The Alta Bates Summit Medical Center has been fined by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health for willfully violating safety protocols that put staff, patients and visitors at high risk of contracting infectious diseases. Ironically, this violation was discovered as Cal/OSHA personnel were investigating the hospital for another safety transgression.

Once again, California legislators are considering legislation to establish uniformity and transparency for charity care and community benefit programs -- SB 346, authored by Sen. Bob Wieckowski. Once again, the hospital giants are scrambling to prevent it.

On the one-year anniversary of the illegal closing of North Adams Regional Hospital on March 28, 2014the North County Cares Coalition (NCCC) is hosting a day of action and demonstrations as part of a year-long effort to restore a full service hospital to meet the significant health care needs of the 37,000 residents of Northern Berkshire County who are currently going without access to needed services, and are forced to travel a long distance to receive services they used to receive close to home.

The management of Huntington Memorial Hospital (HMH) would have the Pasadena community believe that it is a great hospital and that current efforts by its registered nurses to form a labor union in affiliation with the California Nurses Association (CNA) will lead to ruin. It may be hard for management to admit, but neither claim could be further from the truth.

Sutter Health has agreed to pay $71,275 in fines issued by Cal/OSHA after an investigation found safety violations for handling patients with suspected airborne diseases at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland.

As NPR has been reporting in its Injured Nurses series, nursing employees suffer more back and arm injuries than just about any other occupations, but studies show that hospitals can reduce the number of injuries dramatically if they buy special equipment to move patients and conduct intensive training to teach the staff how to use it.

Prime Healthcare’s decision to drop its bid to buy six Daughters of Charity hospitals, citing strict conditions set by Attorney General Kamala Harris, should prompt discussion about basic standards for all California hospitals. Harris established a new bar for how all hospitals should operate, and it ought to become the industry yardstick.