SACRAMENTO
As intensive care units filled and coronavirus cases surged over the holidays, Carmela Coyle invoked a World War II-era quote attributed to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to rally her own troops: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Coyle is head of the California Hospital Association, and her “troops” are the highly paid hospital executives she represents. Throughout the pandemic, as in the December memo in which she quoted Churchill, she has employed battlefield rhetoric to galvanize their massive political and financial clout.
That’s because Coyle believes hospitals are quite simply “in battle conditions” a sentiment she has impressed upon the state’s top healthcare officials.
California to centralize vaccines, base eligibility on age
Jan. 26, 2021 at 9:34 am
JANIE HAR, Associated Press
California’s governor is pledging a more seamless coronavirus vaccination system that should make it easier for nearly 40 million residents to know when it’s their turn to get vaccinated and where to sign up, easing some of the confusion and angst as 58 counties try to roll out the scarce shots themselves.
The state would move to an age-based eligibility system after vaccinating those now at the front of the line, including health care workers, food and agriculture workers, teachers, emergency personnel and seniors 65 and older, Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news briefing Monday.
Photo by Tom Seawell and Gabe Branbury
Mark R. Laret, president and chief executive officer of UCSF Health, who grew and transformed UC San Franciscoâs multibillion-dollar clinical enterprise in an ever-shifting health care landscape for more than two decades, has announced that he will retire from the University of California on Dec. 31, 2021.
A nationally recognized leader in health care, Laret joined UCSF in 2000, in the wake of a three-year merger with Stanford Hospital that had left UCSF Medical Center in challenging financial and administrative straits. Under Laretâs deft leadership, a new Medical Center executive team was recruited, guided by a values system he implemented called PRIDE (Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity and Excellence), which has since been adopted across the entire University.Â
U.S. largely weathered Christmas coronavirus surge, but experts warn the threat could intensify Fenit Nirappil Ambulances outside Emanate Health Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina, Calif., on Jan. 12. (Philip Cheung for The Washington Post) The United States appears to have avoided the worst-case coronavirus scenarios that officials feared would overwhelm hospitals in the aftermath of Christmas and New Year’s gatherings. But experts caution that the threat from the virus has not diminished and could intensify with the emergence of new variants. Even as hospitalizations begin to stabilize, they do so from record heights. The country’s hospitals averaged more than 130,000 covid-19 patients a day over seven days this month, far exceeding summer and spring surges. The death toll from cases contracted before and after the holidays will stretch into February. Authorities reported nearly 4,500 deaths Wednesday, a new single-day record.