Equity Archives - Healthy News

Univera equity award bolsters Warrior House ‘Aging Strong Program’

Any person up for a little downward pet?

In their ongoing quest to give packages for the community’s very well-remaining, organizers of The GOOSE Neighborhood Center and Warrior Home of WNY will now be featuring a yoga sequence, thanks to a Univera overall health fairness award, Susan Zeliff states.

The award from Univera Healthcare will support Warrior Home of WNY and its Aging Solid Application to encourage physical wellness between senior older people aged 55 and older in rural Genesee County. Based in Oakfield, Warrior Household is a nonprofit organization committed to enriching the lives of veterans and households through Western New York by means of support providers that endorse social and emotional improvement for all round health and fitness and well-becoming, said Zeliff, Warrior Dwelling co-founder and treasurer.

“Aging Powerful is a community-based mostly health and diet plan that informs and empowers more mature older people to make balanced choices about taking in, and safely raise their amount of physical activity,” Zeliff explained this weekend. “In our section of Genesee County, the want for this kind of software is good, but existing resources were couple of. That is right until Univera stepped in with underwriting aid.”

Warrior Dwelling of WNY is located at 33 South Key St., in The GOOSE Community Heart, a identify borrowed from the former internet site of the Yellow Goose and an acronym for the Warrior House motto: God is On Our Side Every day.

Univera Health care is a nonprofit well being program that serves associates across the eight counties of Western New York and invited nonprofit, 501(c)(3) businesses serving Western New York to utilize for Health Equity Awards to enable fund health and wellness packages that address racial and ethnic health disparities.

Health and fitness Fairness categories integrated but were not confined to: Lessening wellbeing disparities in racial, ethnic, LGBTQ communities, people with disabilities, people living in rural or city communities, or other teams that might be at higher well being possibility for clinical difficulties and problems (long-term or acute), behavioral wellness or mental wellness disorders, and negative outcomes from the previously mentioned, together with death or suicide.

“Working jointly with businesses such as Warrior House, we are confronting the disaster in health disparities, and addressing prolonged-standing gaps in treatment and products and services in underserved communities,” Univera Healthcare President Artwork Wingerter mentioned.

Univera Health care invited companies to implement for awards of up to $30,000 every single to support fund packages to enhance health and fitness fairness in communities of color, specially inside Black and Latino communities. These segments of the group go on to endure from health treatment and social cons thanks to racism and discrimination. Award categories consist of, but have been not constrained to, strengthening the community’s actual physical wellness and mental health and fitness, cutting down social disparities in health care, and guaranteeing access to health and fitness treatment expert services.

The funding from Univera Health care will guidance six nonprofit, 501(c)(3) corporations across Western New York, that had been chosen soon after a comprehensive review approach that integrated enter from people today with various backgrounds and ordeals to evaluate each individual proposal. Grant recipients have been picked primarily based on obvious, outlined targets and measurable success for reducing wellness disparities and strengthening overall health fairness.

Univera Health care introduced the award to Warrior Dwelling on Feb. 2. The target of the Getting old Solid method is to market actual physical well being amid senior adults 55 and more mature by means of a neighborhood-based exercise and diet plan that informs and empowers more mature adults to make nutritious possibilities about feeding on and safely and securely increasing their physical activity amounts, Zeliff stated.

Secondary aims include cultivating supportive networks amid older-aged community customers, selling health and fitness training and literacy through health and diet workshops, and awareness of accessible help from community health support vendors and the Warrior Dwelling food stuff pantry.

Funds will be used for plan analysis, materials, foodstuff, and for exercising instructor Denise Gliden. She will be hosting a chair yoga at 10 a.m. on Thursday mornings beginning March 16 and a Vinyasa-model yoga at 6 p.m. on Wednesday nights beginning March 22.

“Our Univera Award will allow us to give these lessons for totally free. Our target is often to offer low to no-expense plans. We by no means want expenditures to hold people today from collaborating in our programs,” Zeliff stated. “It is awards like this that aid us make this achievable. At this time, we are not putting a limit on the class sizing. We are hoping to reward a lot of men and women with this software.”

For far more data, go to Warrior Household of WNY or Univera Healthcare.

