From the cashier to the emergency room nurse to the drugstore pharmacist to the home health aide taking the bus to check on her older client, the soldier on the front lines of the current national emergency is most likely a woman.

Barron’s: Coronavirus Has Ushered in the Digital Revolution in Medicine. How Investors Can Play It. (April 17, 2020)
At Sanford Health, one of the largest rural health-care systems, more than 1,600 patients a day now use telemedicine, up from an average of 50 a day in February.

New York Times: Asthma Is Absent Among Top Covid-19 Risk Factors, Early Data Shows (April 16, 2020)
The research at this early stage is minimal and not always consistent, as one would expect. A recent commentary published in Lancet by a group of European researchers called it “striking” that asthma appeared “to be underrepresented in the comorbidities reported for patients with Covid-19” — comorbidity being the term for a secondary health problem. A small study of 24 critically ill patients in Washington State noted that three had asthma.

Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Ravages the Lungs. It Also Affects the Brain. (April 14, 2020)
As the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide reaches 2 million, clinicians are realizing the disease doesn’t just ravage the lungs and hurt the heart. It also can, in a significant proportion of cases, affect the nervous system in myriad little-understood ways. Through a growing number of papers, doctors around the globe are chronicling Covid-19’s lesser-known neurological manifestations including brain inflammation, hallucinations, seizures, cognitive deficits and loss of smell and taste. It is unknown whether these are caused directly by the virus infiltrating the nervous system, or by the body’s immune response to infection.

New York Times: More Coronavirus Vaccines and Treatments Move Toward Human Trials (April 8, 2020)
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads at unprecedented rates, invading the lungs of people of all ages, ethnicities and medical histories, companies are ratcheting up their efforts to fight the disease with accelerated schedules for creating new vaccines, and beginning clinical trials for potential treatments.

New York Times: Coronavirus Was Slow to Spread to Rural America. Not Anymore. (April 8, 2020)
Coronavirus illnesses and deaths are still overwhelmingly concentrated in cities and suburbs, and new rural cases have not exploded at the same rate as in some cities. But they are growing fast. This week, the case rate in rural areas was more than double what it was six days earlier.

Kaiser Health News: ‘When It Starts Getting Into Your Local Hospital, It Becomes Real’ (April 8, 2020)
A look inside a rural Louisiana hospital on the front lines of a pandemic.

Wall Street Journal: Hunt Is on for Genetic Clues to Why Coronavirus Impact Varies (April 7, 2020)
Scientists around the world are pooling their knowledge and resources to determine whether gene variations make people more susceptible to serious Covid-19 infection, hoping to learn why some patients’ coronavirus symptoms are quite mild while others’ are severe.

Boston Globe: Massachusetts to launch first US trial of Japanese coronavirus drug (April 7, 2020)
Three Massachusetts hospitals have received approval to launch the first US clinical trial of a Japanese flu drug that could be used to treat COVID-19, according to a doctor involved in the effort. The trial — which will take place at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester — was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration Tuesday. The small, randomized trial of the antiviral drug favipiravir will look to study its effectiveness as a treatment for patients infected with the coronavirus, according to doctors involved in the study. The Japanese government has touted the drug, known by the brand name Avigan, as a possible treatment for COVID-19 Medical authorities in China have called the drug “clearly effective” in treating coronavirus patients after conducting two clinical trials.

New York Times: How Coronavirus Attacks the Body (April 6, 2020)
It doesn’t take long for mild coronavirus symptoms to turn serious. These virtual reality images show how the virus can invade the lungs and kill.

Kaiser Family Foundation: Is There a Widening Gender Gap in Coronavirus Stress? (April 6, 2020)
The KFF Coronavirus Poll conducted in March 11-15, 2020 found that there were some gender differences in how men and women were experiencing the pandemic, with women more likely to worry about both the health and economic effects on their families, and more likely to report taking protective actions.

Kaiser Health News: Mysterious Heart Damage, Not Just Lung Troubles, Befalling COVID-19 Patients (April 6, 2020)
While the focus of the COVID-19 pandemic has been on respiratory problems and securing enough ventilators, doctors on the front lines are grappling with a new medical mystery. In addition to lung damage, many COVID-19 patients are also developing heart problems — and dying of cardiac arrest.

Senior Housing News: COVID-19 could cost senior living industry $57 billion as operating expenses soar (April 6, 2020)
All non-exempt, hourly employees at the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society are receiving a one-time “stability payment” of between $50 and $300 — and their health care premiums will be fully covered from April through June.

New York Times: The Rising Heroes of the Coronavirus Era? Nations’ Top Scientists. (April 5, 2020)
The new celebrities emerging across Europe as the coronavirus burns a deadly path through the continent are not actors or singers or politicians. Instead, they are epidemiologists and virologists who have become household names after spending most of their lives in virtual anonymity.

Modern Healthcare: Critical-access hospitals with long-term care units face more COVID-19 dangers (April 4, 2020)
Critical-access providers are implementing practices to shield their long-term care patients from the virus such as not allowing any visitors while at the same time preparing to treat COVID-19 patients in their hospitals including ones from their long-term care arm.

Wall Street Journal: Questions About Accuracy of Coronavirus Tests Sow Worry (April 2, 2020)
Health experts say they now believe nearly one in three patients who are infected are nevertheless getting a negative test result. They caution that only limited data is available, and their estimates are based on their own experience in the absence of hard science.

McKnight’s Senior Living: Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society employees to receive bonus payments (April 2, 2020)
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on everything we do,” said Randy Bury, president of the Good Samaritan Society. “We owe a debt of gratitude to our frontline caregivers who are protecting the most vulnerable during this time of great need.”

CIDRAP: What can hospitals still do to prep for COVID-19? (March 31, 2020)
In Sioux Falls, Sanford has been clearly defining roles for healthcare workers for the potentially chaotic time when coronavirus patients arrive and instituting strict infection prevention and control measures for cleaning, laundry, food services, visits, and other issues.

STAT: STAT’s guide to how hospitals are using AI to fight Covid-19 (March 31, 2020)
The coronavirus outbreak has rapidly accelerated the nation’s slow-moving effort to incorporate artificial intelligence into medical care, as hospitals grasp onto experimental technologies to relieve an unprecedented strain on their resources.

New York Times: The Medical News Site That Saw the Coronavirus Coming Months Ago (March 30, 2020)
Stat, started in 2015 by the Red Sox owner John Henry, is drawing four to five times its normal audience. “We were built for this,” one of its editors said.

Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Pandemic Delays Testing of New Drugs (March 27, 2020)
The world-wide spread of the new coronavirus is throwing into disarray studies critical to the development of promising new medicines. The pandemic is causing delays in starting clinical drug trials and temporarily halting others, according to companies, consultants and industry officials. Patients enrolled in some studies have stopped showing up at trial sites, while hospitals supposed to see trial subjects are shifting attention to tackling coronavirus patients. Industry scientists, meanwhile, can’t travel for research.

Wall Street Journal: Hospital Capacity Crosses Tipping Point in U.S. Coronavirus Hot Spots (March 26, 2020)
Hospitals in U.S. pandemic epicenters have passed a tipping point in the fight against the new coronavirus as the relentless climb in infections forces some to move patients to outlying facilities, divert ambulances and store bodies in a refrigerated truck.

New York Times: Doctors Expect a ‘Huge Spike’ in Pediatric Injuries at Home (March 26, 2020)
Some doctors and childhood injury organizations worry that the new coronavirus outbreak will lead to a rise in accidents and injuries involving children at home.

HealthCareBusiness: Discussing the use of point-of-care ultrasound for evaluating COVID-19 patients (March 23, 2020)
Increasingly, hospitals are using point-of-care ultrasound to evaluate patients with COVID-19. To learn more, HealthCare Business News spoke to Diku Mandavia, chief medical officer and senior vice president of FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc and FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A. in Bothell, Washington.

New York Times: You Can Help Break the Chain of Transmission (March 19, 2020)
Dr. Helen Jenkins, whose work focuses on tuberculosis, which still kills about 4,000 people daily around the world, drew a simple tree diagram, as a way to clearly convey the value of cutting just one link in the coronavirus transmission chain. The basic message: Very simple interventions, such as working from home and severing even one link, have an exponential effect. Every individual acting preemptively can make a huge difference.

Wall Street Journal: U.S. Calls for Help from AI Researchers to Fight Coronavirus (March 16, 2020)
The White House and a group of researchers called for help in analyzing a new publicly available database of scientific articles related to the coronavirus and Covid-19.The database is being made available to machine-learning experts and other researchers in an effort to study how to combat and treat the pandemic.

Washington Post: Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve” (March 14, 2020)
After the first case of covid-19, the disease caused by the new strain of coronavirus, was announced in the United States, reports of further infections trickled in slowly. Two months later, that trickle has turned into a steady current. This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May.

CNN: Protecting residents from a deadly threat, nursing homes must decide who gets in and who stays out (March 13, 2020)
The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, one of the nation’s largest senior-housing providers, also halted visits, with rare exceptions. At its facility in Blaine, Washington, about 110 miles north of Seattle, administrator Haley Amundson said employees were cleaning door handles and water fountains up to three times a day.

New York Times: Why Women May Face a Greater Risk of Catching Coronavirus (March 12, 2020)
As the coronavirus snakes its way around the world — canceling events, shuttering offices and suspending classes — some health experts worry that the crisis could put women at a disproportionate risk, exacerbating gender, social and economic fault lines. Typical gender roles can “influence where men and women spend their time, and the infectious agents they come into contact with, as well as the nature of exposure, its frequency and its intensity,” declared the World Health Organization in a 2007 report. In other words: The roles that women have in society could place them squarely in the virus’s path (although some early studies of coronavirus cases in China suggest men have a higher death rate).

The Hill: Trump administration issues new guidance for nursing homes to combat coronavirus (March 4, 2020)
The Trump administration on Wednesday issued new guidance to prioritize inspection efforts at nursing homes around the country in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Vice President Pence met with nursing home and long-term care industry leaders at the White House on Wednesday morning as part of ongoing outreach between the government and businesses affected by the virus.

Kaiser Health News: As coronavirus cases grow, so does scrutiny of nursing home infection plans (March 4, 2020)
Nursing home industry leaders asked White House officials to address potential shortages of supplies, such as masks and gowns, if the contagion continues to spread. “The links in that [supply] chain are getting a little weaker,” said Randy Bury, president of the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, which runs skilled rehabilitation facilities and other elderly care centers in 24 states.

New York Times: Nursing homes are closing across rural America, scattering residents (March 4, 2020)
South Dakota chips in less than any other state in the nation to pay for long-term care for residents on Medicaid, said Mark B. Deak, executive director of the South Dakota Health Care Association. He added that the state’s low payment level — a product of South Dakota’s fiscal conservatism and distrust of government-run health care — has now created a crisis.

Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Response Plan Exposes Vulnerabilities in U.S. Health-Care System (March 4, 2020)
Lawmakers and federal officials, alarmed by the spread of the coronavirus, are moving to plug gaps in the U.S. health-care system that could worsen the epidemic by deterring people from getting tested, such as a lack of insurance and paid sick days, as well as the cost of medical care.

Wall Street Journal: CDC Warns It Expects Coronavirus to Spread in U.S. (February 25, 2020)
Federal health authorities said Tuesday they now expect a wider spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. and are preparing for a potential pandemic, though they remain unsure about how severe the health threat could be. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday the agency expects a sustained transmission of the virus and called for businesses, schools and communities to brace themselves and plan for potential outbreaks. “We expect we will see community spread in this country,” meaning the virus circulating within local communities, said Dr. Messonnier. She added that the question isn’t if the virus will expand in the U.S., but when.

