Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
For Hospitals Tending To Onslaught Of Shooting Victims It Was 'Worst Moment And Proudest Moment'
On Sunday night, Toni Mullan drove 110 miles an hour on side streets from home to get back to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where she had just worked a 12-hour shift as a clinical supervisor in the trauma resuscitation department. Her car was smoking as she pulled into a three-hour parking spot close to the trauma center. Ms. Mullan, 54, left her hazard lights blinking as she shut the car door and raced inside. (Fink, 10/2)
Hospitals in Las Vegas are grappling with a range of patient injuries that reflect the chaos of Sunday evening鈥檚 mass shooting, including horrific gunshot wounds and traumas inflicted as victims tried to flee. Local hospitals called in extra staff as well as medical personnel from a nearby Air Force base to cope with the onslaught, as authorities on Monday reported at least 59 deaths and more than 527 wounded from the tragedy outside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. (Whalen and Caldwell, 10/2)
Hospitals across the Las Vegas area were inundated Sunday evening when hundreds of people injured in the mass shooting at a country music festival on the Strip arrived at their doors by ambulances and private car. And hundreds of doctors, nurses, and support personnel were called into work to help handle the patients that were lined up in ambulance bays and hallways, officials say. (Kodjak, 10/2)
Las Vegas hospitals have likely implemented similar emergency preparedness protocols as they treat the roughly 515 people who were wounded Sunday night in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, which has left at least 58 people dead as of Monday afternoon. University Medical Center, the only Level 1 trauma center in Nevada, has treated 104 individuals who were wounded when a lone gunman opened fire on a concert crowd on the Las Vegas strip. More than 30 patients were treated in the free-standing trauma center approximately 6 miles from the country music festival's location. Four patients were pronounced dead at the facility, UMC spokeswoman Danita Cohen told the media. (Castellucci, 10/2)
As hospitals in Las Vegas deal with hundreds of shooting victims, a new study finds that gun violence sent more than 700,000 patients to emergency rooms in less than a decade. Those visits resulted in nearly $25 billion spent in healthcare over that period. Local officials reported that hospitals in Las Vegas were treating 515 casualities and that 58 people were dead after a gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort Hotel late Sunday night. Firearm-related injuries accounted for 25.3 emergency department visits for every 100,000 people between 2006 and 2014, according to an analysis of government data published Monday in Health Affairs and released to the press on an embargo before Sunday's shooting. (Johnson, 10/2)
No individual ambulance service or hospital in the Kansas City metro area could handle the aftermath of a mass shooting on the scale of what happened in Las Vegas Sunday night, where more than 50 people were killed and more than 500 were injured. (Marso, 10/2)
When a lone gunman with automatic rifles opened fire on the crowd below, Tina Frost, a 2008 graduate of Arundel High, was among the more than 520 people wounded early Monday morning in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Fifty-nine people were killed. Late Monday, Becky Frost said her 27-year-old sister had lost her right eye and was in a Las Vegas intensive care unit after a two-hour surgery. (Cox, 10/2)
