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Dr. Janice Bacon was exactly the person Kay McField hoped to talk to when she found herself spending most of her days in bed, feeling too depressed to get up as the coronavirus pandemic threatened those around her. As she watched those closest to her test positive for the virus — a goddaughter and her uncle, whom she cares for, among them — McField said she was terrified that she or her daughter, who both suffer from autoimmune diseases, would fall ill. When she wasn’t in bed, the 51-year-old single mother was cleaning her house compulsively. (Willingham, 9/7)

The medical mistakes that befell the 87-year-old mother of a North Carolina pharmacist should not happen to anyone, and my hope is that this column will keep you and your loved ones from experiencing similar, all-too-common mishaps. As the pharmacist, Kim H. DeRhodes of Charlotte, N.C., recalled, it all began when her mother went to the emergency room two weeks after a fall because she had lingering pain in her back and buttocks. Told she had sciatica, the elderly woman was prescribed prednisone and a muscle relaxant. Three days later, she became delirious, returned to the E.R., was admitted to the hospital, and was discharged two days later when her drug-induced delirium resolved. (Brody, 9/7)

In other health industry news —

State inspectors fanned out across Georgia this summer to conduct federally-required checks of infection-control protocols at every nursing home, reporting few problems. But when August arrived, the numbers told a different story: It was the worst month yet for COVID-19 deaths and infections at Georgia’s facilities caring for vulnerable seniors. (Teegardin, 9/4)

The vast majority of Department of Veterans Affairs clinics across the state will remain closed to face-to-face visits until there is a significant downward trend in the number of coronavirus infections, VA officials said Friday.Department Secretary Robert Wilkie, in Atlanta to tour the Atlanta VA Health Care Center in Decatur and get updates on its COVID-19 response, pointed out that VA doctors in the region have completed more than 20,000 telehealth appointments a month during the pandemic. (Quinn, 9/4)

Kaiser Health News: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: She Tangled With Health Insurers For 25 Years — And Loved It 
Barbara Faubion’s boss, an insurance broker, used to tell clients: “Listen, you don’t need to be on the phone for four hours with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Let us do that. I have a person.” Faubion was that person. And she got up every day psyched to go to work, which she said puzzled her friends. “They’d go, ‘You love your job?!? You spend your whole day talking to an insurance company. Are you kidding me?’” (Weissmann, 9/8)

In obituaries —

Dr. Seymour Schwartz, an eminent surgeon and prolific polymath who was the founding editor of the 1,800-page surgery textbook, first published in 1969, that became a bible for medical students, died on Aug. 28 in St. Louis. He was 92. Dr. Schwartz died at the home of his son Dr. David Schwartz, whom he was visiting, according to another son, Richard Schwartz. He lived in Pittsford, N.Y., near Rochester, and had been affiliated with the University of Rochester since 1950. (Roberts, 9/3)