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Governor Brian Sandoval announced...that the second meeting of his Opioid State Action Accountability Task Force will take place April 18th in Carson City...The 1 p.m. meeting will be held in the Old Assembly Chambers at the state Capitol Building...the Task Force will hear a status report of crosscutting initiatives and status reports on track one – prescriber education and guidelines; track two – treatment options and third-party payers; track three – data collection and intelligence sharing; and track four – criminal justice investigations...“This Task Force has the specific task of reviewing the policies and programs that have been put into place to address the opioid epidemic in our state,” Sandoval added. “I am looking forward to hearing reports on the progress being made to combat this epidemic.”...

Drug-toting travelers now have a place to trash their stash before boarding a flight at McCarran International Airport...Green metal bins have popped up at the nation’s eighth-busiest airport, creating a safe space for airline passengers to dispose of marijuana before boarding a flight...Even though recreational marijuana is legal in Nevada, the drug is banned inside Clark County’s network of airports and security checkpoints operated by the Transportation Security Administration...About 20 “amnesty boxes” were installed over the past week outside high-traffic areas of McCarran, Henderson Executive and North Las Vegas airports, bearing a sign citing the local law that prohibits pot within airport property...The move comes after Clark County’s Board of Commissioners banned marijuana possession and advertising on airport property as a way to comply with existing federal laws...

Sierra Nevada Health Center is one of Carson City's two federally-qualified health care centers that were hoping for renewed funding at the beginning of this month, but are instead still waiting on Congress to extend the Community Health Centers Fund program that expired on Sept. 30, 2016...Nevada's six federally-qualified health care centers provide care to around 89,000 patients across the state. Sierra Nevada Health Center and Carson City School-based Health Center provide care to Carson City and Carson Valley residents and are hanging in a balance after the deadline to extend the funding passed...Nevada's health centers are among more than 1,300 community health centers across the U.S. that receive funding from the CHCF program. Today, Nevada's health centers employ more than 60 medical professionals...Earlier this month, Nevada Health Centers CEO and board chairs sent a letter to Nevada's congressional delegation to encourage action on funding for community health centers...addressed to Republican Sen. Dean Heller, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen and Democratic Rep. Ruben Kihuen, the CEO and board chairs asked for unity between political parties and a solution to health care funding...The letter encourages Nevada congressional members "to develop a long-term, fiscally responsible funding plan that ensures the success of our country's greatest public health asset."

A Las Vegas investigator with the state Board of Medical Examiners was sexually harassed by her boss and retaliated against by co-workers after complaining to her superiors...The lawsuit...by investigator Lara Ward, alleges that the sexual harassment was part of a pattern of unprofessional conduct by officials in the state office that investigates complaints against licensed medical practitioners...While the sexual harassment claims form the core of the lawsuit, Ward also levels numerous allegations of unprofessional conduct by various members of the board. Among them, the complaint alleges that:

■ Andreas held personal vendettas against certain physicians, whom he targeted by keeping cases open after doctors were cleared of accusations.

■ Board officials closed several investigations of malpractice concerning high-profile physicians.

■ Doctors sued by a major insurance company for fraud had malpractice cases administratively closed. Those cases accused doctors of misuse of spinal cord and cervical injections and opioids.

■ Opioid overprescription investigations were delayed, including those resulting in death. The delays were part of an overall pattern of mishandling of overdose cases that included closure after lab reports were misread.

■ Female co-workers in the Las Vegas office favored by Andreas were promoted to investigative positions even though they lacked required bachelor’s degrees.

■ Ward, who has a bachelor’s in criminal justice from the University of Colorado, was denied a promotion to senior investigator and received poor marks from Chief of Investigations Pamela Castagnola on an employee review because she inquired about the position.

Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt has announced the formation of a Statewide Partnership on the Opioid Crisis. The Working Group’s first meeting will take place Thursday, and will include members from local and federal law enforcement, prosecutors, experts in the medical field, elected officials, and judicial and educational representatives...The primary function of the statewide partnership is to make recommendations to the Attorney General’s Office and Nevada’s Statewide Opioid Coordinator on best practices for data sharing to combat the opioid crisis. The AG says this remains a critical gap in Nevada’s response to the crisis...

