- Maine: Nursing Leaders of Maine, the American Nursing Association of Maine, and the Maine Nursing Action Coalition on Tuesday said by 2025, the state will face a nursing shortage of about 3,200 RNs. According to the organizations, nursing is facing an "employment cliff"—the median age for a nurse in Maine was 49 in 2015, and about 30 percent of RNs are at least 55 years old. Maine's public universities plan to collaborate with the state administration to host a Main Nursing Summit to address the shortage (AP/Sacramento Bee, 2/14).
- Missouri: Kansas City, Missouri-based Saint Luke's Health System has announced that it will open new Convenient Care retail clinics at three Price Chopper grocery stores in the area north of the Missouri river. Patients can visit the clinics for immediate treatment for mild conditions, such as minor sprains, sinus infections, and vaccinations. Advanced nurse practitioners will staff the clinics and can provide referrals to primary and specialty care providers in the Saint Luke's system (Reuter, Kansas City Business Journal, 2/13).
- Washington, D.C.: The Physicians Committee, a group comprised of 12,000 physicians, has launched a campaign that seeks to have children's hospitals stop serving hot dogs, contending that hot dogs pose a choking risk and are linked to a high risk of colon cancer. The campaign is aimed at hospitals located in the "colon cancer corridor," a group of nine states with high death rates from colorectal cancer. The corridor includes Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The committee asks the hospitals to remove hot dogs from their menus by March, which is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month (Jones Sanborn, Healthcare Finance News, 2/13).
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