Submitted image of Michele Hrichan, Univera Health care Medicare Income Olivia Linke, Univera Health care Neighborhood Affairs Director Susan Zeliff, Warrior Home of WNY co-founder and Treasurer Art Wingerter, Univera Healthcare president and Kimberly Burr, Univera Healthcare Marketplace Enroller.

US workers sue Georgia for transgender healthcare discrimination | Gender Equity News

Two state employees and a public school media clerk are suing the state of Georgia in southeast United States, saying state health insurance illegally discriminates by refusing to pay for gender-transition healthcare.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Atlanta on Wednesday by Micha Rich, Benjamin Johnson and an anonymous state employee suing on behalf of her adult child.

They argue Georgia’s State Health Benefit Plan (SHBP), which insures more than 660,000 state government and public school employees and retirees, is breaking federal law.

“The exclusion not only harms the health and finances of transgender people seeking gender dysphoria treatment, it also reinforces the stigma attached to being transgender, suffering from gender dysphoria and seeking a gender transition,” the lawsuit argues.

“The exclusion communicates to transgender persons and to the public that their state government deems them unworthy of equal treatment.”

The plaintiffs said the exclusion against gender-transition healthcare in the SHBP should be overturned and they should be repaid for the money they spent on procedures not covered by insurance. They have also requested money damages and lawyers’ fees.

The Department of Community Health, which administers the plan, declined comment, according to spokesperson Fiona Roberts.

The lawsuit cites a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that treating someone differently because they are transgender or gay violates a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. The plaintiffs in that case included an employee of Georgia’s Clayton County.

The suit also argues that Georgia’s actions violate the 14th Amendment’s right to equal protection and that, in the case of Johnson, violate federal prohibitions against sex discrimination in education.

The plaintiffs include three transgender men. Rich is a staff accountant at the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts. Johnson is a media clerk with the Bibb County School District in Macon. The mother of the third man, identified only as John Doe, is an administrative support worker at the Division of Family and Children Services in suburban Paulding County. She covers Doe, a college student, on her insurance.

All three were assigned as women at birth but transitioned after therapy. All three were seeking top surgery to reduce or remove breasts. All three appealed their denials and won findings from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Georgia was discriminating against them. The US Department of Justice also started an investigation.

In the meantime, Rich paid $11,200 for his surgery in 2021 and later declared bankruptcy. The Paulding County family paid $8,769 for John Doe’s surgery and is still repaying loans. Both Rich and Doe also say the state owes them for testosterone prescriptions. Johnson dropped his state insurance and bought coverage elsewhere, having surgery in September.

“My employer should not be able to deny me health care because of who I am,” Rich said in a statement. “For years, I had to put off living my life fully while I waited to have the medical treatments that my doctors and I knew I needed.”

The lawsuit is the fourth in a line of lawsuits against Georgian agencies to force them to pay for gender-confirmation surgery and other procedures. State and local governments have lost or settled the previous suits, changing rules to pay for transgender care.

The University System of Georgia paid $100,000 in damages in addition to changing its rules in 2019 when it settled a case brought by a University of Georgia catering manager. A jury in September ordered Georgia’s Houston County to pay $60,000 in damages to a sheriff’s deputy after a federal judge ruled her bosses illegally denied the deputy health coverage for gender-confirmation surgery.

The Department of Community Health agreed to change the rules of Georgia’s Medicaid program in April to settle a lawsuit by two Medicaid beneficiaries.

The Atlanta skyline, featuring Georgia's Capitol dome — State and local governments in Georgia have either lost or settled previous lawsuits pushing for transgender healthcare [File: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

The current lawsuit comes as some states seek to ban all gender-confirming care for children. Georgia could consider such a ban next year.

“They did not accept our invitation to negotiate an end to their discrimination without litigation – and, plainly, they didn’t remove the exclusion,” wrote David Brown, legal director at the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs.

In question are two health plans paid for by the state but administered by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare.

The lawsuit states insurers told the department in 2016 that transgender exclusions were discriminatory. It also says a state lawyer told health plan leadership in July 2020 that a court would likely find the rule illegal.

