Stories That Caught Our Attention This Week: With opioid-related deaths skyrocketing, an Oakland emergency physician has launched a program to initiate medication-assisted treatment before patients walk out the hospital door.

Stories That Caught Our Attention This Week: Health care journalists delve into the complicated challenge of helping rural hospitals survive in a hostile financial environment.

In emergency rooms, people with opioid addiction are usually treated for their symptoms and referred to addiction treatment providers. Imagine instead if those patients were treated on the spot for the underlying disease of addiction.

Humboldt County has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic, but recent media coverage missed significant, successful steps local leaders have taken to stem the tide. (Aerial photo of Humboldt Bay: Robert Campbell)

Federal residency funding has remained stagnant for decades while the number of medical schools increases and doctors from other countries arrive to compete for positions in training. A physician describes the implications. (Photo: Dean Ishida/UCLA)

Health care providers cannot effectively coordinate a patient’s care without access to a shared set of accurate clinical information about that patient. That’s what Collective Medical aims to provide, and that’s why it has received the CHCF Innovation Fund’s latest program-related investment.

In California hospitals, the cost of uncompensated care continued to fall in 2016, but at a slower rate than the 51% decline between 2013 and 2015.