In brief: State taking longer look at Deaconess sale
The Washington state Department of Health will take an extra 30 days to screen an application by Tennessee-based Community Health System Inc. to buy Spokane’s Deaconess Medical Center and sister facility Valley Hospital and Medical Center.
The extra time to ensure the application is complete likely will push public hearings on the sale to spring.
The application, which is thousands of pages long and has multiple redactions, was filed in January. It proposes a $272 million transaction that includes about $108 million to fund a new Spokane health care charity; $64 million to repay debts owed by the hospital’s parent company, Empire Health Services; and a commitment to invest $100 million in renovations and technology upgrades at the two hospitals.
After the Health Department deems the application complete, the agency will hold public hearings in Spokane and solicit comment on whether the sale of the nonprofit hospitals to the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain is in the public interest.
– John Stucke
Coeur d’Alene
Cancer clinic chosen to join vaccine study
A Coeur d’Alene clinic is included in a kidney cancer vaccine trial by pharmaceutical firm Oxford BioMedica.
The trial for the vaccine TroVax will be conducted at the Kootenai Cancer Center by Dr. Brian Samuels.
Kidney cancer ranks No. 10 among common cancers, affecting about 32,000 new people each year in the United States. More than half will die of the disease, according to Oxford BioMedica.
Oxford BioMedica touts its vaccine, now in large-scale, Phase III clinical trials, as a promising drug that can help people live longer.
The phase follows earlier trials gauging safety and efficacy in treating specific conditions.
– John Stucke
SEATTLE
Schools told not to use California plant’s beef
More than 100 Washington school districts have been told not to serve beef that came from a California slaughterhouse being investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state officials said Friday.
At least one of three meat processors that supplies schools in the state gets beef from Westland Meat Co., which processes carcasses from the Hallmark Meat Packing Co. The USDA said Wednesday it would investigate whether sick dairy cows were mistreated at a Hallmark slaughterhouse in California in violation of state and federal laws.
Video footage released Wednesday by the Humane Society of the United States after a six-week undercover investigation showed workers at the plant repeatedly kicking cows and ramming them with the blades of a forklift as the animals squealed in pain.
There have been no reported cases of tainted beef among the meat put on hold.
The federal government asked state education officials to contact the school districts and tell them to set aside beef connected to Hallmark and Westland.
In Eastern Washington that included the Freeman, Tekoa, Liberty, Moses Lake and Rosalia school districts, Saint Aloysius School and the Spokane County Juvenile Center.
– Associated Press