“Yet the defendants have knowingly and intentionally maintained the exclusion year after year, long after it became plain – and the SBHP itself concluded – that doing so is unlawful discrimination,” the lawsuit states.

A recent court ruling found a similar ban in North Carolina to be illegal. The state is appealing. A Wisconsin ban was overturned in 2018. West Virginia and Iowa have also lost lawsuits over employee coverage, Brown said, while Florida and Arizona are being sued.

Building Equity in Biomedical Research

“We have to create these opportunities,” Reede said. “The Visiting Research Internship Program provides the opportunities for these students to start to ask: Is there a place for me in this?”

Harvard Catalyst, the university’s clinical and translational science center, coordinates the VRIP in partnership with the HMS Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership and with funding from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), a program of the National Institutes of Health.

NCATS places a strong emphasis on integrating diversity and inclusion throughout its national programs. Along with an annual faculty fellowship, VRIP is a core program.

Opening doors, enlightening the path

For Gerald Lilly, now a physician, a VRIP summer in 2015 provided an opportunity to work on CRISPR gene editing and the experience sparked a love of science that Lilly is still chasing.

A Black man from the Midwest, Lilly was a second-year med student interested in exploring a research career when he was accepted into the program to collaborate with oncologist Daniel Bauer, HMS associate professor of pediatrics and the Donald S. Frederickson, MD Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, who was doing work in cancer genetics.

Today, Lilly stands out in an elite group of Americans who’ve been named Presidential Management Fellows by a federal leadership-development program started by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.

The role places Lilly at the heart of pandemic preparedness, working on vaccine quality control at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

VRIP “enlightened my path,” Lilly said in an interview.

“It helped me to understand that I really wanted to do science with my MD and get more experience in the lab. I didn’t see direct patient care as my primary role, and that’s not what I’m doing in my career. I want to affect people by helping advance the science.”

Another former VRIP participant, Ross O’Hagan from the 2019 cohort, said the program convinced him to dig deeper into a career in translational science.

A student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, he went on to earn a spot in the NIH Medical Research Scholars program and became immersed in pioneering translational work in the NIH lab of Lasker Clinical Research Scholar Nehal Mehta.

VRIP “made me like research so much that I wanted to train for a whole extra year,” O’Hagan said, laughing.

Living the academic life

VRIP targets first- and second-year medical students who are at critical junctures in their careers and links them with an HMS-affiliated clinician-scientist as research mentor.

Working on-site in Boston for two months, students are immersed in real-world academic research along with an intensive curriculum of seminars that cover research methods and practices.

Internationally recognized cancer researcher Marsha Moses, the HMS Julia Dyckman Andrus Professor of Surgery, whose lab is at Boston Children’s, was a first-time VRIP mentor in 2002, hosting Michael Dang, a medical student from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

As a result, Dang learned to work with cell cultures in a state-of-the-art wet-bench laboratory under the immediate tutelage of Roopali Roy, an HMS instructor in surgery in Moses’ lab at Boston Children’s.

In addition to working on his research project and immersing himself in the Harvard Catalyst curriculum, Dang attended weekly lab meetings and journal clubs. He was one of eight VRIP awardees in the 2022 session working in labs across the HMS campus this past summer.

“It’s important for young folks to understand what it means to do science for a living,” Moses said.

“To spend time working at the bench with really smart, dedicated, inspired young women and men who at the end of the day are not very different than they are, is invaluable,” she said.

That’s especially true, Moses said, for members of groups historically underrepresented in medicine, and for young women, who may not have had access to the same pool of mentors as more privileged students have.

Mentors who ‘get it’

Gezzer Ortega, an HMS instructor in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, knows what it’s like to work your way into an academic research career without a road map or mentors to guide you.

As the eldest son of Dominican immigrants who spoke only Spanish, and the first in his family to go to college, he figured out mostly for himself how to get into and navigate college, medical school, and then graduate school for his master of public health program. When Ortega sees students who come from similar circumstances, he gets it.

Ortega saw aspects of his own path in Bryan Torres, a second-year medical student at Tulane University who grew up in an impoverished Hispanic community with immigrant, non-English speaking parents. Ortega jumped at the opportunity to help bring a fellow Latino into clinical science.

