CHKD fined for losing track of drug shipment

The Department of Justice fined Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters $68,000 this month after the health system misplaced a shipment of 200 1-milliliter vials of fentanyl. The Department of Justice said the package was lost in CHKD’s receiving warehouse on its way to the hospital’s pharmacy.

CHKD also entered an agreement to correct record keeping inconsistencies, which allows the hospital to avoid legal responsibility for misplacing the shipment.

Hospital spokesperson Alice Warchol told WHRO the hospital cooperated fully with the investigation.

“CHKD no longer allows the delivery of controlled substances to their warehouse,” Warchol wrote in an email.

“Shipments are now delivered directly to the pharmacy. The hospital has also strengthened its system of record-keeping and receiving procedures to prevent incidents of this nature from occurring in the future.”

Congress holds first hearing on psychedelics in decades to assess health benefits for veterans

After studies started showing that substances like MDMA might help symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, the House Veterans Affairs Committee met to hear testimony about psychedelics as mental health treatment in November.

According to reporting by WHRO military reporter Steve Walsh, the VA is partnering in several studies to look at the possibility of using MDMA, psilocybin and other drugs to treat veterans, but isn’t directly funding any of those projects.

Psychedelics are controlled by the Food and Drug Administration as well as the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The VA wants to see more studies before approving treatment, but the other agencies’ rules make widespread studies difficult to conduct. None of those studies are happening at VA facilities in Virginia, but other local institutions are studying the therapeutic use of psychedelics, including Virginia Commonwealth University.

Read the full story here.

North Carolina immigrants face huge barriers to accessing care

According to a study from UNC-Chapel Hill and the Urban Institute, North Carolina’s immigrant residents face language barriers, eligibility issues and discrimination — and those problems mean many don’t get the care they need.

About one in 12 North Carolinians are immigrants. In northeastern North Carolina’s most populous counties, Dare and Pasquotank, immigrants make up 4.5% and 2.9% of the population, respectively.

The study says their experience with the state’s health care system and other government agencies vary widely.

Each county administers its own SNAP and Medicaid programs, creating extensive regional inconsistencies in the way programs are run.

A little over half of North Carolina’s immigrants speak Spanish, for which resources are intermittently available, but other immigrant groups are left without resources in their native languages. Newly-arrived immigrants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who largely speak Swahili, for example, reported never receiving any information in their own language.

Read the full story here.

Hospitals and nursing homes across Virginia continue to struggle with staffing shortages

A survey of 170 nursing homes around Virginia discovered nearly half those facilities are limiting new admissions, and another 40% are implementing waitlists.

Nursing home operators say they can’t find workers to maintain a required staff-to-patient ratio. More than 90% of the facilities said they’ve had to ask their existing employees to work overtime.

Additional reporting by WHRO found that hospitals are facing the same struggles to hire enough registered nurses. They’re trying a range of strategies to boost staffing — tuition reimbursement, student loan forgiveness and even international recruitment. Local provider Bon Secours also increased pay by around 10% during the last few years.

Read the full story on nursing home shortages here. Read WHRO’s coverage of nursing shortages here.

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