Washington Post: Old diseases, other public health threats reemerge in the U.S. (February 24, 2020)
Even as the world struggles to control the coronavirus, U.S. health officials are refighting battles they thought they had won, such as halting measles outbreaks, reducing deaths from heart disease and protecting young people from tobacco. These hard-fought victories are at risk as parents avoid vaccinating children, obesity rates climb and vaping spreads like wildfire among teens.

Wall Street Journal: Medicaid Standoff: Trump Plan to Tighten Oversight of States Draws Objections (February 15, 2020)
Many governors, insurers and hospitals are denouncing a Trump administration plan to tighten oversight over how states pay for their share of Medicaid, saying it would deprive them of billions of dollars in funding, jeopardize health coverage and strain state budgets. The proposal would impose new reporting requirements and restrictions on financial practices used by states to pay for Medicaid. The Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Regulation, as the proposal is known, also would apply to extra payments states give to some doctors and providers.

Associated Press: Amid coronavirus fears, a second wave of flu hits US kids (February 14, 2020)
A second wave of flu is hitting the U.S., turning this into one of the nastiest seasons for children in a decade. The number of child deaths and the hospitalization rate for youngsters are the highest seen at this point in any season since the severe flu outbreak of 2009-10, health officials said Friday. And the wave is expected to keep going for weeks. Experts say it is potentially a bad time for an extended flu season, given concerns about the new coronavirus out of China, which can cause symptoms that can be difficult to distinguish from flu without testing.

Modern Healthcare: Rural hospitals’ margins erode, sparking financial instability (February 14, 2020)
More than 450 rural hospitals are financially unstable as operating margins decline, new research shows. Rural hospitals in states that have not expanded Medicaid recorded a -0.3% median operating margin, compared to 0.8% for rural facilities in expansion states, according to the report. Providers in a Medicaid expansion state are 62% less likely to close.

STAT: Americans with employer coverage saw growth in drug spending outpace other medical costs (February 13, 2020)
Americans with private employer health insurance spent nearly 26% more on prescription drugs from 2014 to 2018, according to a new analysis. At the same time, the average price of a medicine purchased by each employee rose by almost 21% and their usage rose more than 4% during that time period.

Modern Healthcare: Employer health plan spending jumped 4.4% in 2018 (February 13, 2020)
Per capita health spending for the 160 million Americans in employer-sponsored health plans grew by 4.4% in 2018, the third consecutive year of increases above 4%, according to the latest annual spending report by the Health Care Cost Institute.

New York Times: An Alzheimer’s Treatment Fails: ‘We Don’t Have Anything Now’ (February 10, 2020)
The study aimed to show that Alzheimer’s disease could be stopped if treatment began before symptoms emerged. The participants were the best candidates that scientists could find: still healthy, but with a rare genetic mutation that guaranteed they would develop dementia. For five years, on average, the volunteers received monthly infusions or injections of one of two experimental drugs, along with annual blood tests, brain scans, spinal taps and cognitive tests.

New York Times: Inundated With Flu Patients, U.S. Hospitals Brace for Coronavirus (February 7, 2020)
With an intense flu season in full swing, hundreds of thousands of coughing and feverish patients have already overwhelmed emergency rooms around the United States. Now, hospitals are bracing for the potential spread of coronavirus that could bring another surge of patients.

STAT: We need better regulation of stem cell therapies, especially rogue clinics (February 6, 2020)
Rogue stem cell clinics continue to victimize hopeful patients seeking cures for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, autism, chronic pain, and more. Most of these treatments are unproven and unsupported by evidence, wasting precious time and health care dollars for desperate patients and often doing more harm than good to patients’ health and survival.

Kaiser Health News: Why Home Health Care Is Suddenly Harder To Come By For Medicare Patients (February 3, 2020)
Altogether, about 12,000 home care agencies (most of them for-profit) provided care to 3.4 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available. To qualify for services, a person must be homebound and in need of intermittent skilled care (less than eight hours a day) from nurses or therapists. Previously, Medicare’s home health rates reflected the amount of therapy delivered: More visits meant higher payments. Now, therapy isn’t explicitly factored into Medicare’s reimbursement system, known as the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM).

New York Times: Wuhan Coronavirus Looks Increasingly Like a Pandemic, Experts Say (February 2, 2020)
The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe, according to many of the world’s leading infectious disease experts. The prospect is daunting. A pandemic — an ongoing epidemic on two or more continents — may well have global consequences, despite the extraordinary travel restrictions and quarantines now imposed by China and other countries, including the United States.

New York Times: W.H.O. Warns That Pipeline for New Antibiotics Is Running Dry (January 27, 2020)
With the pipeline for new antibiotics slowing to a trickle and bankruptcies driving pharmaceutical companies from the field, the World Health Organization on Friday issued a fresh warning about the global threat of drug-resistant infections.

Wall Street Journal: Cooper’s Take: Takeaways From the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (January 17, 2020)
Thousands of health-care dealmakers and executives flocked to San Francisco between Jan. 12 and Jan. 16 for the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. Private-equity sponsors sat through days of meetings with bankers and executives to learn more about companies that would be looking for investors in 2020.

Kaiser Health News: What The 2020s Have In Store For Aging Boomers (January 16, 2020)
Within 10 years, all of the nation’s 74 million baby boomers will be 65 or older. The most senior among them will be on the cusp of 85. Even sooner, by 2025, the number of seniors (65 million) is expected to surpass that of children age 13 and under (58 million) for the first time, according to Census Bureau projections.

US News & World Report: The AI Revolution Is Coming in Emergency Care (January 13, 2020)
Artificial intelligence is poised to have a transformative impact on emergency department teams and the broader world of medical diagnostics. Think of AI as “digital consultants” – advanced computational tools, now making their way to the front lines of medicine where they augment the diagnostic skills of human doctors.

New York Times: A.I. Is Learning to Read Mammograms (January 1, 2020)
Artificial intelligence can help doctors do a better job of finding breast cancer on mammograms, researchers from Google and medical centers in the United States and Britain are reporting in the journal Nature.

2019

Wall Street Journal: In Published Work, Male Scientists Sing Their Own Praises More (December 16, 2019)
Male scientists portray their studies as “unprecedented,” “remarkable,” “excellent” and “novel” more often than female scientists, a new study finds, which may contribute to gender differences in pay and promotion in the medical world. The study, published Monday in the British Medical Journal, analyzed more than 6.2 million articles published in journals between 2002 and 2017.

New York Times: Medicaid Covers a Million Fewer Children. Baby Elijah Was One of Them. (October 22, 2019)
Nationwide, more than a million children disappeared from the rolls of the two main state-federal health programs for lower-income children, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, between December 2017 and June, the most recent month with complete data.

New York Times: Pregnant Women Should Get Flu and Whooping Cough Shots, C.D.C. Says October 8, 2019)
Millions of pregnant women in the United States are not getting two vital vaccines that protect not only their health, but their babies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The vaccines — against flu and whooping cough — are strongly recommended during every pregnancy. But only about 35 percent of pregnant women in the country are receiving both vaccines, according to a new C.D.C. report, and just over half receive one.

Los Angeles Times: Polio was nearly extinct. Then the anti-vaxx movement reached Pakistan (September 5, 2019)
Polio is making a troubling comeback in Pakistan, with a surge in children infected with a disease that had been all but wiped out there. It is being driven by some of the same forces spreading measles in the United States – a broad U.S.-based anti-vaccination movement rooted in suspicions of modern medicine and unsubstantiated rumors fueled by social media.

CDC: An estimated 92% of cancers caused by HPV could be prevented by vaccine (August 22, 2019)
During 2012-2016, an average of 43,999 HPV-associated cancers were reported each year, according to a study published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Among the estimated 34,800 cancers probably caused by HPV, 92 percent are attributable to the HPV types that are included in the HPV vaccine and could be prevented if HPV vaccine recommendations were followed, according to the report.

Kaiser Family Foundation: ACA medical expansion reduced uninsured rates and uncompensated care costs in expansion states (August 15, 2019)
Multiple studies over the last five years find that the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion has increased health coverage, affordability, and access to care while producing budget savings for states and reductions in uncompensated care costs for hospitals and clinics, according to a KFF review of more than 300 studies and policy reports.

New York Times: Exercise During Pregnancy May Have Lasting Benefits for Babies (August 7, 2019)
Newborns whose mothers exercise during pregnancy may become physically coordinated a little earlier than other babies, according to a captivating new study of gestation, jogging and the varying ability of tiny infants to make a fist. The study’s findings add to growing evidence that physical activity during pregnancy can strengthen not just the mother but also her unborn children and might influence how well and willingly those children later move on their own.

New York Times: Philippines Declares a National Dengue Epidemic (August 6, 2019)
The Philippines declared a national dengue epidemic on Tuesday, saying that the mosquito-borne disease had killed at least 622 people in the country so far this year. More than 146,000 dengue cases were reported in the first seven months of the year, almost twice as many as in the same period last year, according to the country’s health department.

New York Times: Colorectal Cancer Rises Among Younger Adults (July 31, 2019)
Colorectal cancer is typically considered a disease of aging — most new cases are diagnosed in people over age 50. But even as the rates decrease in older adults, scientists have documented a worrisome trend in the opposite direction among patients in their 20s and 30s. Now, data from national cancer registries in Canada add to the evidence that colorectal cancer rates are rising in younger adults. The increases may even be accelerating.

Kaiser Health News: Doctor Alexa Will See You Now: Is Amazon Primed To Come To Your Rescue? (July 29, 2019)
Now that it’s upending the way you play music, cook, shop, hear the news and check the weather, the friendly voice emanating from your Amazon Alexa-enabled smart speaker is poised to wriggle its way into all things health care.

Wall Street Journal: Consumers Will Be Able to Pay for Doctor Visits on Their Phones, Via Anthem (July 22, 2019)
Health insurers are racing to roll out new digital tools that give them a deeper role in health care, aiming to reduce costs and improve convenience for consumers. The latest sign is a new app from Anthem that is set to be introduced next week in one state, but later reach the big insurer’s full geographic territory. The app will let consumers, including those who don’t have its insurance, schedule and pay for medical visits through their smartphones, as well as learn potential diagnoses and text with doctors.

Wall Street Journal: Ebola Epidemic in Congo Declared a Global Health Emergency (July 17, 2019)
The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a global public-health emergency, a rare move that seeks to mobilize more funds to stop the deadly virus nearly a year after it first took hold in a region marked by decades of conflict.

USA Today: First baby in US born from transplanted uterus of deceased donor, Cleveland Clinic says (July 9, 2019)
The first baby in the United States born from the transplanted uterus of a deceased donor was delivered last month at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. The mother, who is in her mid-30s, is one of three women who successfully received the transplant and the first to give birth, the clinic announced on Tuesday. The trial involves 10 women with uterine factor infertility (UFI).

Wall Street Journal: Midwest Hospital Systems to Merge Into 26-State Regional Giant (June 28, 2019)
Two major Midwestern hospital systems plan to merge, according to executives involved in the deal, creating another regional giant as the nation’s $1 trillion hospital sector continues to consolidate. Sanford Health, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and UnityPoint Health, based in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday signed a letter of intent to combine the two nonprofit systems, which together operate 76 hospitals and outpatient and long-term-care services across 26 states, executives of the two systems said.

New York Times: HPV Vaccines Are Reducing Infections, Warts — and Probably Cancer (June 27, 2019)
Vaccines against the human papillomavirus have sharply reduced infections, genital and anal warts, and precancerous lesions in young women and girls in more than a dozen wealthy countries, a major new study has found — powerful evidence that these vaccines will ultimately cause major drops in cervical cancer.