Torres said knowing he was going to be matched with a mentor who comes from a similar background was a “huge motivation” in applying for a VRIP spot.

“As a minority in medicine, it’s sometimes very lonely. It was really hard to find mentors. When I did find them — all of whom were amazing — rarely, if ever, did they look like me,” Torres said.

VRIP 2022 graduate Lacey Foster, a Black woman in her second year at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, echoed that experience, and said it illustrates the need for greater diversity in science and medicine.

“Everyone brings their lived experiences to everything that they do. Having people from different backgrounds and ethnicities bring their perspectives is really instrumental, especially in research, where we’re aiming to answer questions in innovative ways,” she said.

“In medicine, we see a diverse group of patients and I think it is important for our physician population to reflect the diversity in our patients.”

Foster recently started a nonprofit, the Foster Family Foundation, to provide mentorship, guidance, and financial support to students from historically Black colleges and universities who want to go to medical school.

Inclusive mentoring

For underrepresented groups in particular, “mentorship helps open pathways that would otherwise not be available to them,” said Meena Nathan, HMS assistant professor of surgery at Boston Children’s, who has mentored VRIP participants for the past five years.

“Having a diverse population of caregivers improves health care for underrepresented populations,” she said.

This year Mischael Saint-Sume, a Black second-year medical student at Morehouse School of Medicine, got a taste of life in Nathan’s pediatric cardiac surgery research lab, sleuthing out the incidence of a serious surgical complication — vocal cord paralysis — in order to understand how to prevent it.

For Nathan, the most rewarding part of participating in the program is being able to help young students like Saint-Sume realize what they want to do.

“I was mentored as a student, as a resident, and as junior faculty, so part of it is giving back,” she said. “You need to help the next generations the same way you were helped when you were starting out.”

That mentor-mentee relationship is built into the DNA of science, said Reede.

“It’s how all of us got to where we are. It’s something that’s always happened in science, but not everybody was included. VRIP is saying, ‘Let’s open this up so more can be a part of this journey.’”

HHS approves Washington state request to offer health insurance to illegal immigrants, citing ‘health equity’

President Joe Biden’s administration will allow Washington state to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants within its borders by rolling back requirements for the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Department of the Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) approved the state’s request via a State Innovation Waiver, which was requested by Washington’s government in May.

WA GOV. INSLEE’S EQUITY SUMMIT TELLS STATE AGENCIES ‘OBJECTIVITY,’ ‘INDIVIDUALISM’ ROOTED IN ‘WHITE SUPREMACY’

HHS approves Washington state request to offer health insurance to illegal immigrants, citing ‘health equity’

Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services, speaks during a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 28, 2022.
(Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Washington has requested a waiver in order to expand access to qualified health plans, stand-alone qualified dental plans, and a state affordability program to Washington residents regardless of immigration status,” HHS and Treasury said in a joint statement.

The statement continued, “The waiver will help Washington work towards its goals of improving health equity and reducing racial disparities by expanding access to coverage for the uninsured population through the state Exchange, all the while not increasing costs for those currently enrolled.”

BORDER OFFICIALS SEEING MASSIVE MIGRANT NUMBERS, LARGE GROUPS AHEAD OF TITLE 42’S END

The U.S. Treasury Department building viewed from the Washington Monument, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

The ACA’s normal regulations explicitly exclude non-citizens living in the U.S. illegally from collecting the benefits of the program.

Washington’s successful campaign to expand coverage to illegal immigrants is the first of its kind since the ACA was introduced.

TEXAS LAUNCHES TASK FORCE WITH K9S, DRONES TO STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ‘GOTAWAYS’ AMID SPIKE IN NUMBERS

State Innovation Waivers are granted under the supervision of the HHS and Treasury for states seeking to modify existing ACA regulations to suit their specific needs.

Washington State Capitol
(Dan Mihai/Getty Images)

“Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) permits a state to apply for a State Innovation Waiver (also referred to as section 1332 waiver) to pursue innovative strategies for providing residents with access to high quality, affordable health insurance while retaining the basic protections of the ACA,” according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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In their statement, the departments said that the approved modification of Washington’s ACA, contingent upon the state accepting “specific terms and conditions,” would be valid from 2024 through 2028.

Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com

Hospital shutdown in Pennsylvania spurs questions about private equity in health care

After a car accident last month, Latifa Dixon, a mother of two, arrived at the emergency room at Delaware County Memorial Hospital in suburban Philadelphia only to learn the ER had just shut down. Twenty-eight-year-old Cecilia Vizuete, who was having trouble feeding her one-year-old daughter because of a breast infection, said she was told by a security guard to search Google Maps for another hospital. Shirley Posey arrived there suffering from shortness of breath and tightness in her chest.

“This was the closest hospital to me and I needed help,” Posey said when CBS News met her outside Delaware County Memorial. Posey later recovered, but not until she raced to an urgent care, collapsed, and was transported by ambulance to another hospital.

For nearly a century, Delaware County Memorial delivered babies, treated trauma and tended to the critically ill. That all changed earlier this year, when its current owners, a Los Angeles-based for-profit company called Prospect Medical Holdings, began cutting services at the 168-bed hospital in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. First the maternity ward went, then the operating rooms and the I.C.U., and then, last month, the emergency department closed its doors to the community’s nearly 85,000 residents.

The shutdown has raised questions about the role of private equity as it piles into the health care space, snapping up everything from local doctors’ practices to specialty clinics, even hospices. According to the consultancy Bain & Company, private equity firms posted a record year for deal volume in health care in 2021, with the total value of those deals topping $150 billion.

Backed by private equity investment, Prospect Medical Holdings rapidly grew to own 20 hospitals in six states by 2018. In 2016, it bought Crozer Health, a nonprofit Pennsylvania health system that was in danger of failing.

A CBS News investigation found that of those 20 hospitals owned by Prospect Medical, five have closed. In addition to Delaware County Memorial, Prospect Medical has suspended all services at Springfield, another acute care hospital in the same Pennsylvania health system. It also closed three hospitals in a San Antonio health system it purchased in 2012.

In court proceedings, Prospect Medical argues it is not seeking to close Delaware County Memorial for good. In a statement to CBS News, the company said it is working to transition the hospital to a “100 patient facility for those in need of behavioral health and other services.” As part of the plan, the hospital will lose inpatient “acute care services,” which includes the lone emergency room in the community of Upper Darby.

“There aren’t resources nearby and so we find that people wait longer to go to the hospital,” county official Monica Taylor told CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, adding that closing what’s considered a safety-net hospital will hit the area’s low-income population hardest.

“We wouldn’t see a hospital closing down if this were a more affluent area,” said Taylor. “It leaves a gaping hole in this community that is going to be very hard and very difficult to fill.”

“What they cared about was making money”

In a presentation provided to Delaware County officials, Prospect Medical cited struggles with high labor costs, record inflation for supplies and pharmaceuticals, and the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic for its decision. Taylor said she believes the company has not been upfront, and has been reluctant to share its financials with the county.

“I had the sense they were not giving us all the information,” Taylor said.

Prospect Medical has faced scrutiny before. In 2019, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office investigated a proposed company transaction. Prospect Medical owns two hospitals in the state, that Neronha said were “in real danger of closing” because of the debt Prospect Medical had taken on.

“This had nothing to do with the pandemic,” Neronha told CBS News. “Hospitals all over the country were facing the pandemic … but the problems here were exacerbated, frankly, by greed.”

Neronha invoked state law to force Prospect Medical to turn over its finances. A ruling by the attorney general’s office found the company put “every hospital in its system…at risk of reduction of services, sale or closure.”

“They didn’t care about health care,” Neronha said. “What they cared about was making money for their investors.”

Neronha hired two different outside experts to follow the money and discovered one reason why Prospect Medical was experiencing financial strain. In 2018, company owners took out a $1.12 billion loan, using proceeds to pay themselves and their private equity shareholders a $457 million dividend, according to the company’s financial statements, obtained by Neronha’s office in the course of the investigation.

“It’d be like a homeowner going to a bank, taking out a $100,000 loan, and instead of using it to invest in their property or pay for their kids to go to college, what they did was they just basically stuck it in their pockets as cash,” Neronha told CBS News.

