💉 Checking the Pulse 08/05/26

Kratom and 7-OH update — As you may have seen, over the weekend CDN published a lengthy story about kratom and 7-OH, addictive products available in gas stations that are increasingly causing intense addictions for parents and kids. The story was published on Saturday. Yesterday, when Whatcom County Council met as the health board, it sounded like there may be some movement at the county level toward discussing these products. Councilmember Jon Scanlon said there is interest amongst council members in dedicating time to discuss the products. The council has received numerous emails regarding the products, Scanlon said.

Late last month, it was revealed that the federal government demanded some hospitals nationwide share personally identifiable medical records of patients served in their emergency departments. The request came from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a small agency that, according to KFF Health News, has been secretly pressuring hospital leaders to share detailed and personal patient data with a private contractor.

Skagit Regional Health hasn’t been asked for information from the agency, a hospital spokesperson told me. If they are eventually asked, “we would comply with the public records act to supply statistical data but would not release protected health information,” the spokesperson said.

PeaceHealth also told me it hasn’t been asked for data from the agency.

When asked if PeaceHealth would share emergency department data containing personally identifiable information, a spokesperson for the system wrote in an emailed statement:

“We are legally required to comply with all state and federal laws. PeaceHealth has clear processes in place to ensure we respond appropriately to any requests. However, if requests conflict with existing guidelines such as those outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, PeaceHealth will seek clarity when needed.”

PeaceHealth employees have yet again received another email from their chief executive officer, Sarah Ness, announcing layoffs. The health system will soon lay off an undisclosed number of IT employees due to a new five-year contract with the U.S. subsidiary (The HCI Group) of an Indian IT company, Tech Mahindra.

A PeaceHealth spokesperson declined to provide an estimate of how many employees will be laid off or say how much the contract costs. The hospital also declined to say what other companies were considered for the contract, but added in an email, “The decision followed a structured review of multiple providers.”

The contract is for five years with two optional one-year renewals.

A PeaceHealth IT employee in Bellingham who requested anonymity as they’re now looking for a job told me they estimate the cuts could impact around 200 to 250 people.

As you know, the announcement is only the latest in a series of layoffs publicly defining Ness’s tenure since she took the helm of the health system in January. In particular, earlier this year the hospital cut much of its informatics staff — the team that handles healthcare information and technology internally.

In her email to staff, Ness said that some IT roles will no longer remain, but added: “None of the affected roles provide direct patient care.” IT employees took little solace in Ness’s assurance, based on my conversations with likely soon-to-be jobless IT employees.

Not only is this adding to the growing list of local families grappling with sudden job and insurance loss, but the IT employees have concerns that the changes could result in disruptions to the timeliness with which issues related to the hospital’s electronic medical records (Epic Systems) are addressed.

“A lot of the non-IT caregivers, they feel like support is going to slow down drastically and things aren't going to be fixed very properly, especially with going to a third-party company for issues,” one PeaceHealth IT employee told CDN. “They're worrying that PeaceHealth is just going to be treated like they're just another one of our clients. They have to get in the back of the line and wait for us to fix their issues.”

Another concern, the employee added: data privacy.

“Where’s the information from Epic going to be stored now?” they asked.

HCI Group’s website indicates the company has experience with Epic, including at Johns Hopkins on the East Coast and at “over 130” clients using Epic. The company also helps hospitals move their electronic health records to Amazon Web Services — the cloud computing arm of Amazon.

Put another way, one of Whatcom County’s largest employers continues to lay off employees working in-person in the county and instead outsource those jobs — or just the responsibilities of those jobs — to companies based elsewhere.

The Atlantic: Writing in support of an argument you don’t hear every day, a public health professor and emergency medicine physician says public health needs MAHA.

Inside Medicine: After reading the aforementioned Atlantic article, now consider a line-by-line disagreement and, honestly, takedown by Dr. Jeremy Faust.

The Seattle Times: Why is a concerning, little-known restraint stocked in a youth Skagit County detention facility but not in Whatcom County? The Seattle Times’ investigation into spit hoods is a must-read.

Mother Jones: The investigative journalism outlet takes readers inside Idaho and the Make America Healthy Again movement with a concerning story about vaccines, parenting and two children’s strange deaths.