New York Times: A Boy Who Had Spinal Surgery in the Womb Stands on His Own Two Feet (June 24, 2019)
The condition, spina bifida, occurs when tissue that should enclose and protect the spinal column does not form properly, leaving part of the spine uncovered, with nerves exposed. About 2,000 children a year are born with the disorder in the United States. Surgery to repair the defect can be performed after a child is born, but the results are often better if it can be accomplished before birth. Because nerve damage is irreversible and accumulates as a pregnancy progresses, closing the spine as early as possible can prevent further injury. Traditionally, the prenatal surgery has required cutting open the uterus. But Lexi and her husband, Joshuwa, chose an experimental approach: fetoscopic surgery, developed at Texas Children’s Hospital by Dr. Michael A. Belfort, the obstetrician and gynecologist in chief, and Dr. William Whitehead, a pediatric neurosurgeon.

Wall Street Journal: Heart Attack at 49—America’s Biggest Killer Makes a Deadly Comeback (June 21, 2019)
One of America’s greatest achievements over much of the past century has been a huge decline in death rates from heart disease and strokes. Anti-smoking campaigns, medications to control blood pressure and cholesterol, and surgical advances have extended millions of lives, fundamentally reshaping the U.S. population. Now, progress has stalled. That’s helping drive down life expectancy in the U.S. after decades in which each generation of Americans could expect to live longer than the one that came before.

Star Tribune: Editorial: Moms are dying as Minnesota health panel dawdles (June 21, 2019)
Minnesota, a state home to world-class providers, ought to be leading the charge to rein in this public health crisis. Instead, a group of state experts, whose mission is to delve into Minnesota data and find ways to prevent these deaths, hasn’t met since spring 2017. The reason appears to be foot-dragging by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) in filling a job vacancy created when the group’s official coordinator retired.

Politico: Efforts to save new moms clash with GOP’s Medicaid cuts (June 14, 2019)
The push to address the soaring U.S. maternal morality rate is colliding with a broader, more ideological public health imperative: Republican-led efforts to scale back Medicaid. The safety net program pays for half of all births in the nation. Democrats and many public health experts see it as a natural vessel for slowing the death toll of pregnant women and new mothers, by extending care in the crucial year following childbirth.

New York Times: N.I.H. Head Calls for End to All-Male Panels of Scientists (June 12, 2019)
The word “scientist” does not specify a gender. And yet, for eons — well, ever since conferences and symposiums emerged from the primordial academic soup — the majority of prominent scientific speakers and panelists have been men. Now, the effort to achieve better gender balance has a new high-profile champion: the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis S. Collins. In a statement titled “Time to End the Manel Tradition,” Dr. Collins, who led the Human Genome Project and has been N.I.H. director for a decade, said on Wednesday he would no longer speak at conferences that do not show a strong commitment to diversifying the makeup of their panelists.

New York Times: One Hospital’s Plan to Reduce C-sections: Communicate (June 5, 2019)
Two factors account for a majority of unnecessary C-sections. The first is “arrest of labor,” or “failure to progress,” meaning that labor is stalled. The reason isn’t always clear. The second factor is “unreassuring fetal heart tones,” or opaque information from a fetal heart rate monitor about how well a baby is tolerating labor. Experts believe that probing these two areas could unlock the mystery of too many C-sections, and curtail them.

New York Times: Sweden Finds a Simple Way to Improve New Mothers’ Health. It Involves Fathers. (June 4, 2019)
A new study suggests a way to make a significant difference in mothers’ postpartum health: Give the other parent paid leave, and the flexibility to use it on days the mother needs extra support, even if it just means a couple of days at home.

Wall Street Journal: The Push for Fewer Opioids for New Mothers (June 3, 2019)
Doctors generally consider it safe for babies when breast-feeding mothers take controlled doses of certain opiates like oxycodone. Most hospitals give women who have C-sections opioids for pain and send them home with a prescription whether they ask for one or not. Now, some of the country’s leading hospitals are revising this longstanding policy. When given more limited choices, new mothers often find they don’t want or need amounts of opioids that used to come standard, research shows. This change is part of a push to reduce unnecessary opioid prescriptions in response to the opioid epidemic, which kills an average of 130 Americans a day. Thirty-six percent of such deaths are from prescription opioid overdoses, which can start with unused pills from family members and friends.

New York Times: When Defending Vaccines Gets Ugly (June 2, 2019)
The percentage of unvaccinated children has quadrupled since 2001, vaccine-preventable diseases like measles are creeping back as a result, and mistrust in science — the fuel powering this crisis — has migrated from the fringes to the center of American life. The denigration of individual scientists is a chilling aspect of that mistrust; experts say it skews public discourse by scaring vaccine proponents into silence.

Wall Street Journal: Health Law Improved Access to Cancer Treatment, Studies Show (June 2, 2019)
New studies suggest the 2010 Affordable Care Act has modestly improved Americans’ timely access to cancer treatment, and may have smoothed some racial disparities in patient access. Researchers said the health law’s expansion of insurance coverage, including the enlargement of the government Medicaid insurance program for lower-income people in many states, boosted rates of diagnosis and treatment of patients with certain cancers at earlier stages.

STAT News: ‘She’s wiggling her toes’: New fetal surgery for spina bifida may be safer for both baby and mom. (May 28, 2019)
In 2014, surgeons at Texas Children’s Hospital started performing a spina bifida repair surgery in which the mother’s abdomen is opened, but the uterus remains intact. The uterus is pulled out of the abdomen and puffed full of carbon dioxide. Endoscopic surgical tools called trocars and a tiny camera are then inserted into the uterus through small holes. After doing some 50 of these “fetoscopic” procedures, Dr. Michael Belfort, the surgeon who pioneered this approach, said he believes it is equivalent to the open surgery in terms of helping the fetus, although more long-term data are needed, and said the obstetric benefits are “immense.” But it still means the mother must withstand a major surgical incision to her abdomen. Chmait wanted to go one step further. He didn’t want to slice open the abdomen at all.

The Hill: Women today are more likely than their mothers to die in childbirth (May 22, 2019)
American women today are 50 percent more likely to die in childbirth than their mothers — risks that are three to four times higher for black women than white women. For every death, hundreds of women experience childbirth complications that bring them to the brink, and tens of thousands more suffer from preventable and under-treated chronic illnesses.

NPR: The Struggle To Hire And Keep Doctors In Rural Areas Means Patients Go Without Care (May 21, 2019)
A new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that one out of every four people living in rural areas said they couldn’t get the health care they needed recently. And about a quarter of those said the reason was that their health care location was too far or difficult to get to.

USA Today: Episiotomies are painful, risky and not routinely recommended. Dozens of hospitals are doing too many. (May 21, 2019)
USA TODAY’s new analysis of episiotomies is yet another example of how childbirth care at hospitals varies dramatically – and how data kept secret could inform women’s healthcare decisions. The injuries women suffer from episiotomy complications can last years and there is little scientific evidence of its benefits. That’s why the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issued bulletins to doctors since 2006 calling for the procedure to be used sparingly.

JAMA: Viewpoint: Why Bolstering Trust in Journalism Could Help Strengthen Trust in Medicine (May 13, 2019)
Declines in public trust in US institutions has been widespread and well documented. Neither journalism nor medicine are immune from this trend, although the combination has the potential to adversely affect both population and individual health.

Wall Street Journal: Rattled by Cyberattacks, Hospitals Push Device Makers to Improve Security (May 12, 2019)
Hospitals, after a decade of racing to wire up their medical records and an explosion of internet-connected medical devices, are growing more aggressive with technology suppliers amid pressure to better defend against incursions that could threaten patients and cause costly disruptions. Credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service in February ranked hospitals as one of the sectors most vulnerable to cyberattacks.

New York Times: Huge Racial Disparities Found in Deaths Linked to Pregnancy (May 7, 2019)
African-American, Native American and Alaska Native women die of pregnancy-related causes at a rate about three times higher than those of white women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday.

Star Tribune: Minnesota’s rural hospitals are hanging on — for now (May 5, 2019)
The billion-dollar question — literally, considering the economic impact of rural hospitals — is whether Minnesota has managed to insulate itself from the closure wave or just delayed the inevitable for a cluster of money-losing facilities that are barely hanging on.

Modern Healthcare: Medical schools overhaul curriculum to better prepare future docs (May 4, 2019)
Dell Medical School is one of a growing number of institutions reimagining the traditional medical education curriculum. Leaders are throwing out long-held practices in hopes of creating a pipeline of doctors armed with skills typically not learned until years in the profession, if ever. The end goal is to have a workforce of physicians who are innovative and patient-centered, concepts that traditional medical education doesn’t promote very well.

Wall Street Journal: CEOs in Health Care Discuss Challenges of Working With Artificial Intelligence (May 1, 2019)
Technology is reshaping health care, from pharmaceutical research to detecting opioid addiction, but the magnitude and pace of change isn’t always as dramatic as some had hoped a few years ago, industry leaders said at The Wall Street Journal Health Forum on Tuesday.

Vox: We’re investigating how insurance gaps endanger mothers. This is why. (April 25, 2019)
The only way to solve America’s maternal mortality problem is to fix its insurance problem. That’s the clear takeaway from a widening pool of research. The majority of deaths involving pregnancy and childbirth aren’t happening in the delivery room, they’re happening after a woman has a baby — sometimes months after.

Fargo Forum: Sanford investing over $100M to make Roger Maris Cancer Center a ‘destination’ for treatment (April 25, 2019)
Sanford Health plans a major expansion of its Roger Maris Cancer Center, including the addition of bone marrow transplant and immunotherapy programs, in a bid to make it a “destination” for cancer treatment.

New York Times: W.H.O .Says Limited or No Screen Time for Children Under 5 (April 24, 2019)
In a new set of guidelines, the World Health Organization said that infants under 1 year old should not be exposed to electronic screens and that children between the ages of 2 and 4 should not have more than one hour of “sedentary screen time” each day. Limiting, and in some cases eliminating, screen time for children under the age of 5 will result in healthier adults, the organization, a United Nations health agency, announced on Wednesday.

Washington Post: Measles cases break record since disease was eliminated in United States in 2000 (April 24, 2019)
Measles cases in the United States have now exceeded the highest number on record in a single year since the disease was eliminated in 2000. This year, as in the past, officials say the majority of people in the U.S. who have fallen ill were unvaccinated. In some communities, anti-immunization activists have spread false claims about the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, causing concern among parents about inoculating their children. When many people in a community have not been vaccinated, the disease can spread quickly.

New York Times: Hospitals Stand to Lose Billions Under ‘Medicare for All’ (April 21, 2019)
If Medicare for all abolished private insurance and reduced rates to Medicare levels — at least 40 percent lower, by one estimate — there would most likely be significant changes throughout the health care industry, which makes up 18 percent of the nation’s economy and is one of the nation’s largest employers. Some hospitals, especially struggling rural centers, would close virtually overnight, according to policy experts. Others, they say, would try to offset the steep cuts by laying off hundreds of thousands of workers and abandoning lower-paying services like mental health.

The Hill: Opinion: Telehealth is calling — will Congress pick up? (April 19, 2019)
Three out of four U.S. hospitals connect using video or other remote monitoring technologies, according to the American Hospital Association. It’s in our best interest – telemedicine and remote monitoring can help us maintain or improve quality and access at a lower cost, including for behavioral health, chronic care management and patient engagement. But that requires reducing limitations on Medicare coverage and increasing reimbursements.

Modern Healthcare: WHO releases first digital health guidelines (April 19, 2019)
The World Health Organization has released its first-ever set of guidelines on digital health interventions. The guidelines, targeted toward government agencies and public health practitioners, outline 10 recommendations on how to use digital health tools to support patients’ health outcomes and access to care. The WHO developed the guidelines and recommendations over the past two years. Recommendations include using mobile devices for clinical decision support tools, telemedicine and supply-chain management.

