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Friday, August 30, 2013

Fast Food Strikes Go Viral: Workers Expected to Protest Low Wages in 35 Cities Thursday

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from business.time.com


People gather outside of a Wendy's restaurant as part of a one day strike calling for higher wages for fast food workers in New York, July 29, 2013.

A growing movement among fast food workers to demand higher wages is expected to gain momentum this Thursday as strikes and protests against the country’s biggest restaurant chains spread to the South and the West Coast.

Low-wage workers at fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and retailers such as Macy’s are gearing up for a nationwide strike just before Labor Day weekend. The striking workers are demanding the right to unionize and at least $15 an hour in pay, more than double the current national minimum wage of $7.25. Organizers say Thursday’s strikes could touch as many as 35 cities.

“These companies that own these fast food restaurants, they make way too much money off the backs of the employees,” says Dearius Merritt, a 24-year-old worker at Church’s Chicken in Memphis who earns $13 an hour and plans to take part in his first strike Thursday. “I’m in the store every day with these workers that make $7.25…If I’m 30 years old and this is what I have to do to survive, then I deserve a living wage off of it.”

The rumblings against the long-standing economics of fast food began last November in New York, when about 200 restaurant workers went on strike in a one-day protest. By July the movement had ballooned to include thousands of...

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

An “F” for Quality

Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com

Huge numbers of older persons transition from hospitals to the nursing home. Often, an older hospitalized patient needs skilled nursing care before they are ready to return home. In other cases, a nursing home patient who needed hospitalization is returning to the nursing home. Older patients and their families certainly hope that great communication between the hospital and nursing home would assure a seamless transition in care.

But a rather stunning study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests the quality of communication between the hospital and the nursing home is horrendous. The study was led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin, including nurse researcher, Dr. Barbara King and Geriatrician Dr. Amy Kind.
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Claims Adjuster, TPA Could Face Criminal Charges for Worker Fatality



Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.propertycasualty360.com


The egregious ­mismanagement
of a California workers’ compensation
claim is being blamed for an
injured worker’s severe infection
and resultant death.

The ongoing case is drawing ire from various associations, including the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association (CAAA), which is lobbying that criminal charges be filed against Sedgwick Claims Management Services, the third-party administrator involved in the claim, as well as one of its adjusters.

The initial workers’ compensation claim originated when Charles Romano injured his shoulder and cervical spine on Dec. 20, 2003 while stocking shelves at a Ralph’s grocery store (part of The Kroger Co.) in Camarillo, Calif. After undergoing surgery for the resultant injuries on August 29, 2005, Romano contracted methicillin-resistant straphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which not only caused renal and pulmonary failure but also paralysis below the shoulders (from C8 down).

Romano later sought treatment for the serious infection at the Ventura County Medical Center, where he had no choice but to use Medi-Cal—the state’s version of Medicaid—because Sedgwick refused to authorize treatment. In fact, Medi-Cal paid for Romano’s medical bills dating from November 2005 through February 2007, ultimately picking up a tab for $300,000.

Fatal Consequences
On October 25, 2006, a workers’ compensation judge issued an amended findings and award,ruling that the MRSA infection was a...
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After West disaster, News study finds U.S. chemical safety data wrong about 90 percent

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from share.d-news.co


Even the best national data on chemical accidents is wrong nine times out of 10.
A Dallas Morning News analysis of more than 750,000 federal records found pervasive inaccuracies and holes in data on chemical accidents, such as the one in West that killed 15 people and injured more than 300.

In fact, no one at any level of government knows how often serious chemical accidents occur each year in the United States. And there is no plan in place for federal agencies to gather more accurate information.

As a result, the kind of data sharing ordered by President Barack Obama in response to West is unlikely to improve the government’s ability to answer even the most basic questions about chemical safety.

“We can track Gross National Product to the second and third decimal, but there is no reliable way of tracking even simple things like how many [chemical] accidents happen,” said Sam Mannan, a nationally recognized expert on chemical safety who recently testified before a congressional hearing on West.

“This is just scandalous.”
After the West explosion in April, The News asked a simple question: How often do serious or potentially serious industrial chemical accidents occur in Texas and nationwide? After scouring the four federal databases with the most comprehensive information available on chemical safety, The News concluded that there was no way to know.

For a recent four-year period, the paper managed to confirm at least 24...
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Measuring the Global Burden of Disease

Today's post was shared by NEJM and comes from www.nejm.org

It is difficult to deliver effective and high-quality care to patients without knowing their diagnoses; likewise, for health systems to be effective, it is necessary to understand the key challenges in efforts to improve population health and how these challenges are changing. Before the early 1990s, there was no comprehensive and internally consistent source of information on the global burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors. To close this gap, the World Bank and the World Health Organization launched the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study in 1991.

Although assessments of selected diseases, injuries, and risk factors in selected populations are published each year (e.g., the annual assessments of the human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] epidemic, the only comprehensive assessments of the state of health in the world have been the various revisions of the GBD Study for 1990, 1999–2002, and 2004.

The advantage of the GBD approach is that consistent methods are applied to critically appraise available information on each condition, make this information comparable and systematic, estimate results from countries with incomplete data, and report on the burden of disease with the use of standardized metrics.

The most recent assessment of the global burden...

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Christopher J.L. Murray, M.D., D.Phil., and Alan D. Lopez, Ph.D.
N Engl J Med 2013; 369:448-457August 1, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra1201534


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Fashion Safety: Charges of Child Labor Confront Walmart and The GAP

Child labor infractions and workplace safety conditions in Bangladesh have been raised against Walmart and The GAP by Al Jazeera America in a report aired in its initial week of broadcasting.

Children as young as 12 make clothes with
Old Navy tags in a Dhaka factory with no fire exit or fire extinguishers.
"Fault Lines repeatedly asked for on-camera interviews with representatives of Walmart and Gap, but by our deadline, both companies had denied our requests. Instead, they issued written comments in response to the reporting in our investigative film, "Made in Bangladesh," which examines some of the practices of U.S. retailers in Bangladesh's garment industry. Walmart's comments come in the form of a Q&A we did with a company spokesperson, while Gap issued a statement in response to our findings in Bangladesh that we outlined to them. Both statements are posted in full."

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Who Is Paying the Bills for Occupational Illnesses and Disease?

A recently published study from the US Department of Health and Human Services (NIOSH) reports that 45% of emergency room medical expenses for occupational illnesses and disease are not expected to be paid by workers' compensation insurance coverage.

Click here to read the complete report: Use of Workers’ Compensation Data for Occupational Safety  and Health: Proceedings from  June 2012 Workshop (May 2013) Identifying Workers’ Compensation as the Expected Payer in  Emergency Department Medical Records,  Larry L. Jackson, PhD, Susan J. Derk, MA, Suzanne M. Marsh, MPA, Audrey A. Reichard, OTR, MPH  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
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