SALT LAKE CITY – All over the country, millions of people are up and quitting their jobs and looking for better options. It’s called “The Great Resignation,” and analysts believe it’s impacting healthcare in Utah, which is especially concerning since COVID-19 cases are on the rise.

In early June, the World Economic Forum projected more than 40 percent of all workers across the US were planning to resign from their jobs. Some health care providers in Utah are already seeing this play out.

At any normal point, the University of Utah Health has 600 to 800 open jobs in all of its facilities statewide. However, Chief Human Resources Officer Sarah Sherer says they have 900 open jobs, now.

“I don’t think we’re alone. I know all of our other healthcare partners are in the same boat of looking for a workforce,” she said.

She reported these open jobs to include

CLEVELAND — Deborah Van Kleef and her husband are just one of hundreds of Northeast Ohio families who are waiting for the in-home healthcare help they desperately need.

The couple is doing all they can to keep Deborah’s 94-year-old mother in her home, but after her mom broke her arm in February, a national shortage of in-home caregivers has made it very difficult on her family.

“Oh I love my mom more than I can say,” Van Kleef said. “She’s always believed in me, and because she’s a great role model, a great example.”

Van Kleef said after her mother broke her arm, getting her the care she needs has proven extremely difficult.

“And then she broke her arm and immediately, almost overnight, she needed 24-hour care. Even when I’m not with her, it’s a 24/7 responsibility,” Van Kleef said. “We couldn’t find the in-home help we needed so she

FLINT, MI — An executive who formerly held a role as president of McLaren Health Care’s central region, has been promoted to the position of executive vice president and chief operating officer for the nonprofit health care delivery system.

Chad Grant was named the new executive vice president and chief operating officer for McLaren Health Care, Philip Incarnati, president/CEO of McLaren Health Care, announced Thursday, July 8 in a MHC news release.

Prior to this promotion, Grant was the president of McLaren’s central region directing the hospital operations of McLaren Flint, McLaren Greater Lansing and McLaren Lapeer Region. In this new role, Grant will oversee all hospital operations across the organization.

The McLaren system comprises 15 hospitals, including 14 in Michigan and one in Maumee, Ohio, per the news release.

Grant brings an extensive background of healthcare leadership experience, including successful management of acute care hospital operations, strategic planning, new

Karen Jo Young wrote a letter to her local newspaper criticizing executives at the hospital where she worked as an activities coordinator, arguing that their actions led to staffing shortages and other patient safety problems.

Hours after her letter was published in September 2017, officials at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, Maine, fired her, citing a policy that no employee may give information to the news media without the direct involvement of the media office.

But a federal appellate court recently said Young’s firing violated the law and ordered that she be reinstated. The court’s decision could mean that hospitals and other employers will need to revise their policies barring workers from talking to the news media and posting on social media.

Those media policies have been a bitter source of conflict at hospitals over the past year, as physicians, nurses and other health care workers around

President Biden signed on Friday an executive order that the White House bills as an effort to target anticompetitive practices in tech, healthcare and other parts of the economy while boosting workers’ wages and consumer protections.

The sweeping order includes 72 actions and recommendations that the White House says “will lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, and promote innovation and even faster economic growth.”

The order includes calls for banning or limiting noncompete agreements to help boost wages, allowing rule changes that would pave the way for hearing aids to be sold over the counter at drugstores and banning excessive early termination fees by internet companies. It also calls on the Transportation Department to consider issuing rules requiring airlines to refund fees when baggage is delayed or in-flight services are not provided as advertised.

“In total, higher prices and lower wages caused by lack of competition are now

Despite a global pandemic and an armed rebellion, Ted Hooley wouldn’t give up on his vision to build a health clinic in the Central African Republic.

The Stillwater native and St. John’s University graduate knew he wanted to use his skills to help underserved people in developing countries. But he didn’t always know how that would look. Maybe he would work abroad as a consultant for a country’s ministry of health — a job he tried while completing his graduate degree in global human development at Georgetown University.

After working in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis, Hooley realized his calling wasn’t in consulting. It was on the ground in communities.

“There’s nothing that beats being in a village with people and just making that person-to-person connection,” said Hooley, 33. “That’s what really gives me energy.”

In 2016, Hooley laid the groundwork for his humanitarian health nonprofit, Senitizo,

In the latest state-level swing at LGBTQ health care access, Ohio will now allow medical providers to refuse to administer any medical treatment that violates their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.

The language was buried in a 700-page document of last-minute amendments to the state’s two-year budget bill, which Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine approved last Thursday. The provision allows anyone providing medical care — from doctors and nurses to researchers and lab techs – and anyone paying for that care (namely, insurance providers), “the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.” 

The bill does not allow medical professionals to deny LGBTQ people care, carte blanche; the exemption “is limited to conscience-based objections to a particular health care service.” It goes on to say that the provider