Patients

Respiratory therapists, nursing aides, surgical technicians and other patient care workers plan to stage a walkout starting Tuesday morning at five University of California medical centers. More than 12,000 workers from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are expected to participate in the two-day strike over staffing, pay and pension reform, union officials said. An additional 3,400 workers from the University Professional and Technical Employees union plan a one-day sympathy strike.

A strike by University of California patient care workers Tuesday caused the cancellation of hundreds of surgeries, the closure of laboratory stations and the diversion of emergency room patients, officials said. The hospitals prepared for the two-day strike by postponing elective surgeries and hiring temporary workers, but services still were affected after thousands of employees took to the picket line at the medical centers in Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento, where the UC Davis facility is located.

The injured children came into the Children's Hospital at the Oklahoma University Medical Center in Oklahoma City fast. So fast that the hospital set up a triage center in its own facility. "Every once in a while, a trauma trickles into the emergency room at OU Children's," said Bob Letton, pediatric trauma medical director at the hospital. But not Monday. In the wake of a powerful tornado that ripped through the area, he said, "a facility used to seeing one or two traumas a day all of a sudden had over 50. " PHOTOS: Powerful tornado slams Oklahoma Doctors and other staff almost immediately treated the "walking wounded" -- those with lacerations and other minor injuries -- so the emergency room could handle the more seriously injured, Letton said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A strike by patient-care workers concerned about pension changes and staffing levels has led to the cancellation of an expected 150 surgeries at UC San Francisco Medical Center over the two-day labor action and will affect at least another 200 patients, hospital officials said Tuesday. As strikers in green T-shirts blew whistles and chanted outside of the hilltop hospital, staff worked to discharge as many patients as possible, dropping the normal census at the adult facility and adjacent UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital to 398 from the usual 505. “Mark Laret, the hospital CEO, eliminated 300 positions in April, pretty much across everything,” said Randy Johnson, an MRI technologist and member of the striking American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

For years, physicians have been inching their way to a better understanding of how -- and how well -- the drug ketamine, a "twilight drug" used to sedate some patients before a painful procedure, can lift someone with severe depression almost immediately from the abyss. A new study, presented in San Francisco this week at the American Psychiatric Association's yearly meeting , shows that ketamine's rapid antidepressant effect is no incidental effect of sedation: it's real, and it lasts -- albeit with diminishing effects -- for at least a week.

Patient care workers at the University of California's medical centers plan to stage a two-day strike next week, but the number taking part will be decided Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court. A judge is expected to rule on a request for a temporary restraining order limiting the number of workers who may take part in the walkout. According to UC officials, the focus is on workers considered essential for patient care. The union representing nearly 13,000 patient healthcare workers has notified UC that it plans to strike over contract issues from 4 a.m. Tuesday to 4 a.m. Thursday.

Hedda Bolgar, a psychologist old enough to have attended Sigmund Freud's lectures in Vienna but youthful enough to have treated patients until just a few weeks ago, has died. She was 103. Her mind was sharp, her zest for work keen, and her social calendar full until shortly before her death on Monday, said Allen Yasser, her longtime friend and colleague. "It took me a month to get a dinner date with her, and we were virtually family," said Yasser, a psychologist and psychoanalyst.

When Medicare disclosed average charges from thousands of U.S. hospitals for 100 common procedures last week, only one hospital was near the top in every category: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Be it a cardiac stent, a hip replacement or a pacemaker, Cedars-Sinai's list prices for these routine treatments ranked among the top 5% in the country. For example, the average charge at Cedars-Sinai for gallbladder surgery with complications was $153,302 in 2011 compared with the U.S. median charge of $42,380, government data show.

The only thing less pleasant than a stay in the hospital is having to go right back there to deal with complications. And experts say it happens all too often. One in 8 elderly patients is readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of being discharged after surgery, according to a recent study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. But efforts are underway to bring down the number of readmissions. The federal government, for instance, can fine hospitals with too many patients readmitted within 30 days after being treated for heart attacks, heart failure or pneumonia.

SACRAMENTO - Facing a possible two-day strike next week by patient care and technical workers, the five large University of California medical centers are starting to cancel elective surgeries that had been scheduled as soon as Monday, officials said. Emergency care will not be shut and patients already in the five hospitals across the state will continue to receive care. But many elective procedures will delayed until after the potential strike, set for Tuesday and Wednesday, according to John Stobo, UC's senior vice president for health sciences and services.