Editor’s Note: Our thoughts are with colleagues and community in Duluth and elsewhere in the state, in the aftermath of flood devastation.
HEALTH CARE
26,000 Uninsured Die Each Year The study, released on Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Families USA, estimates that a record high of 26,100 people aged 25 to 64 died for lack of health coverage in 2010, up from 20,350 in 2005 and 18,000 in 2000. That makes for a rate of about 72 deaths per day, or three per hour.
$129 Marked for Community Health Centers The 2010 federal healthcare overhaul established the Community Health Center Fund to provide $11 billion over five years to fund health center operations, expansions and construction. Wednesday’s funding announcement followed more than $1.7 billion in health center funding provided by the healthcare law in fiscal 2011.
Vans Deliver Access to Health Care Nurse Jennifer Doble took Dominga’s medical history, then escorted the family to the clinic: a 31-ton truck parked outside. The trailer, equipped with a defibrillator, a crash cart, blood pressure monitors, wheelchair lift, chest X-ray suite and an electrocardiogram, is one of a handful of mobile health clinics in Minnesota that are part of a strategy to bring medical care to the state’s under- and uninsured.
LABOR
Hospitals Lag In Workforce Diversity According to a survey from the American Hospital Association’s Health Research and Educational Trust, minorities represent 29% of all patients, but only 14% of hospital board members, and 14% of executive leadership.
90M Workers of This Kind Won’t Be Needed By 2020 Between 90 and 95 million low-skill workers — or 2.6 percent of the global workforce — will not be needed by employers by 2020 and will be vulnerable to permanent joblessness.