The company’s financial statements revealed that to pay back that $1.12 billion loan, Prospect Medical sold the land and the buildings from hospitals they owned in California, Connecticut and Pennsylvania to a real estate investment trust for $1.386 billion. The documents show Prospect Medical then leased those hospitals back from the real estate investment trust.

“So now you’re even in a worse position because you have no equity any longer,” Neronha said. “You don’t own anything that you can then go to the bank and use as collateral to raise more money when you need it.”

In Delaware County, that lease-back arrangement instead meant the health system was saddled with $35 million a year in rent.

Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, was closed in November 2022 after being bought by a private equity firm, Prospect Medical Holdings.

CBS News

CBS News submitted detailed questions to Prospect Medical about these financial decisions, including about the $457 million dividend and the lease-back arrangement. The company, through a spokesman, declined to answer those questions.

“They are drawing the value out of these hospitals as they would money from a piggy bank,” said Eileen O’Grady, campaign director with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit organization that has raised concerns about Prospect Medical to attorneys general in the six states where the company owned hospitals. “Meanwhile, the company’s owners have made out like bandits.”

Neronha’s office confirmed to CBS News that the Prospect Medical CEO’s personal share of the $457 million dividend was about $90 million.

“What they’ve done is extremely evil”

One of the early investors in Prospect Medical’s 2016 purchase of the Pennsylvania health system told CBS News that the company entered into the arrangement as the only bidder and “last hope for these failing hospitals.” When the purchase was announced, local officials said it came with a promise: to invest $200 million to “dramatically increase…service to the community.”

“They tried to tell us that they were going to run us the same way,” said emergency nurse Angela Neopolitano, who worked at Delaware County Memorial for 41 years. Instead Neopolitano, who was president of the local nurses’ union, says Prospect Medical dismantled the hospital piece by piece, leading to longer waits in the emergency room and forcing staff to transfer more patients to other hospitals.

“They kept on cutting services,” Neopolitano said. “Things wouldn’t get fixed. Our elevator in the back of the emergency room had been broken for over a year. When they closed the I.C.U., that was the knife in my heart.”

Neopolitano said at one point, the credit cards used by paramedics within the health system to fill their ambulances with fuel were disabled because Prospect Medical “didn’t pay their bill.”

The company did not respond to questions about its specific investments at Delaware County Memorial, but in an annual report said it had lived up to its commitment to invest $200 million in Crozer Health.

The company did not respond to a question about whether it neglected to pay fuel bills for ambulances, which was first reported in an investigation of the company by ProPublica. The company told ProPublica a company credit card was rejected because it had a charge limit as a security measure, and it increased the limit when it was brought to their attention to ensure there was not a disruption of services.

Now, the company has pivoted to a plan to convert Delaware County Memorial into a behavioral health facility. An executive with the hospital told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week that the new incarnation would not be “a moneymaker… but we go from losing $18 million a year to making $3 million and providing needed services to the community.”

The shut down of Delaware County Memorial in September has sparked a legal battle which has drawn in Pennsylvania’s attorney general and governor-elect Josh Shapiro.

In October, a judge granted an emergency injunction to keep the hospital open. Yet weeks later, the state’s health department shut it down anyway, after Prospect Medical notified the department of staffing issues.

In a statement to CBS News, Prospect Medical said the ongoing litigation limits what it can say, but that the company is communicating with state health officials about its “multiple efforts to address those staffing issues.” The company has pledged to save the facility by turning it into a “desperately needed 100-patient facility for those in need of behavioral health and other services.”

Next week, a judge will hear arguments over whether to require Prospect Medical to find a way to re-open the hospital’s doors. Shapiro’s office has asked the judge to hold Prospect Medical in contempt and to fine it $100,000 for every day it does not resolve the staffing issues.

Neopolitano told CBS News she thinks that the $457 million dividend Prospect Medical’s owners and private equity investors paid themselves should have gone back into the hospitals and into the community.

“What they’ve done is extremely evil, in my words,” said Neopolitano of Prospect Medical. “To gain a dollar, you maybe destroyed lives, maybe even ended lives, because they can’t get the help they need.”

Jon LaPook

Dr. Jonathan LaPook is the chief medical correspondent for CBS News.