USA Today: Childbirth safety requirements seek to protect pregnant, new mothers (April 18, 2019)
Maternity hospitals across the country would be required to do more to prevent deadly deliveries under new standards proposed this week by the nation’s largest hospital accreditation group. If adopted, about 2,700 birthing hospitals would be required by the Joint Commission to take specific actions related to severe bleeding and dangerously high blood pressure. For years, these measures have been recommended to protect mothers – but too often they are ignored, helping drive the USA’s status as the most dangerous place to give birth among developed nations. Hospitals that failed to follow the requirements could lose their Joint Commission accreditation.

NPR: How Well Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work? (April 16, 2019)
Workplace wellness programs — efforts to get workers to lose weight, eat better, stress less and sleep more — are an $8 billion industry in the U.S. Most large employers offer some type of wellness program, with growth fueled by incentives in the federal Affordable Care Act. But no one has been sure they work. Various studies over the years have provided conflicting results, with some showing savings and health improvements while others say the efforts fall short.

Wall Street Journal: Do the Latest Baby Monitors Ease Fears or Add Anxiety? (April 9, 2019)
Tech companies promise to track your baby’s bedtime well-being so you can follow that longstanding parenting adage: Sleep when the baby sleeps. But advanced baby monitors like Owlet and Angelcare are causing parental anxiety, too.

Wall Street Journal: Amazon Wants You to Use Alexa to Track Health Care (April 7, 2019)
Amazon.com Inc. is positioning Alexa, its artificial-intelligence assistant, to track consumers’ prescriptions and relay personal health information, in a bid to insert the technology into everyday health care. Seattle-based Amazon says Alexa can now transfer sensitive, personal health information using software that meets health-privacy requirements under federal law.

Wall Street Journal: IVF Often Doesn’t Work. Could an Algorithm Help? (April 4, 2019)
Now, as more women wait longer to have children, some academic researchers and startups are studying ways to use AI in the fertility field. AI, they say, could help patients get pregnant sooner by selecting the most viable embryos. Embryologists think AI can pick up abnormalities in embryos that the human eye can’t see.

CNBC: ‘Alexa, find me a doctor’: Amazon Alexa adds new medical skills (April 4, 2019)
The developers behind these skills pointed to the trend of bringing health to the home, which represents both a cheaper and more convenient option for the patient. It’s also a way for providers, including doctors and nurses, to monitor patients once they leave the home, which both gives them an opportunity to prevent costly readmissions to the hospital.

NEJM: Algorithms in Medicine: Identifying Cats vs. Cancer (April 3, 2019)
With care and with effort, and with obsessive attention to detail, we can turn that enormous power of algorithms in to the service of our patients and in the service of a new kind of medical science.

NPR: Training A Computer To Read Mammograms As Well As A Doctor (April 1, 2019)
Barzilay struck up a collaboration with Connie Lehman, a Harvard University radiologist who is chief of breast imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. We meet in a dim, hushed room where she shows me the progress that she and her colleagues have made in bringing artificial intelligence to one of the most common medical exams in the United States. More than 39 million mammograms are performed annually, according to data from the Food and Drug Administration.

USA Today: This simple urine test could save lives by detecting preeclampsia sooner, researchers say (March 26, 2019)
Researchers at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center say a simple urine test can accurately detect preeclampsia in early pregnancy. The Congo Red Dot (CRD) test could save lives for the condition that can be difficult to spot because the symptoms – headaches and swelling – often mimic those of a routine pregnancy but can quickly turn deadly.

New York Times: What Happens if Obamacare is Struck Down? (March 26, 2019)
The Affordable Care Act touches the lives of most Americans. Some 21 million could lose health insurance if the Trump administration were to succeed in having the law ruled unconstitutional.

New York Times: Opinion: What Rural America Has to Teach Us (March 21, 2019)
Everybody says rural America is collapsing. But I keep going to places with more moral coherence and social commitment than we have in booming urban areas. These visits prompt the same question: How can we spread the civic mind-set they have in abundance?

New York Times: F.D.A. Approves First Drug for Postpartum Depression (March 19, 2019)
The first drug for women suffering postpartum depression received federal approval on Tuesday, a move likely to pave the way for a wave of treatments to address a debilitating condition that is the most common complication of pregnancy. The drug works very quickly, within 48 hours — a significant improvement over currently available antidepressants, which can take two to four weeks to have an effect, if they work at all.

New York Times: How Artificial Intelligence Could Transform Medicine (March 11, 2019)
Doctors are already using A.I. to spot potentially lethal lesions on mammograms. Scientists are also developing A.I. systems that can diagnose common childhood conditions, predict whether a person will develop Alzheimer’s disease and monitor people with conditions like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

CBS 60 Minutes: Could Gene Therapy Cure Sickle Cell Anemia? (March 10, 2019)
Nearly 20 years ago, scientists stunned the world when they announced they had decoded the genes that make up a human being. They hoped to use that genetic blueprint to advance something called gene therapy which locates and fixes the genes responsible for different diseases. Now, a clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health is doing exactly that in an attempt to cure sickle cell anemia, a devastating genetic disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year.

Washington Post: Long overlooked by science, pregnancy is finally getting attention it deserves (March 6, 2019)
About 10 percent of reproductive-age women become pregnant each year in the United States, but far less research is done into pregnancy than into much less common conditions. The effect of medicines on pregnant women and their fetuses is rarely studied. Basic understanding of pregnancy itself is full of gaping scientific holes, mysteries that include how the placenta forms and what, exactly, controls the timing of birth.

New York Times: Reducing Maternal Mortality (March 5, 2019)
Women in the United States face a far greater risk of dying from childbirth complications than in many other wealthy countries. Now the federal government has taken a step toward addressing the problem with the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act, signed in December, which will provide federal grants to states to investigate the deaths of women who die within a year of being pregnant.

STAT News: ‘Wired into the walls’: Voice-recognition system promises to automate data entry during office visits (March 4, 2019)
Hands down, the one task doctors complain about most is filling out the electronic health record during and after patient visits. It is disruptive and time-consuming, and patients don’t like being talked to over the doctor’s shoulder. Now, amid an intensifying race to develop voice technologies for health care, a Boston-based company is preparing to release one of the first products designed to fully automate this process, by embedding artificially intelligent software into exam rooms.

Wall Street Journal: Second HIV Patient May Be Cured After Stem-Cell Transplant (March 4, 2019)
A London man infected with HIV may be the second person to beat the virus that causes AIDS, researchers reported Monday, a finding advancing the costly and challenging search for a cure.

New York Times: Kaiser Permanente’s New Medical School Will Waive Tuition for Its First 5 Classes (Feb. 19, 2019)
By eliminating the financial burden of a medical education, the school hopes that more students will choose family medicine and other vital but lower-paid specialties.

NPR: Scientific Duo Gets Back To Basics To Make Childbirth Safer (Feb. 18, 2019)
About 1 in 10 babies are born prematurely in the U.S. each year. If those babies are born close to term — after around 35 weeks — they can do quite well. But a woman with a problematic cervix can go into labor much sooner, which can lead to miscarriage or a baby born so early that the child may die or face lifelong health problems.

New York Times: The Instant, Custom, Connected Future of Medical Devices (Feb. 14, 2019)
About 79 percent of consumers surveyed in the United States said technology is important to managing their health, according to a 2019 report by Accenture. The latest tech-related medical treatment advances run the gamut from implants that help paralyzed people walk to smart pills that detect when patients fail to take their medication.

Wall Street Journal: New Rules Could Ease Patients’ Access to Their Own Health Records (Feb. 11, 2019)
The Trump administration is proposing steps aimed at improving patients’ access to their own health data, bolstering efforts to bring information including insurance claims, hospital and doctor records to digital devices such as smartphones.

New York Times: A.I. Shows Promise Assisting Physicians (Feb. 11, 2019)
Each year, millions of Americans walk out of a doctor’s office with a misdiagnosis. Physicians try to be systematic when identifying illness and disease, but bias creeps in. Alternatives are overlooked. Now a group of researchers in the United States and China has tested a potential remedy for all-too-human frailties: artificial intelligence.

New York Times: These Patients Had Sickle-Cell Disease. Experimental Therapies Might Have Cured Them. (January 27, 2019)
At the moment, the only remedy for sickle-cell disease is a dangerous and expensive bone marrow transplant, an option rarely used. An effective gene therapy would not be simple or inexpensive, but it could change the lives of tens of thousands of people. “This would be the first genetic cure of a common genetic disease,” said Dr. Edward Benz, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. It also would mark a turning point for a large community of underserved patients. Most of them have African ancestry, but Hispanics and those with southern European, Middle Eastern or Asian backgrounds are also affected.

Chicago Tribune: Turn your head, cough, submit your DNA: Your next physical may include genetic testing. (January 25, 2019)
South Dakota-based Sanford Health started offering broad genetic testing to primary care patients last year and so far has tested about 2,000 patients. About 3 percent of those tests have come back with results showing patients are at higher risk for certain diseases that can be treated or caught with regular screenings, said Dr. Cassie Hajek, physician chair for the system’s precision medicine program. It’s information the system hopes will help keep its patients healthier — a common goal for genetic testing in medicine.

Washington Post: Go to bed! Brain researchers warn that lack of sleep is a public health crisis. (January 24, 2019)
Brain research, which has pushed back hard against this nonchalant attitude, is now expanding rapidly, reaching beyond the laboratory and delving into exactly how sleep works in disease and in normal cognitive functions such as memory. The growing consensus is that casual disregard for sleep is wrongheaded — even downright dangerous.

The Telegraph: Stem cell therapy which allowed Jack Nicklaus to play golf again could help Andy Murray, say scientists (January 18, 2019)
The treatment was developed by Sanford Health, the largest not-for-profit rural healthcare company in the US, which received much of its research funding from billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford. This week the company revealed positive results of its first clinical safety trial to repair rotator cuff injuries in the shoulder, and the company believes that the therapy could be used for all joints, including hip problems like Murray’s.

Fast Company: Apple will likely tackle these three big healthcare challenges next (January 16, 2019)
The company has hired numerous clinicians and engineers to work on health features. The big ones are not yet public.

Wall Street Journal: Bill Gates: The Best Investment I’ve Ever Made (January 16, 2019)
Global health groups that buy and distribute medicines are a sure bet for saving lives, but their government funding is now in danger, and even the biggest philanthropies can’t fill the gap.

New York Times: The Flu Is Widespread in the U.S., and It’s Not Too Late to Get Vaccinated (January 11, 2019)
About six million to seven million people in the United States have come down with the illness so far, with half of them sick enough to have seen doctors, according to estimates released on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York Times: A Virus Even More Dangerous Than Zika to Pregnant Women (January 7, 2019)
The mosquito-borne virus that causes Rift Valley fever may severely injure human fetuses if contracted by mothers during pregnancy, according to new research. In a study published last month in the journal Science Advances, researchers used infected rats and human fetal tissue to discover how the virus targets the placenta. Results showed that the virus may be even more damaging to fetuses than the Zika virus, which set off a global crisis in 2015 and left thousands of babies in Central America and South America with severe birth defects.

Star Tribune: Sanford Health eyes growth in senior care (January 2, 2019)
Sanford Health officials are talking about the potential for growth after closing Jan. 1 on a deal to merge with Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, another nonprofit group based in South Dakota that’s also a large operator of senior care facilities.

2018

Star Tribune: Minnesota legislators face expensive health care decisions (December 30, 2018)
There’s been lot of talk at the Capitol about a $1.5 billion budget surplus , but lawmakers are already worrying about how to plug a $700 million hole. That’s because a tax on health care providers that helps fund Medicaid and the state’s separate MinnesotaCare program is slated to go away at the end of the year.

STAT News: 3 global health challenges to watch in 2019 (December 24, 2018)
A couple years ago, the Zika virus startled the world with its until-then unrecognized ability to maim fetuses. A few years before that a camel virus — MERS — began infecting and killing people on the Arabian Peninsula. And a few years before that, H1N1 ignited the first flu pandemic in 41 years.

