The COVID team donning personal protective equipment (PPE) in the CCU at the University Campus of UMass Memorial Health. (Photo by Allison Dinner Photography)
BOSTON — Late October and it’s still 70+ degrees in central Massachusetts. At Worcester’s Elm Park, it was a scene out of the ‘Before Times.’ Residents fed ducks, pushed strollers and relaxed on benches. What they didn’t do was don masks.
But across the street at the Price Chopper, the continuing reality. With Worcester entering the second month of an indoor mask mandate, shoppers had no choice but to cover mouths and noses.
WORCESTER - UMass Memorial Health is donating $1 million to the city to help establish the Worcester Health Equity Fund, supporting a range of health initiatives.
The city will disburse $200,000 annually into the fund over the next five years.
Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics help guide families on how to manage and move on from trauma.
Most people don’t make it through childhood without some degree of trauma. Some people have the resilience to handle this trauma without ongoing effects, but for others it’s more difficult.
Proceeds will establish the Worcester Health Equity Fund
he United States is entering its second flu season in the COVID-19 pandemic. The convergence of the two could pose a risk to those infected, and to hospital capacity. Dr. Robert Klugman with UMass Memorial Medical Center and the UMass Medical School joined GBH’s All Things Considered with Arun Rath to discuss. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
U.S. hospital and health system workers have been serving nearly two years on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. To recognize these workers, organizations have offered bonus payments during the public health crisis. It has been part of an ongoing effort to retain and recruit employees as hospitals deal with staff shortages and burnout during surges of the virus.
Becker's reached out to three healthcare leaders to see if these bonuses have boosted retention.
After the most mild flu season on record in 2020, the virus could come back early and hit harder this year, some doctors are predicting as they urge people to get a flu shot.
“The worry is that we are out of isolation and we didn’t get some of the natural immunity from last year, so we could see a surge in flu from last year,” said Dr. Robert Klugman, the medical director of employee health at UMass Memorial Health.
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HOPKINTON, Mass. - Hopkinton High School is the first school in Massachusetts to get state approval to drop the in-school mask mandate and a local pediatrician is weighing in on the decision.
In order to meet the state's threshold for removing masks, at least 80% of all students and staff at the school have to be vaccinated.
Advances to certified level 8 in both the acute and ambulatory care settings
HFMA President and CEO Joe Fifer interviews Sergio Melgar, CFO at UMass Memorial Health, about his history with health systems in peril and what he thinks could come out of pandemic-era changes.
WORCESTER - UMass Memorial Health President and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson said that, while things are “still very tight” regarding bed availability in Central Massachusetts, the mask mandate appears to be working, with COVID test rates roughly halved in recent weeks.
WORCESTER, Mass. - Healthcare providers are putting out the reminder for people to get their flu shots.
With strict COVID-19 restrictions such as mask wearing and social distancing in place last year the amount of flu last season was less than normal. Doctors are concerned with the easing of these restrictions, flu and other respiratory illnesses will return to pre-pandemic levels.
BOSTON — The pandemic has created a lot of stress. Often a simple way to find relief is a glass of wine or a beer.
Surveys show drinking is up significantly, particularly among women.
Massachusetts hospitals are bracing to lose hundreds of employees as deadlines for employees to get a Covid vaccine mandates approach.
While vaccination rates at Massachusetts hospitals are high, thousands of workers have yet to meet the criteria ahead of deadlines, which range from Oct. 1 at some hospitals to Nov. 1 at others. Those who haven't confirmed they are vaccinated could face termination.
WORCESTER, Mass. - After another emergency advisory from the CDC, local medical leaders are calling on pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The message advises pregnant women to protect not only themselves, but their baby from the harmful virus.
WORCESTER — The head of the largest healthcare system in Central Massachusetts says the hospital bed shortage and staffing crisis at UMass Memorial Healthcare have reached a tipping point.
As 25 Investigates’ Kerry Kavanaugh learned, plans are in the works to add more beds at the Worcester hospital, but requiring workers to get the COVID vaccine as a condition for employment could translate into fewer staff to care for patients.
On Thursday’s Boston Public Radio, Dr. Eric Dickson described the current situation at UMass Memorial Health as “the perfect storm,” after its hospital system ran out of ICU beds on Wednesday — 18 months after the COVID-19 pandemic officially began.
Dickson is the President and CEO of UMass Memorial Health, which has hospitals in Worcester, Southbridge, Marlborough and Leominster.
It’s time — long past time — to settle the St. Vincent Hospital nurses strike.
I’ve written about the strike before. The nurses said they walked to protect their patients and demanded better staffing requirements. To make their case, they produced a mountain of complaints, many verified by nursing supervisors, that documented unsafe patient conditions.
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