LOS ANGELES — More than 24,000 nurses and other health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Oregon have overwhelmingly authorized a strike, threatening to walk out over pay and working conditions strained by the coronavirus pandemic. Kaiser, one of the nation’s largest health care providers, has proposed a two-tiered wage and benefits system […]
health care workers
Posted inNews, Politics and Government
Threatening an elected official in Colorado may soon land you in prison as lawmakers push to protect public workers
After state Rep. Kyle Mullica introduced a bill last year to make it harder for Colorado parents to opt their children out of school vaccinations, he received a threatening email. “You deserve death,” the person wrote. “The world would be better if your home burned down with you and your family in it.” Police came […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health, News
Colorado’s “last responders” are exhausted after a year of coronavirus goodbyes
Maria McLain Cox deals in uncertainty. The longtime hospital chaplain has been with patients through chemotherapy and new diagnoses. She comforts couples who have lost infants, the families of stroke victims and people who were rushed to the emergency room and didn’t survive. There are no words McLain Cox can say to ward off difficulty, […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News, Politics and Government
Colorado lawmaker who also works as ER nurse gets coronavirus vaccine, hopes to show others it’s safe
Kyle Mullica, a state representative who also works as an emergency room nurse, received his first dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, saying he hopes to show others that the inoculation is safe and leaving open the possibility of legislative action to ensure it reaches enough people to end the pandemic. “I trust the […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
$8,000 a week drawing COVID nurses from Colorado, other states to hard-hit areas
Markian Hawryluk and Rae Ellen Bichell In March, Claire Tripeny was watching her dream job fall apart. She’d been working as an intensive care nurse at St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, and loved it, despite the mediocre pay typical for the region. But when COVID-19 hit, that calculation changed. She remembers her employers telling […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, News, Politics and Government
RVs are housing health care workers worried about giving their families coronavirus. But some Colorado cities, HOAs put up roadblocks.
Boulder Community Hospital nurse Ernest Illo and his wife grew anxious that the COVID-19 outbreak would soon creep from Illo’s work into their Gunbarrel condo and infect their 5-year-old son. When the virus started spreading across the country, many medical front-line workers moved out of their homes to shelter in motels, or at the homes […]
Posted inColoradans, News
A volunteer army has answered Colorado’s need for masks. Denver’s jails are one recent beneficiary.
When the new coronavirus emerged in Colorado, the Denver Sheriff Department knew it would need protective masks to limit the spread of the illness in the close quarters of its Downtown Detention Center and in the larger Denver County Jail on Smith Road. Disposable surgical masks donated by the Denver Health Foundation filled the immediate […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Carman: Essential workers are our heroes. It’s time to start treating them that way.
I love the howl. Every night at 8, I join my neighbors in a collective bawling at the moon to honor the essential workers in our midst who are risking their lives to care for the rest of us. A couple of cheeky participants light fireworks. Children holler with glee. Dogs bark. The urban coyotes […]
Posted inBusiness, Health, News
Coronavirus panic has fueled the telehealth revolution in Colorado — and we won’t go back
Colorado patients visiting their doctors virtually through video links, phone calls or online chats are up more than 2,000% in some larger health systems during the COVID-19 crisis, easing life for consumers and promising permanent changes long after the virus is gone. Turning a short-term necessity into a long-term virtue for consumers and providers, the […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, Health, News, Politics and Government, Technology
Colorado’s efforts to scale up PPE production are being tangled in federal red tape, certification process
In a matter of weeks, hundreds of manufacturers across Colorado have suspended normal production of things like snowboards, outdoor gear and clothing to make personal protective equipment for health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak. They’re making masks and face shields and parts for ventilators. But federal red tape and limited […]