New York Times: Set It and Forget It: How Better Contraception Could Be a Key to Reducing Poverty (December 18, 2018)
Children whose births are unplanned are likelier to have health complications, to be born into poverty, to stop their education sooner and to earn less. Mothers of unplanned children tend to give birth when they are younger, leave school earlier and earn less when older.

New York Times: An Island Nation Starts an Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone (December 18, 2018)
In Vanuatu, 20 percent of children miss their shots because villages are so hard to reach. It has hired an Australian company to fly them in.

ProPublica: “Landmark” Maternal Health Legislation Clears Major Hurdle (December 12, 2018)
Congress moved a big step closer on Tuesday toward addressing one of the most fundamental problems underlying the maternal mortality crisis in the United States: the shortage of reliable data about what kills American mothers.

NPR: Research Gaps Leave Doctors Guessing About Treatments For Pregnant Women (December 10, 2018)
Historically, pregnant women have been excluded from medical research, because scientists and ethicists were concerned that experimenting on them could hurt them or their fetus.Researchers have to take special precautions to do studies on vulnerable populations, including children, the mentally disabled, incarcerated people and pregnant women. So researchers typically exclude these groups to get their studies approved. But one result is that doctors caring for pregnant women have fewer tools to care for them when they’re ill.

Wall Street Journal: For Elderly in Rural Areas, Volunteers Step In (December 10, 2018)
The strains and limits on the country’s caregiving system are especially acute in rural and non-metropolitan areas, where one out of four Americans 65 and older live—some 10 million people. Around 65% of areas short of health professionals are rural or partially rural, according to September figures from the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Argus Leader: Sanford honors genetic researchers with $1 million Lorraine Cross Award (December 4, 2018)
The health system presented the $1 million Lorraine Cross award to Jean Bennett and Katherine A. High for their groundbreaking research in gene therapy that helps cure an inherited form of blindness. Bennett and High were pioneers in gene therapy, took it to clinical trials and got the first FDA approval of gene therapy for a genetic disease.

STAT: For the first time, a baby is born via a uterus transplant from a deceased donor (December 4, 2018)
For the first time, a woman has given birth after receiving a uterus transplant from a deceased donor, researchers reported Tuesday. Until now, only uterus transplants from living donors have led to successful births.

New York Times: The Placenta, an Afterthought No Longer (December 3, 2018)
The placenta may be dismissed as “afterbirth,” deemed an afterthought in discussions about pregnancy and even relegated, literally, to the trash bin. But at long last it is beginning to get its due. In the past three weeks, scientists have published three significant studies of this ephemeral organ.

Wall Street Journal: Amazon Starts Selling Software to Mine Patient Health Records (November 27, 2018)
Amazon.com Inc. is starting to sell software to mine patient medical records for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry.

Star Tribune: Mayo partnership aims to teach digital stethoscope to detect heart trouble (November 25, 2018)
Now the Mayo Clinic is teaming up with the California medical device company Eko to conduct a clinical trial to see whether a new kind of digital stethoscope can be used as an early screening tool to detect compromised hearts. Heart failure affects 6.5 million Americans today, and many of them have asymptomatic left-ventricular dysfunction that could potentially be detected with the system.

NPR: Twin’s Difficult Birth Put A Project Designed To Reduce C-Sections To The Test (November 24, 2018)
This is the story of how that baby, Bryce McDougall, tested the best efforts of more than a dozen medical staffers at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass., one day last summer. Bryce’s birth also put to the test a new method of reducing cesarean sections that has been developed at Dr. Atul Gawande’s Ariadne Labs, a “joint center for health systems innovation” at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

New York Times: Will We Ever Cure Alzheimer’s? (November 20, 2018)
Few drugs have been approved for treatment of this dementia, and none works very well. It has become one of the most intractable problems in medicine.

New York Times: Why Don’t We Have Vaccines Against Everything? (November 19, 2018)
Money is just the obvious obstacle. A few diseases, like H.I.V., so far have outwitted both the immune system and scientists.

New York Times: The Fight Against Malaria Has Reached a Standstill (November 19, 2018)
Deaths from the disease plummeted from 2000 to 2013, but are now stuck at over 400,000 a year. Donor giving is flat, and some countries are not doing enough to protect their citizens.

New York Times: Air Quality in California: Devastating Fires Lead to a New Danger (November 16, 2018)
The wildfires that have laid waste to vast parts of California are presenting residents with a new danger: air so thick with smoke it ranks among the dirtiest in the world. In short, researchers like Dr. Nadeau believe that a person’s short-term exposure to wildfire can spur a lifetime of asthma, allergy and constricted breathing.

Star Tribune: Mayo Clinic gets its largest gift ever: $200 million to train doctors of the future (November 13, 2018)
The founder of a corporate turnaround firm is donating $200 million to Mayo Clinic to help future doctors afford medical school and train them in areas such as genetics and artificial intelligence that are becoming central to modern medicine.

Wall Street Journal: Flush With Ideas: Bill Gates Pursues the Toilet of the Future (November 9, 2018)
Seven years after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation first challenged inventors to build cheap, sewerless toilets, several prototypes are entering early trials. This new generation of toilets could curb the spread of disease among the more than 4 billion people without access to safely managed sanitation.

New York Times: A Sense of Alarm as Rural Hospitals Keep Closing (October 29, 2018)
Hospitals are often thought of as the hubs of our health care system. But hospital closings are rising, particularly in some communities. Since 2010, nearly 90 rural hospitals have shut their doors. By one estimate, hundreds of other rural hospitals are at risk of doing so.

New York Times: Miscarrying at Work: The Physical Toll of Pregnancy Discrimination (October 21, 2018)
Women in strenuous jobs lost their pregnancies after employers denied their requests for light duty, even ignoring doctors’ notes, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

NPR: Report: Women Everywhere Don’t Know Enough About Ovarian Cancer (October 21, 2018)
A new study of women with ovarian cancer shows that ignorance about the condition is common among patients in all 44 countries surveyed. And that ignorance has a cost. The disease is more treatable, even potentially curable, in its early stages. Ovarian cancer is the eighth leading cause of cancer in women, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly 300,000 women will develop it this year. The World Ovarian Cancer Coalition estimates that one in six will die within three months of diagnosis and fewer than half will be alive in five years.

New York Times: Immune-Based Treatment Helps Fight Aggressive Breast Cancer, Study Finds (October 20, 2018)
Women with an aggressive type of breast cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy plus chemotherapy, rather than chemo alone, a major study has found.

STAT News: With genome sequencing, some sick infants are getting a shot at healthy lives (October 19, 2018)
When babies become intensely ill, it can be difficult to know what has gone wrong. But the answer, quite often, is hidden somewhere in their genes. Whole-genome sequencing — in which scientists can read the nearly 3 billion chemical letters in DNA — can help turn up that answer. And scientists, increasingly, are laying out a case for using that tool in an intensive care setting, despite the upfront costs.

STAT News: An Ebola outbreak presents a new mystery involving children (October 19, 2018)
Epidemiologists working on the world’s latest Ebola outbreak are racing to try to solve a mystery. Why have so many children — some still infants — been infected with the virus? The disproportionate number of recent infections among children in the Democratic Republic of Congo — specifically in Beni, the outbreak’s current hot spot — has come as a surprise; typically young children don’t make up a big proportion of cases during an Ebola outbreak.

New York Times: 1,495 Americans Describe the Financial Reality of Being Really Sick (October 17, 2018)
The survey, of some of the country’s most seriously ill people, found that even with health insurance, more than a third of the respondents had spent all or most of their savings while sick. They are often faced with deductibles and co-payments; treatments their insurance won’t cover; and financial challenges — like lost work — that health insurance alone can’t address. The New York Times, the Commonwealth Fund and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health used the survey to examine the sliver of the American population who use the health care system the most.

New York Times: The Results of Your Genetic Test Are Reassuring. But That Can Change. (October 16, 2018)
Laboratories frequently “reclassify” genetic mutations. But there is no reliable system for telling patients or doctors that the results of their genetic tests are no longer valid. The problem affects a minority of patients, mostly people with unusual mutations. The more common disease-causing mutations — like those that predispose you to breast or colon cancer — are so well studied that their meaning is not in doubt.

Wall Street Journal: Babies’ Sleep Linked to Lower Obesity Risks Years Later (October 15, 2018)
Combating high childhood obesity rates is a vexing problem: Diets and other interventions often don’t work, and when they do the effects aren’t long-lasting. Now, some researchers are attacking the problem at the newborn stage with an unlikely target: sleep.

Chicago Tribune: ‘How does a well baby die?’ Respiratory distress event gaining attention of doctors, nurses (October 9, 2018)
The first two hours after delivery are high risk for babies, even if they’ve been fine in utero and through labor and have good health screening (Apgar) scores at one and five minutes. Easing their transition and promoting bonding between mom and baby have been the impetus behind immediate skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding, both of which are almost universally accepted by medical professionals. But incidents of healthy babies suffering respiratory distress in their initial hours and days outside the womb, leading to death in half the cases or serious neurological deficits in many others, are gaining attention among doctors, nurses and technicians dealing with newborn care.

Star Tribune: Summit in Minneapolis ponders the future of health care (October 9, 2018)
If the health care industry is on the verge of embracing transformation, Minnesota is at the crossroads of forces driving that change. That was a key message Tuesday in the Minneapolis Convention Center, where hundreds of people are gathering this week for the first-ever Manova Global Summit on the Future of Health.

New York Times: 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Yazidi Activist and Congolese Doctor (October 5, 2018)
In the midst of a global reckoning over sexual violence, a Yazidi woman who was a captive of the Islamic State and a Congolese gynecological surgeon were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their campaigns to end the use of mass rape as a weapon of war. The award went to Nadia Murad, who became a bold, dignified voice for women who survived sexual violence by the Islamic State, and to Dr. Denis Mukwege, who has treated thousands of women in a country once called the rape capital of the world.

STAT News: Research is scarce on medication use in pregnant women. Experts are urging the government to fix that (October 1, 2018)
There’s very little research on whether medications are safe and effective in pregnant and lactating women, but an expert panel has ideas for how to close that information gap — and it’s calling on the federal government to take action in a new report that could stir change.

Wall Street Journal: Young Cancer Patients in Poor Countries Get a Boost (September 26, 2018)
A new $15 million global campaign against pediatric cancer aims to narrow the gap between treatment in affluent countries and poor ones.

Wall Street Journal: High Hopes for a Gene Therapy Come With Fears Over Cost (September 24, 2018)
Just 4 years old, Caspian Soto uses a cane and headlamp to help him see when he walks. He can’t see in dark places like aquariums or movie theaters. He’s never seen the stars. Caspian was born with a rare, inherited eye disorder called Leber congenital amaurosis, which results in the progressive deterioration of the retina, the tissue at the back of the eye that detects light and color. He could lose all vision by the time he’s a teenager. This month Caspian became among the first patients in the country to receive a new gene-therapy treatment called Luxturna, which his doctors at Oregon Health & Science University believe will improve his vision and prevent further deterioration.

Fortune: The Four Best Investments We Can Make in the Global War on Poverty (September 18, 2018)
For decades, Ethiopia was a land of seemingly unending poverty, beset by one humanitarian crisis after another. A drought-induced famine in 1973–74 was estimated to have left 300,000 dead. A still greater famine, in the mid-1980s, killed twice as many. A third, in 1990–2000, starved tens of thousands more. Since then, however, Ethiopia has made such remarkable strides in growing its economy—and just as important, in building a comprehensive social safety net—that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation now says it’s on track to “almost eliminate extreme poverty by 2050.”

Wall Street Journal: The New, Improved World of Infant Care (September 16, 2018)
A wave of innovation in newborn care is giving infants a better start in life—and could improve Americans’ health far into the future. These advances cover a range of conditions and treatments. Maternal- and fetal-medicine specialists are finding new ways to prevent premature birth, which affects one in 10 infants and can cause serious and costly mental and physical disabilities.

