Health Workers

Top Los Angeles County officials are conducting a case-by-case review of all health department employees known to have criminal histories in order to determine whether some workers have convictions that should disqualify them from their jobs, Supervisor Mike Antonovich said Tuesday.

The leaders of an Oakland union were removed from office Tuesday by their Washington bosses, the culmination of months of fighting over who will represent tens of thousands of home health aides. The Service Employees International Union served the officers of the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers West with a trusteeship notice Tuesday afternoon. It appointed its executive vice presidents, Eliseo Medina and Dave Regan, as trustees.

In an unexpected twist, a former Labor secretary tapped to resolve a dispute between two high-profile labor leaders essentially rendered a split decision Thursday. At issue was whether the officers of United Healthcare Workers-West, based in Oakland, broke union rules when they set up a tax-exempt fund for patient education, which the Service Employees International Union said was a secret war chest in a fight against its parent union.

California's failure to check the criminal backgrounds of health professionals extends well beyond nurses, encompassing tens of thousands of doctors, dentists, psychiatric technicians and therapists. The Times reported this fall that regulators had not vetted about 195,000 of the state's registered and vocational nurses, exposing patients to caregivers with histories of violence, addiction, predatory behavior or corruption.

The Bush administration announced its "conscience protection" rule for the healthcare industry Thursday, giving doctors, hospitals, and even receptionists and volunteers in medical experiments the right to refuse to participate in medical care they find morally objectionable. "This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," said outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

Since the gruesome Mumbai terrorist attacks, mental health experts understandably have been in big demand here. But India, with 1.1 billion people, has only 4,000 psychiatrists, and efforts to provide adequate professional help for those traumatized by the rampage is proving a daunting task. Psychiatrists say it's not unusual to arrive at rural clinics and find 300 people waiting to see them. Each patient receives five minutes of attention at best.

A controversial poll of unionized healthcare workers in California came to a close this week, with 86% voting in favor of a single statewide long-term healthcare worker local. The vote by the Service Employees International Union asked certain members of locals 521 and 6434 as well as United Healthcare Workers West, whether they preferred to consolidate into a single healthcare union or only to consolidate the long-term workers, which include nursing home employees and home health aides.

Health workers are on the verge of eradicating Guinea worm disease in what would be just the second time in history that a disease has been wiped from the planet, the Carter Center said Friday. Cheap interventions such as hygiene education, using larvicides to kill the worm and distributing inexpensive cloths to help filter parasites from drinking water have cut the infection rate by 99%, the center said. Fewer than 5,000 cases of Guinea worm disease, also known as dracunculiasis, remain in Mali, Niger, Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia, the Atlanta-based center said.

The presidential election has come to an end, but a stormy political battle of another sort is in high gear in labor circles, with long-ranging consequences for California healthcare workers. At issue is whether as many as 300,000 employees now represented by three separate local unions across the state will be rolled into one enormous local, a proposal that was put to a nonbinding vote of members on Monday.

After a yearlong impasse, the University of California has reached a tentative labor contract with 11,000 patient care workers. The pact calls for the minimum wage for workers at the system's five medical centers to be raised to $14.50 an hour over five years. It also provides salary parity for existing employees and new hires, sets up a step system to reward workers for years of service and guarantees extra pay for overtime work. Officials with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will recommend that its members ratify the contract when they meet early next month.