Tentative agreement reached at eight Twin Cities hospitals

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MINNEAPOLIS — SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members at eight Twin Cities Hospitals have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that includes strengthened health and safety provisions to protect both workers and patients. The new language represents a significant step forward on a major goal for the 3,500 workers covered by the contract, the union said. “With the shift in healthcare towards primary, preventive and ambulatory care, the patients we see in our hospitals are sicker and the threat of infectious agents is greater than ever before,” said Maxine Maxon, a Nursing Assistant at the Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis. “We are proud that we won stronger protections for our health and safety at work, as well as the health and safety of our patients and anyone who visits our hospitals.”

“We are the people who take care of our patients and take care of our hospitals, so we want to make sure that no one is put in an unsafe situation if it can be avoided,” said Billie Brown, a Mental Health Assistant at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale. “Our new contract will help us limit exposure to infectious agents in our hospitals and it addresses our right to refuse work in certain circumstances where our health and safety may be at risk.”

The agreement was reached early Friday morning, shortly before Sunday’s expiration of the current contract. Continue Reading

Public health spending focuses on children, mentally ill

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Minnesota’s greatest health challenges fall into two categories: children living in poverty and gaps in care for people with mental illness, according to Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson.For the past two days, Jesson and division directors laid out Gov. Mark Dayton’s health care proposals to the House Health and Human Services Finance Committee, which took no action.The governor’s overall proposed $35.5 billion budget for the Department of Human Services includes $12.8 billion from the General Fund, about $176.5 million more than the projected base funding for the 2016-2017 biennium. The remaining department operating funds come from the Health Care Access Fund, federal matches, lottery revenues, special revenue fund and fees for services.Not all of the initiatives would require changes in law, but many do.Caring for the childrenA disproportionate number of babies born to mothers addicted to opioids occur in tribal communities. Department officials are calling for early, in-utero intervention, which may result in public fund savings because it’s more expensive to treat the babies in the neonatal intensive care unit after birth. The grant program would enable clinics to target pregnant at-risk women and direct them into services for substance abuse and public health services.To improve access to quality child care, regulations for assistance would be simplified and the Basic Sliding Fee program for child care would be expanded to reduce the number of families on waiting lists. The sliding fee is capped and some counties have long waiting periods for families that qualify. Continue Reading

BEHIND THE STORY | Agreeing to Disagree

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This might be surprising, but I run with a pretty liberal/progressive crowd. In my “real” life as well as on social media, most of my connections are people that generally have values surrounding helping the environment, working toward social justice, free speech- that kind of thing. So I’ve found myself a bit in a kerfuffle around this whole vaccination debate. I had no idea it was such a prevalent belief among otherwise sane, progressive people to question whether vaccinations were an okay thing with which to partake. I thought the “anti-vaxxer” movement was just some fringe conspiracy movement. It turns out some of my very dear friends and people I really respect have reservations about vaccinations. Continue Reading

Who protects the protectors?

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A man and woman are in the car ahead, and the car has a veteran’s license plate. Which one is the veteran?Most people would identify the man. But maybe this time it’s the woman. As the number of women in the military grows, so does the number of women vets.Life in the military can be hard for women. Like that license plate response, the military system was created with men in mind. Continue Reading

Sexual Violence Center heals wounds of ‘a rape culture’

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Small, quaint, intimate, private, relatable — words to describe the space and the open house held by the Sexual Violence Center in North Minneapolis. Annex Teen Clinic, UROC, and the Minneapolis Police Department were all a part of the many groups and organizations that attended this event held January 13.Executive Director Kristen Houlton Sukura says, “We are a rape crisis center. We work three counties — Hennepin, Carver and Scott. We’re an advocacy agency… We’re not therapy. We are not a clinic. Continue Reading