Wall Street Journal: Health Care Looks Beyond Medicine to Social Factors (September 16, 2018)
The latest efforts by health organizations to fight disease extend well beyond medical care. With a growing body of research showing that social and economic forces play a significant role in health, many medical groups are investing in programs to help needy patients secure basics such as affordable housing, transportation and nutritious food. By tackling such nonmedical issues, often called the social determinants of health, they aim to ease the burdens that make battling disease more difficult.

New York Times: Where a Sore Throat Becomes a Death Sentence (September 16, 2018)
Once a year, doctors travel to Rwanda to perform lifesaving surgery on people with damaged heart valves — a disease caused by untreated strep throat.

New York Times: Lasker Awards Given for Work in Genetics, Anesthesia and Promoting Women in Science (September 11, 2018)
The Lasker Awards, which are among the nation’s most prestigious prizes in medicine, were awarded on Tuesday to a Scottish veterinarian who developed the drug propofol, two scientists who discovered the hidden influence of genetic packing material called histones and a researcher who in addition to doing groundbreaking work in RNA biology, paved the way for a new generation of female scientists. The awards are given by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and carry a prize of $250,000 for each of three categories. They are sometimes called the “American Nobels” because 87 of the Lasker recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

New York Times: Most Doctors Are Ill-Equipped to Deal With the Opioid Epidemic. Few Medical Schools Teach Addiction. (September 10, 2018)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, addiction — whether to tobacco, alcohol or other drugs — is a disease that contributes to 632,000 deaths in the United States annually. But comprehensive addiction training is rare in American medical education. A report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University called out “the failure of the medical profession at every level — in medical school, residency training, continuing education and in practice” to adequately address addiction.

New York Times: Vaccines Against H.I.V., Malaria and Tuberculosis Unlikely, Study Says (September 7, 2018)
Vaccines against H.I.V., malaria and tuberculosis — three major killers of the world’s poor — are unlikely to be produced in the foreseeable future unless vastly more money is committed to finding them, a new study has concluded. To make real progress against this variety of infectious diseases by 2030, the study concluded, the world must increase research spending to nearly $9 billion a year; it now spends only about $3 billion.

New York Times: What the Experts Want Us to Know About Public Health (September 4, 2018)
Things like clean water, immunization and mosquito control are crucial, yet easily overlooked or taken for granted.

Chicago Tribune: Teens are anxious and depressed, and turning to the school nurse for help. But most Illinois schools don’t have one. (August 23, 2018)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 in 20, or 2.6 million, U.S. children ages 6 to 17 had current anxiety or depression diagnosed by a health care provider in 2011-12.

STAT News: Maternal deaths represent the canary in the coal mine for women’s health (August 23, 2018)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s newly released annual report on U.S. deaths indicates a larger challenge than maternal mortality: death rates are rising for all women of reproductive age, not just those who are giving birth.

New York Times: The Secret to Keeping Black Men Healthy? Maybe Black Doctors (August 20, 2018)
In an intriguing study, black patients were far more likely to agree to certain health tests if they discussed them with a black male doctor.

New York Times: Let Kids Play (August 20, 2018)
Doctors should prescribe playtime for young children, the American Academy of Pediatrics says. … And the policy statement goes into detail on recent research showing that play can affect the developing brain, both in its basic structure and in function, with changes that can be traced to play showing up at the molecular and cellular level, as well as at the level of behavior and executive function.

Star Tribune: Macalester remembers alum Kofi Annan (August 19, 2018)
As dignitaries from around the world offered their condolences on the death of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, leaders in Minnesota reflected on his impact during his years at Macalester College and afterward.

Wall Street Journal: A Troubling Rise in Pregnancy-Related Heart Problems (August 13, 2018)
The rates of heart-related problems in women before and after childbirth have increased in the U.S., a problem that some experts think may be contributing to the jump in the country’s maternal mortality rate.

Star Tribune: New Mayo Clinic CEO most recently led its Florida operation (August 11, 2018)
The Mayo Clinic on Friday named a 30-year insider as the new chief executive at one of the nation’s marquee medical centers. Mayo’s board elected to give the top job to Dr. Gianrico Farrugia, a physician who’s held a series of leadership positions at the clinic. Rochester-based Mayo is the largest private employer in Minnesota and continues to draw patients from around the world with its reputation for specialty care.

New York Times: Michelle Bachelet, Ex-President of Chile, Picked as Next U.N. Rights Chief (August 8, 2018)
The leader of the United Nations said on Wednesday that he had picked Michelle Bachelet, a prominent women’s rights advocate and the first woman to serve as Chile’s president, to be the organization’s next top human rights official.

USA TODAY: Hospitals know how to protect mothers. They just aren’t doing it. (July 27, 2018)
Every year, thousands of women suffer life-altering injuries or die during childbirth because hospitals and medical workers skip safety practices known to head off disaster, a USA TODAY investigation has found. The vast majority of women in America give birth without incident. But each year, more than 50,000 are severely injured. About 700 mothers die. The best estimates say that half of these deaths could be prevented and half the injuries reduced or eliminated with better care. Instead, the U.S. continues to watch other countries improve as it falls behind. Today, this is the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth.

Forbes: Glaxo’s New Research Chief Loves Big Pharma. Now He Has To Fix It (July 24, 2018)
At a pharmaceutical company, the head of research and development can be the single most important employee. … Tomorrow morning, on GlaxoSmithKline’s earnings call, Barron will start to draw out his larger blueprint for Glaxo’s laboratories, which he previewed in an interview with Forbes. His biggest idea: leveraging the immune system to attack multiple diseases.

New York Times: For Scientists Racing to Cure Alzheimer’s, the Math Is Getting Ugly (July 23, 2018)
There are 5.4 million Alzheimer’s patients in the United States. You’d think it would be easy to find that many participants for a trial like this one. But it’s not. And the problem has enormous implications for treatment of a disease that terrifies older Americans and has strained families in numbers too great to count.

Wall Street Journal: Health-Care Coverage Is Increasingly Determined by Where You Live (July 18, 2018)
The Trump administration has been steadily rolling back sections of the Affordable Care Act, prompting states to either buttress or countermand the changes.

New York Times: It’s 4 A.M. The Baby’s Coming. But the Hospital Is 100 Miles Away. (July 17, 2018)
Medical help is growing dangerously distant for women in rural America. At least 85 rural hospitals — about 5 percent of the country’s total — have closed since 2010, and obstetric care has faced even starker cutbacks as rural hospitals calculate the hard math of survival, weighing the cost of providing 24/7 delivery services against dwindling birthrates, doctor and nursing shortages and falling revenues. Today, researchers estimate that fewer than half of the country’s rural counties still have a hospital that offers obstetric care, an absence that adds to the obstacles rural women face in getting health care.

New York Times: Drug to Treat Smallpox Approved by F.D.A., a Move Against Bioterrorism (July 13, 2018)
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first drug intended to treat smallpox — a move that could halt a lethal pandemic if the virus were to be released as a terrorist bioweapon or through a laboratory accident.

New York Times: In a Rare Success, Paraguay Conquers Malaria (July 6, 2018)
Paraguay has eliminated malaria, the first country in the Americas to do so in almost 50 years, according to the World Health Organization. But worldwide, momentum against the disease has stalled. Malaria cases increased by five million between 2015 and 2016, climbing to 216 million from 211 million.

New York Times: Emergency Rooms Run Out of Vital Drugs, and Patients Are Feeling It (July 1, 2018)
Summer is “trauma season,” when emergency rooms see a rise in injuries, but a drug supply crisis has doctors scrambling to find alternatives to needed medications.

New York Times: Ebola Outbreak in Central Africa Is ‘Largely Contained’ (June 28, 2018)
After a rapid response by health agencies and the rollout of a new vaccine, an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been declared “largely contained” by the World Health Organization.

Argus Leader: Why rural maternity care is disappearing and how South Dakota can fix it (June 21, 2018)
Mothers who live in rural South Dakota face one of the biggest provider gaps in the United States when it comes to finding a hospital with doctors trained to treat pregnancy and birth, according to 2017 research from the University of Minnesota. And rural maternity care is disappearing. Meanwhile, high infant mortality rates continue to haunt South Dakota as the state’s only medical school sends young aspiring OB-GYNs elsewhere to finish their training.

New York Times: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Name C.E.O. for Health Initiative (June 20, 2018)
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced on Wednesday that a Harvard professor, Dr. Atul Gawande, will lead the independent health care company formed by the three behemoths earlier this year for their employees in the United States.

The Atlantic: The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready? (June 18, 2018)
The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.

Gates Notes: Can this cooler save kids from dying? (June 13, 2018)
Two of the things I love most about my job are getting to see amazing innovations and talk to remarkable people. During a recent trip to New York, I got to check both boxes. I met a woman named Papa Blandine Mbwey who is using a revolutionary new invention to help more kids get vaccinated.

The Independent: Woman cured of advanced breast cancer using own immune cells in ‘exciting’ global first (June 4, 2018)
A woman has been completely cured of breast cancer after doctors tweaked her immune system, enabling it to destroy the tumours that had spread through her body. The treatment, which succeeded after all other conventional treatments had failed, marks the first successful application of T-cell immunotherapy for late-stage breast cancer. While the technique is still in its early days, scientists have welcomed its potential as a future treatment for cancers that have resisted all other forms of therapy.

The New Yorker: Atul Gawande: Curiosity and What Equality Really Means (June 2, 2018)
For doctors as much as anyone else, regarding people as having lives of equal worth means recognizing each as having a common core of humanity.

U.S. News and World Report: Changing the Way Obstetric Fistula is Treated in Kenya (May 22, 2018)
In 1997, I was a new medical resident working in West Pokot County, an underserved, rural region in northwestern Kenya. One morning, a woman came forward with a condition I had never seen before: She was uncontrollably leaking urine through her vagina. While I did not realize it in the moment, my life’s path was set that day.

CNN: WHO preparing for worst-case Ebola scenario (May 11, 2018)
The World Health Organization is preparing for the “worst case scenario” as it continues to respond to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Peter Salama, deputy director-general of emergency preparedness and response at the WHO, said in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday that it’s “going to be tough and it’s going to be costly to stamp out this outbreak.”

New York Times: A Simple Way to Improve a Billion Lives: Eyeglasses (May 5, 2018)
It’s the biggest health crisis you’ve never heard of. Doctors, philanthropists and companies are trying to solve it. While not seen as urgent as other world health problems, untreated vision problems cost the global economy $200 billion annually to lost productivity, according to the W.H.O.

New York Times: Infant Deaths Fall Sharply in Africa With Routine Antibiotics (April 25, 2018)
Two doses a year of an antibiotic can sharply cut death rates among infants in poor countries, perhaps by as much as 25 percent among the very young, researchers reported on Wednesday. Their large study — of nearly 200,000 children in three African countries — raises the exciting possibility that deploying antibiotics as doctors do vaccines could rapidly reduce deaths among newborns and infants. Death rates in this age group have remained stubbornly high in poor countries even as deaths among all children under age 5 have dropped by half, thanks to vaccines against childhood diseases. As a result of the study, the World Health Organization is considering whether to recommend routinely giving antibiotics to newborns.

Bloomberg: Gates Sees Vaccine Technology Promise as Drug Resistance Rises (April 18, 2018)
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates sees emerging vaccine technologies as one of the most promising realms in the pursuit of new medicines amid the rising threat of drug-resistant strains of deadly diseases. Vaccines that use a mirror image of DNA to halt the growth of bacteria and viruses appear capable of speeding development of the prevention tools dramatically, Gates said in an interview.

