UC Davis in the News

Registered nurses at the UC Davis Medical Center have filed a formal complaint with state regulators, accusing the hospital of routinely violating state laws governing nurse-to-patient ratios. Officials representing the Medical Center state that they "have no hesitation about making all records available" to state regulators, as "they are sure they are in compliance."

Registered nurses at the UC Davis Medical Center have filed complaints with the state against the facility for public endangerment, alleging that patient care is being rationed in violation of the state's staffing laws. The Medical Center refutes this claim, stating that the facility has consistently provided above-minimum staff levels since before state regulations were established.

This article states that the California Horse Racing Board's innovative Postmortem Examination program, in which any horse that dies at a state race track must be sent to UC Davis for review, has produced the first documented evidence that horses running on synthetic tracks are receiving more hind-leg injuries than on dirt surfaces. However, program coordinator Hailu Kinde states that more data is needed before making a final determination.

About 150 people joined to celebrate the opening of the new $65.5 million Earth and Physical Sciences Building, which will house the geology department. Eldridge Moores, a distinguished professor emeritus, states that the new facility positions the geology department to play an active role in tackling pressing challenges, such as climate change and dwindling water and energy.

Michael Wilkes, a professor of internal medicine at UC Davis, states that while, in this case, a medical television program may have proved helpful, most actually do a disservice to the viewers. "People hear about things and get all freaked out and don't have enough information," Wilkes says. "It generates a lot of unnecessary medical tests and office visits."

This television news piece explores why a bill received by the parents of slain Sacramento State student Scott Hawkins from the UC Davis Medical Center was so high, even though Hawkins received only 5 minutes of care at the center. The medical center has apologized for the letter, stating that it was mistakenly sent to his family instead of his insurance company.

This article highlights efforts by the UC Davis-managed Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center to rescue and care for birds affected by the recent oil spill in the Bay Area. So far, more than 40 birds have been rescued, and 24 have died either before or during recovery and treatment.

The UC Davis Medical Center is beginning to file a lawsuit against Sacramento County in order to collect the nearly $100 million it is owed for providing care to indigent patients. The county had previously decided to end a long-term contract with UC Davis in favor of a cheaper company, however, the company that was awarded the contract lost the business by early September, causing UC Davis Medical Center to continue to provide emergency care.

According to a recent UC Davis study of more than 6,500 physicians, doctors who treat the young and the old are the most satisfied with their jobs, while gynecologists and surgeons are among the least satisfied. Paul Leigh, a professor at the UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy, states that these findings are important, as "physician satisfaction is associated with patient satisfaction and outcomes."

The UC Davis Medical Center's net income increased by 22 percent last year through a combination of layoffs, cost-cutting measures and an overdue legal settlement. Income from operations rose more than 10 percent, as the nonprofit university medical center shaved expenses to generate $55 million on its core business of patient care.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has announced that the campus will work to discontinue funding intercollegiate athletic programs following a faculty senate vote urging the administration to make the programs self-sufficient. "We need a responsible plan that will enable athletics to be self sufficient," Birgeneau says (No UC Davis reference).

UC Davis senior Roxanne Robles is highlighted in this television segment discussing the benefits of the ride sharing program Zipcar, which recently made its UC Davis debut.

This opinion article states that one way Sacramento County is currently trying to deal with chronic cuts to emergency room mental health care is through a new collaboration with UC Davis that provides psychiatric consults via a video link.

Fidel Realyvasquez, a former heart surgeon and current graduate student in biomedical engineering at UC Davis, has been placed on three years probation by the Medical Board of California for performing unnecessary heart surgeries in 2001 and 2002. The hospital in which Realyvasquez worked became the center of national headlines in 2002 after a raid by federal agents and an expose by CBS' "60 Minutes."

Scientists at UC Davis collaborated with the genome-sequencing center of The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to complete the entire sequencing of the domestic horse genome. "This very high-quality genome sequence of the horse is important because it gives us access to specific sequence information that we can now apply to identify the genes for specific traits in the horse," said co-author Cecilia Penedo of UC Davis' Veterinary Genetics Laboratory.

Ice cream maker Haagen-Dazs has pledged to donate $1 for every #HelpHoneyBees tweet sent between Nov. 5 and Nov. 11 for UC Davis research aimed at stopping the collapse of honeybee colonies worldwide.

UC Davis chemical ecologists Walter Leal and Zain Syed have identified a chemical called nonanal in humans—and, crucially, birds—that serves as a signal for the Culex species of mosquito. The scientists tested hundreds of compounds that birds and humans have and found that sensitive mosquito antennae can detect even minute amounts of nonanal.

This blog post references a study conducted by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute, which found that the seven- to eight-fold increase in the number children born in California with autism since 1990 cannot be explained by either changes in how the condition is diagnosed or counted.