UPMC

Some UPMC workers took to Pittsburgh’s downtown streets Thursday to highlight their uphill battle to form a union.

Labor organizers demonstrated outside UPMC headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh on Tuesday to highlight two August rulings by the National Labor Relations Board that found the state’s largest hospital system violated workers’ rights.

UPMC patients can get their flu vaccines starting this week, but unlike previous years, these immunizations were not manufactured with chicken eggs.

The community benefits agreement finalized with UPMC Mercy last week is very different from the Lower Hill agreement struck with the Pittsburgh Penguins, said city Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle, who was party to both negotiations.

The suicide rate among survivors of head and neck cancers is more than four times higher than suicide among the general U.S. population; male survivors of these cancers are six times more likely than females to commit suicide.

City Council voted to approve UPMC’s $400 million plan to expand Mercy Hospital this week -- but one activist plans to continue the fight against Daniel Lavelle, the city councilor who brokered a deal with the health care giant.

After an emotional day in the City County Building, Pittsburgh City Council voted 7-2 to approve UPMC’s expansion of its Mercy campus in Uptown. The decision came after nearly two hours of public comment from community members opposing the plan.

About 100 people filled Pittsburgh City Council chambers Tuesday for a hearing on a proposed UPMC vision and rehabilitation hospital in Uptown. Many were opposed to the plan and called on the multi-billion-dollar non-profit to provide more affordable care and offer expanded benefits for employees.

A march is scheduled on Tuesday ahead of a public hearing at Pittsburgh’s city council about a proposed UPMC vision and rehabilitation hospital in Uptown.

A new program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine aims to help young physicians learn the ropes of research. Less than 1.5 percent of medical doctors pursue research careers, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Allegheny Health Network has announced it will raise its minimum wage for full-time employees to $15 an hour by 2021. The move comes two years after UPMC said it would do the same.

The insurance mandates of the Affordable Care Act and expansion of Medicaid helped prevent hospitals in Pennsylvania from losing more than $80 million in 2017. 

The findings come via a report on the state's health care finances from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4), an independent state agency established in the 1980s by the state legislature to analyze and report information to improve the costs and quality of health care in Pennsylvania. 

There are 14,000 people in the United States waiting for a liver transplant. And if the country's medical centers continue to draw the vast majority of viable livers from deceased donors, only half of those waiting will receive a transplant. Fifteen to twenty-five percent of those waiting never will.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hopes to change that through Living Donor Liver Transplants (LDLTs), which the hospital says are underpromoted and underutilized across the world. 

Medical research has historically excluded minority participants, creating a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment. UPMC primary care physician Dr. Mylynda Massart said the problem is pervasive, as her patients come from a variety of backgrounds.

A UPMC employee who has tuberculosis is currently on leave and the hospital is reaching out to patients.

Officials confirmed in a statement that the employee contracted TB. That person works in the UPMC Presbyterian Emergency Department and was also seen at a Presby ophthalmology clinic, as well as at a doctor’s office at Magee-Women’s Hospital, they said.

New data says concussions might take longer for high school athletes to heal from than previously thought. 

UPMC concussion specialist Micky Collins unveiled new insight into how concussions effect the teenage brain at a symposium for youth sports medicine Wednesday at Heinz Field. 

The results are from a study of more than 300 concussed high school athletes in western Pennsylvania. There are a few reasons the current data is showing longer recovery time than in years past, according to Collins. 

Shouts of surprise and joy erupted Friday at noon from graduating students at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine.

Another hospital expansion in the Pittsburgh region was announced Wednesday.

Allegheny Health Network will construct an $80 million, 90,000-square-foot cancer institute and academic center adjacent to the North Side Allegheny General Hospital. It is part of the $225 million investment the network has made in regional cancer centers.

“We have 15 major construction projects happening today simultaneously across the region. Many of those that relate to cancer,” said Highmark Health CEO David Holmberg.

A new biotech incubator specializing in immunology will open in around two years at the site of a former Ford auto plant on Baum Boulevard.

Highmark’s Medicare costumers can continue receiving in-network care from nine UPMC hospitals until the end of 2019, due to a Monday ruling by Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Dan Pellegrini.

Highmark health insurance has reached a five-year agreement with UPMC to allow its customers to receive care from select UPMC locations at in-network rates.