Argus Leader: Sanford ‘a major part’ of breakthrough lung cancer study (April 17, 2018)
Sanford Health was one of several hospitals offering a clinical trial that was said in a study this week to be a significant leap forward in the treatment of advanced lung cancer. Dr. Steven Powell, a medical oncologist and researcher with Sanford, said the trial — which involves combining the immunotherapy drug Keytruda and chemotherapy — has “showed a profound change” in the treatment of patients.

New York Times: Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer with Immunotherapy (April 16, 2018)
Odds of survival can greatly improve for people with the most common type of lung cancer if they are given a new drug that activates the immune system along with chemotherapy, a major new study has shown. The findings, medical experts say, should change the way doctors treat lung cancer: Patients with this form of the disease should receive immunotherapy as early as possible.

New York Times: ‘We’re Out of Options’: Doctors Battle Drug-Resistant Typhoid Outbreak (April 13, 2018)
The first known epidemic of extensively drug-resistant typhoid is spreading through Pakistan, infecting at least 850 people in 14 districts since 2016, according to the National Institute of Health Islamabad. The typhoid strain, resistant to five types of antibiotics, is expected to disseminate globally, replacing weaker strains where they are endemic. Researchers consider the epidemic an international clarion call for comprehensive prevention efforts. If vaccination campaigns and modern sanitation systems don’t outpace the pathogen, they anticipate a return to the pre-antibiotic era when mortality rates soared.

ELCA World Hunger: Reflection on the United Nations 62nd Commission on the Status of Women (March 22, 2018)
Even in the United States in 2018, women still face very different challenges and live very different lives than men. But the stories the media has told, until very recently, have rarely reflected those female narratives and the daily inequalities with which they struggle. If we strive to find and to communicate, if we work to broadcast the truth about women from and to even the most remote of places – we fuel and ignite progress everywhere.

CBS News: For 2 weeks, full spotlight on women at the U.N. (March 12, 2018)
The speakers for the United Nations’ International Women’s Day events appeared particularly emboldened this year, with Reese Witherspoon, Dania Guria and Emma Watson talking about sexual abuse and the need for women’s empowerment. It was an appropriate curtain raiser for the events kicking off Monday at the U.N., with the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) hosting dozens of meetings on gender equality and violence against women. The organizer of the event, U.N. Women, calls it the largest gathering on gender equality and women’s rights in the world.

Harvard Business Review: Making Better Use of Health Care Data (March 12, 2018)
At Sanford Health, a $4.5 billion rural integrated health care system, we deliver care to over 2.5 million people in 300 communities across 250,000 square miles. In the process, we collect and store vast quantities of patient data – everything from admission, diagnostic, treatment and discharge data to online interactions between patients and providers, as well as data on providers themselves. All this data clearly represents a rich resource with the potential to improve care, but until recently was underutilized. The question was, how best to leverage it.

Devex: The Gates Foundation launches $170M gender strategy (March 5, 2018)
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday announced its first-ever gender equality strategy, which will commit $170 million to women’s economic empowerment. Previously, the foundation’s investments in gender-related work focused largely on areas such as family planning and nutrition, as well as financial services for the poor.

Argus Leader: Why a liberal arts education matters (February 27, 2018)
The scholarship recipients who choose Augustana University will choose a liberal arts education of enduring worth – one that challenges the intellect, fosters integrity and integrates faith with learning and service. It’s a choice that may not ever deliver great wealth, but it will surely deliver a rich and meaningful life.

Johns Hopkins University HUB: A mosquito emoji for public health awareness takes flight (February 8, 2018)
The mosquito emoji was proposed last year by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The idea was to make it easier for people to communicate about the public health hazards of the most dangerous animal on Earth—which spreads diseases like malaria, Zika, dengue, and yellow fever, contributing to several million deaths and hundreds of millions of illnesses every year.

VOX: Congress has quietly created a new health care crisis for 26 million Americans (February 2, 2018)
Nationally, millions of Americans visit community health centers each year. An estimate from 2016 found the 2,000 centers provided care to 26.5 million people. They rely heavily on federal funds that have passed with bipartisan support in recent decades.

New York Times: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Disrupt Health Care (January 30, 2018)
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced on Tuesday that they would form an independent health care company to serve their employees in the United States.

Modern Healthcare: States breathe sigh of relief over CHIP funding as key senators push for longer extension (January 27, 2018)
But the fight over CHIP’s future hasn’t ended. Children’s healthcare advocates are still leery of a Congress that all too easily used a program that insures nearly 9 million kids as political leverage.

CNN Tech: Apple partners with Malala Yousafzai to fund girls’ education (January 22, 2018)
Activist Malala Yousafzai’s charity is getting a major investment from Apple. Apple’s support will allow the Malala Fund to double the number of grants to fund the secondary education for girls in India and Latin America, the company announced Sunday. The initial goal is to help more than 100,000 girls.

Wall Street Journal: An Action Plan for Averting the Next Flu Pandemic (January 20, 2018)
Despite medical advances, we are just as vulnerable today to a flu pandemic as we were a century ago.

New York Times: After Surgery in the Womb, A Baby Kicks Up Hope (January 15, 2018)
After undergoing experimental surgery for spina bifida in September while still in the womb, a baby boy was born in Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston on Friday.

Gates Notes: The business of improving global health (January 8, 2018)
This year, 5 million children under the age of five will die, mostly in poor countries. And hundreds of millions of others will suffer from diseases and malnutrition that sap them, and their countries, of their strength and their potential. Some of this can be addressed by doing a better job of getting lifesaving drugs and vaccines to the people who need them. But there is still a substantial gap between the tools we have and the tools we need to eliminate the most persistent diseases of poverty.

TIME Magazine: Meet the Five-Year-Old Boy Bill Gates Put on the Cover of TIME (January 4, 2018)
When Mohamad Nasir first met Bill Gates in 2012 in his home country of Ethiopia, the child was less than a month old and had recently received vaccinations against polio, measles, and more. Today, thanks to his early and ongoing health care, Mohamad is an active and curious five-year-old who loves sports and is quick to welcome a visitor. Mohamad’s life represents an important milestone for his community and for the world.

2017

New York Times: The CHIP Program Is Beloved. Why Is Its Funding in Danger? (December 5, 2017)
But CHIP, a program that has had unusually strong bipartisan support since it was created in 1997, is now in limbo — an unexpected victim of the partisan rancor that has stymied legislative action in Washington this year.

New York Times: Woman With Transplanted Uterus Gives Birth, the First in the U.S. (December 2, 2017)
For the first time in the United States, a woman who had a uterus transplant has given birth. The mother, who was born without a uterus, received the transplant from a living donor last year at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, and had a baby boy there last month, the hospital said on Friday.

Governing: As Congress Stalls on Children’s Health Insurance, States Warn of Cuts (November 17, 2017)
The Children’s Health Insurance Program — which has a history of bipartisan support — covers nine million children and pregnant women in families considered to be “working poor,” meaning they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford insurance through the marketplace or their employer. It’s jointly funded by the federal government and states, but the feds foot about 80 percent of the bill.

Harvard Business Review: Using Technology to Improve Rural Health Care (October 18, 2017)
Providing health care in rural regions presents unique challenges. For some patients, the closest doctor may be a three-hour drive. Clinicians seeking an expert consult may find there’s no appropriate specialist within 100 miles. And vast distance can hinder the dissemination of best practices and coordination of care. At Sanford Health, one of the largest rural health-care-delivery systems, we’ve tackled this challenge by leveraging an array of technologies to provide high-value care to a population of around 2 million, dispersed across 300,000 square miles in the Dakotas.

New York Times: Ebola’s Legacy: Children With Cataracts (October 18, 2017)
Cataracts usually afflict the old, but doctors in Africa have been shocked to find them in Ebola survivors as young as 5.

NPR: The Relationship Between Domestic Violence and Mass Shootings (October 7, 2017)
In at least 54 percent of mass shootings, the perpetrator also shot an intimate partner or relative. NPR’s Michel Martin talks with gun policy expert Robert Spitzer about the pattern of domestic abuse among mass shooters.

LA Times Opinion: Time’s up: As CHIP expires unrenewed, Congress blows a chance to save healthcare for 9 million children (September 29, 2017)
Advocates for children’s health started worrying months ago that congressional incompetence would jeopardize the nation’s one indisputable healthcare success — the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which has reduced the uninsured rate among kids to 5% from 14% over the two decades of its existence.

Glamour: The World Is Getting Safer, Healthier, and More Prosperous – Meet the Leaders Making it Happen (September 20, 2017)
It might not always seem like it, but the world is a much better place than it was just a generation ago, and it’s improving every day. Really, it’s true—Bill and Melinda Gates have the data to prove it. Last week their foundation released a report that looks at the progress the world has made on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a blueprint for what the world should look like by 2030. Think of it as a report card on global health.

Wall Street Journal: Bill and Melinda Gates: Let’s Keep Investing in the World’s Poor (September 13, 2017)
U.S. foreign aid has helped developing countries make huge progress against disease and poverty—and this is no time to reverse course.

Washington Post: Sheryl Sandberg and Rachel Thomas: Celebrate Labor Day by supporting national paid family leave (September 1, 2017)
None of us should have to choose between the job we need and the family we love. That’s the concept behind paid family leave. It provides a safety net for when life happens — when a baby arrives, a child falls ill, an aging parent needs extra care — and we need to be there. And because it provides income during that time, it’s a game-changer for workers living paycheck to paycheck.

STAT News: In countries with a shortage of surgeons, other health care workers can fill in the gaps (August 9, 2017)
More than 5 billion people — the majority of the world’s people — lack access to safe, affordable, and timely surgical and anesthesia care. It’s a big problem in Ethiopia, where I was born and raised. An average-size hospital serving a population of 100,000 anywhere in the world should have 20 specialists to perform 5,000 lifesaving surgical procedures per year. Ethiopia has fewer than one specialist per 100,000 people.

ELLE: Mai Khanh Tran Has Been a Janitor, a Wall Street Hot Shot, and a Pediatrician. Next Up? Congresswoman (July 26, 2017)
The statistics aren’t good. According to recent estimates, women make up just under 20 percent of Congress and less than 25 percent of all state legislatures. Only six of our nation’s governors are women.

VOX: The Senate health bill could prove particularly costly for mothers (July 14, 2017)
Senate Republicans released a new version of their health care bill that would have serious ramifications for women’s health care: It would allow health insurers to offer plans that don’t cover maternity care, no longer require health plans to cover birth control and other preventive services, and make it much more difficult to buy plans on the individual health insurance market that cover abortion.

Washington Post Opinion: We’re ceding ground in the war against infant mortality (July 26, 2017)
In the United States, the fight against infant mortality seemed slow but sure. Indeed, over the past decade, the rate at which babies died before their first birthday fell by 15 percent. But in recent years, progress in reducing overall infant mortality has stagnated. And for African Americans, we’ve actually lost ground, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

New York Times: U.S. Malaria Donations Saved Almost 2 Million African Children (June 26, 2017)
Over the last decade, American donations to fight malaria in Africa have saved the lives of nearly two million children, according to a new analysis of mortality rates in 32 countries there.

New York Times: How the G.O.P. Health Bill Would Change Medicaid (June 22, 2017)
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans are covered by Medicaid. We explain how the Republican health plan would significantly change the program.

Dallas Morning News: What the Obamacare overhaul could mean for Texas’ terrible maternal mortality rate (June 12, 2017)
Texas officials were already investigating why an alarming number of Lone Star women are dying from pregnancy-related complications when a study last year ranked the state’s maternal mortality rate as the nation’s worst.

New York Times Opinion: The Real Threat to National Security: Deadly Disease (March 24, 2017)
While the Trump administration is proposing significantly increased military spending to enhance our national security, it seems to have lost sight of the greatest national security threat of all: our fight against infectious disease.

Wall Street Journal: As Many Midwest Cities Slump, Sioux Falls Soars (March 17, 2017)
Many areas of the Midwest have struggled with population loss as manufacturing has declined and farms have needed less labor. But Sioux Falls is on a tear after undergoing an unlikely transformation into a financial and health-care powerhouse in the middle of cornfields.

TIME Magazine: Bill Gates: Cutting Foreign Aid Makes America Less Safe (March 17, 2017)
Protecting Americans, preventing epidemics, strengthening markets, saving lives: aid delivers phenomenal benefits, and for a bargain.

New York Times: Improving Medicine With Art (March 11, 2017)
Some doctors are so inundated with the business of medicine that good bedside manner has become a lost art. As a preventive measure, the new Dell Medical School, part of the University of Texas at Austin, is challenging students in its inaugural class to embrace their feelings by examining the fine arts.

KDLT News/NBC: Augustana University Introduces First Woman President in 157-Year History (February 23, 2017)
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – She was the first woman in South Dakota to serve as a U.S. House Representative. Now she’ll be the first woman to lead one Sioux Falls University. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin has been named as Augustana University’s 24th president.

Bloomberg: Melinda Gates on the World’s Missing Data About Women (February 14, 2017)
Businessweek Debrief: A Conversation with Melinda Gates: “What we don’t measure, we don’t work on.”

CBS NEWS: Davos 2017: Bill Gates on how to “outsmart” global epidemics (January 18, 2017)
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, is preparing to “outsmart epidemics” by launching an effort that develops adaptable vaccines before another global health crisis like Zika or Ebola, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa, threatens the world again.

NPR: 6 Lesser-Known Obamacare Provisions That Could Evaporate (January 11, 2017)
Beyond the Affordable Care Act’s marquee achievements like guaranteeing health coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and allowing children to stay on parents’ plans until age 26, the roughly 2,000-page law created a host of other provisions that affect the health of nearly every American.

Gates Notes: 5 Reasons I’m Optimistic About Africa (January 9, 2017)
Although 2016 was a tough year for many African economies, almost every trend on the continent has been moving in the right direction over the last decade. Per capita income, foreign investment, agricultural productivity, mobile banking, entrepreneurship, immunization rates, and school enrollment are all heading upwards. Poverty, armed conflicts, HIV, malaria, and child mortality are all on the decline—steeply so in many places.

2016

New York Times Opinion: Women’s Rights Are a National Security Issue (December 26, 2016)
The State Department’s gender equality programs are not just politically correct fluff — they deal with matters of life and death, like rape during war, genital cutting, forced marriage and access to education. The State Department provides essential funding to combat these problems.

Smithsonian Magazine: This Device Could Revolutionize How Malaria Is Detected Around the World (December 12, 2016)
It’s a medical breakthrough story that begins with a long line. Brian Grimberg was working at a clinic in Papua New Guinea, watching in frustration as the queue of people hoping to get tested for malaria stretched out the door. It took almost an hour to analyze each person’s blood. Clearly, they wouldn’t get to everyone.

NPR: How Investing In Preschool Beats The Stock Market, Hands Down (December 12, 2016)
There’s a growing body of research on the value and importance of high-quality early education programs — especially for disadvantaged kids.

Wall Street Journal: Melinda Gates Focuses the World’s Largest Foundation on Gender (November 2, 2016)
Since the foundation’s inception more than 15 years ago—with its vast scale and relatively urgent timetable (Bill and Melinda have stipulated that the entire endowment must be spent within 20 years of the death of the last co-chair)—it has worked largely toward eradicating disease and helping the world’s poorest people lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. But now, due almost entirely to Melinda’s influence, there’s an across-the-board focus on gender in service to those goals.

New York Times: Long Before Twitter, Martin Luther Was a Media Pioneer (October 28, 2016)
Americans may know the basics of how Martin Luther was said to have nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, condemning the Roman Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences, but they probably don’t realize how Luther strategically used the media of his time: books, paintings, prints and music.

Smithsonian Magazine: Beautiful Photos from America’s Six Least-Visited National Parks (October 5, 2016)
These parks are less popular, but no less spectacular.

New York Times: In an Era of Hyperbole, Paul Bunyan Is as Tall as Ever (September 24, 2016)
Many Minnesotans still hold a gargantuan lumberjack in reverence, but anything seems possible in this era, and election, of hyperbole.

TIME Magazine: The U.N. Must Focus on Gender Equality (September 15, 2016)
Melinda Gates spoke to TIME about her priorities for the U.N. General Assembly, the need for global gender equality for women and girls, and how best to address the refugee crisis and Zika outbreak.

National Geographic: Why There’s New Hope About Ending Blindness (September 2016)
Thanks to medical advances and expanding treatment, it’s no longer just a dream.

PBS News Hour: There’s buzz around Zika, but could yellow fever become the next pandemic? (August 15, 2016)
The World Health Organization is rushing to play catch-up, planning to send millions more doses of vaccine, extra supplies and even a mobile lab to test samples in distant parts of the DRC.

New Republic: Beyond Zika: How Congress Is Flirting With Medical Disaster (August 12, 2016)
The dysfunctional response to the Zika virus lays bare a system that is increasingly ill-equipped to respond to outbreaks.

Forbes: Driving Solar: Our Closest Star’s Role In Driving Transportation Goals (July 27, 2016)
It’s time transportation paid homage to our neighbor three doors down — the sun. Solar power, in general, is becoming more mainstream as conversations about green energy, less reliance on fossil fuels and other topics about reducing our carbon footprint permeate society. But not much of it has centered around transportation.

The Hill: The Veterans First Act: significant progress, but still a band-aid (June 24, 2016)
The Senate’s new omnibus bill, The Veterans First Act, represents Congress’s latest attempt to resolve performance deficiencies within the Veterans Administration; but this bill will not significantly improve performance. In fact, it could make things worse for our veterans.

Good Morning America: ‘GMA’s Epic Camp Out: Road-Tripping Couple Aims to Visit Every National Park in 1 Year (May 9, 2016)
One adventurous pair, Stefanie Payne and her partner, Jonathan Irish, have put their lives in Washington, D.C. on hold for a year in order to move into a tiny travel trailer and take a road trip to each of the nation’s 59 national parks.

National Geographic: 59 Parks in 52 Weeks (April 27, 2016)
2016 marked the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary and Nat Geo photographer Jonathan Irish celebrated by visiting every U.S. national park throughout the year. Follow his travels as he visited 59 parks in 52 weeks.

PharmaLive/Med Ad News: The X Factor at SXSW (March 31, 2016)
Through collaboration, brainstorming and outreach, AbelsonTaylor, HCB Health and JUICE Pharma partnered with the MIT Hacking Medicine team. It was a new concept for all of us, cramming a traditional 48-hour “hack” into a four-hour portion of our three-day session.

ADWEEK: 3 Ways to Be More Creative With Healthcare Advertising (March 27, 2016)
With medical, social and digital breakthroughs, it doesn’t have to be boring.

ADWEEK: Note to Media and Marketing Execs in the Wake of SXSW: Don’t Move to Austin (March 15, 2016)
You probably won’t like all the growth, innovation and energy.

PM360: Three Independent Agencies Prove Collaboration is Possible at SXSW 2016 (March 2016)
As the leaders of three prominent independent healthcare agencies, we have tired over the years of hearing how networks collaborate together for their clients, implying that an independent can’t do it. Earlier this month, we launched a major initiative at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) in Austin that disproved that notion.

PharmaVOICE: Creating Great Creative (March 2016)
No matter how much new technology and media mess with the definition of an ad, one thing remains the same: it requires great perseverance to push through the mediocre, the see-say, the overdone, the obvious, the self-serving, the self-doubt, the judgment, the panic attacks, and the sheer exhaustion that threaten greatness.

2015

PM360: Key Strategies To Foster Sales and Marketing Collaboration (December 15, 2015)
Sales and marketing departments in most pharmaceutical companies are more closely related than they have ever been. Many companies bring sales and marketing together in business units, but even if that is not the case, most customer-facing employees anticipate that their career path will take them into marketing in the pursuit of positions in upper management, and the reverse is true for marketing personnel.

PharmaExec: Think Globally, Act Locally (November 8, 2015)
There is a paradox at play in the world of global marketing. We live in an age where the expectation is that messages can be shared instantaneously across the boundaries of time, language, and location. We are more connected than we have ever been yet we still are not a unified world. What motivates us, what inspires us, and what drives a brand to succeed is vastly different between continents and cultures.

PM360: The Worst Advice Ever for Marketing a World Class Medical Device (October 21, 2015)
Assumptions. They make an ass out of you and me—especially when you’re trying to determine the best strategies for marketing a medical device. In fact, knowing what assumptions to avoid may be just as important and even more valuable.

CBS Austin: Austin woman making sure other kids never have to face what she did (October 9, 2015)
An Austin woman is on a mission.” When I was four years old, I failed a vision test and we later learned I was blind in my left eye,” said Chelsea Elliott. “A year later, a failed hearing screening in kindergarten revealed that I was deaf in my right ear.” To ensure no other kids have to face what she did, Elliott started the Half-Helen Foundation, named in honor of one of her heroes.

2014

New York Times: U.S. Will Increase Production of the Ebola Drug ZMapp, but May Not Meet Demand (October 1, 2014)
Federal officials are planning to sharply increase production of ZMapp, which is viewed by many experts as the most promising experimental drug for treating people infected with Ebola in West Africa.

2013

TIME Magazine: Families USA Receives $1 Million Grant to Tell Pro-Obamacare Stories (October 25, 2013)
Families USA has received a $1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which it will use to collect and distribute to the media personal stories of those who have benefited from the new health insurance exchange rolled out by the Obama Administration October 1.

2012

Washington Post: Largest health insurer to keep key parts of law regardless of court ruling (June 11, 2012)
The nation’s largest health insurer will keep in place several key consumer provisions mandated by the 2010 health-care law regardless of whether the statute survives Supreme Court review.

2011

Washington Post: Nearly one in six in poverty in the U.S.; children hit hard, Census says (September 12, 2011)
Nearly one in six Americans was living in poverty last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, a development that is ensnaring growing numbers of children and offering vivid proof of the recession’s devastating impact.

2010

New York Times: Health Law Preserves Cobra Plan (April 2, 2010)
If you’ve recently joined the ranks of the unemployed or are worried that you soon will, you may be wondering if the sweeping new health law will help you. Will you, for instance, still be able to get health insurance under the government-mandated Cobra program? If so, for how long? And at what price?

New York Times: The Cost of Doing Nothing on Health Care (February 27, 2010)
The unrelenting rise in medical costs is likely to wreak havoc within the system and beyond it, and pretty much everyone will be affected, directly or indirectly.

NPR: Confronting the Affordability Gap in Health Care Bills (January 19, 2010)
Of course, the conversation on health care in this country continues to come back to coverage. Yesterday, we heard about a debate over the constitutionality of requiring Americans to buy health insurance. And there’s another debate over the individual mandate. It’s about affordability. NPR’s Julie Rovner looks at what it would cost the average family.

2009

New York Times: Two Sides Take Health Care Debate Outside Washington (August 2, 2009)
With Republicans mobilizing against the proposed health care overhaul, President Obama, Congressional Democrats and leading advocacy groups are laying the groundwork for an August offensive against the insurance industry as part of a coordinated campaign to sell the public on the need for reform.

NPR: Opponents Support Expanding Medicaid Coverage (April 21, 2009) Two longtime adversaries in health care will come together Tuesday to unveil a proposal for overhauling the nation’s health care system. It will include a broad expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor.

CNN: Study 86.7 million Americans uninsured over last two years (March 4, 2009)
“The huge number of people without health coverage is worse than an epidemic,” Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a press release. “Inaction on health care reform in 2009 cannot be an option for the tens of millions of people who lack or lose health coverage each year … the cost of doing nothing is too high.” The study came out the day before President Obama plans to hold a health care summit at the White House. The President says reforming health care is one of his top priorities.

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