As Nevada’s suicide rate has jumped to No. 5 in the nation and to its highest level since the late 1990s, the state’s doctors are being asked to be the frontline in recognizing suicidal tendencies of their patients and get them help before they take their lives...The effort is part of a state law passed in 2017 requiring physicians in all specialties to receive two hours of training on suicide prevention as a way to deal with the epidemic. The training for Southern Nevada started on Jan. 23 when Dr. Lesley Dickson, executive director of the Nevada Psychiatric Association addressed more than 90 doctors, medical residents and medical students in a presentation called “Suicide Prevention: How to Save a Life.”...“Interventions by mental health professionals are very important, but many suicidal individuals never see a therapist,”...“It’s important that all people who interact with a suicidal person know how to help.”...Nevada had 650 suicides — just under two a day — and a suicide rate of 22.1 per 100,000, in the latest numbers from the American Association of Suicidology. That’s up from 2015’s 558 deaths and 19.3 rate per 100,000 when Nevada was ranked 11th. The state is typically in the top 10...

The pharmaceutical industry largely snubbed Democrats when it came to doling out campaign contributions last year after the Democrat-controlled Legislature passed a bill to increase drug-pricing transparency in June...Only four Democrats — two members of Assembly leadership and the chairs of the Assembly and Senate health committees — received any contributions from the industry last year while 19 received industry contributions in 2016. By contrast, 19 Republican lawmakers and candidates and four Republican PACs or committees received donations from pharmaceutical companies in 2017, roughly comparable to 2016 trends...The $17,000 in pharmaceutical donations Democrats received represented about 1 percent of the more than $1.4 million the industry spent in Nevada in 2017. Republicans received 67 percent of the industry’s contributions, while the remaining 32 percent went toward funding the industry’s opposition, through the Healthy Nevada PAC, to the insulin pricing transparency bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Yvanna Cancela in 2017.

TOP 10 PHARMA MONEY RECIPIENTS:

• Republican State Leadership Committee: $914,000
• Attorney General candidate Wes Duncan: $8,500
• Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson: $8,250
• Sen. Ben Kieckhefer: $6,500 (including $1,250 to his PAC)
• Sen. Joe Hardy: $6,250 (including $1,250 to his PAC)
• Assemblyman James Oscarson: $5,000
• Gubernatorial candidate and Attorney General Adam Laxalt: $3,500
• Assemblyman Mike Sprinkle, 2017 chair of the Assembly health committee: $3,250
• Assemblyman Chris Edwards: $3,000
• Assembly Minority Leader Jim Wheeler: $2,850

UNLV is notifying 184 patients that they may have had dental implant work done with an instrument that had been used on other patients...A recent review of the dental implant process at the university’s Faculty Dental Practice Clinic found that healing abutments, which are manufactured to be a single-use item, were reused. The reuse of a healing abutment might increase the failure of a dental implant because of healing complications...“I am deeply disturbed by the allegations against the dentist in our dental school,” Regent Trevor Hayes said. “However, I am proud of the swift response of Chancellor Reilly and the system (Nevada System of Higher Education) staff in addressing these allegations and getting to the bottom of it. I have many concerns and questions regarding UNLV’s timeliness of response and depth of response, and I want to know why the system had to take over this matter.”...The dentist who reused the abutments, Dr. Phillip Devore, resigned as UNLV’s director of the faculty group practice in December and now works in private practice at Image Dental. He said there was never a public health risk because he sterilized the abutments. He said he would sometimes use a healing abutment up to five times.

Nevada is taking steps toward leaving the federal healthcare.gov and setting up a separate exchange operated by the state...the Legislative Interim Finance Committee...authorized state officials to spend $1 million to prepare a request for proposals and find a private provider...Heather Korbulic, executive director of the state system, says changes are needed because healthcare.gov is steadily raising the rates it charges states that link their front-end systems to the federal exchange...Korbulic says the federal rate increases by 2019 will leave the state with almost nothing to run the front-end system...Nevada tied its state exchange to the site after...using Xerox as a contractor failed, but Korbulic says several vendors now have proven systems.

Nevada's new opioid prescription law is only days old but doctors already are worried about how it might be implemented...physicians, lawyers and others expressed concerns this week to the state medical and dental boards over draft disciplinary rules for doctors who write improper prescriptions for pain medications...Under the proposed rules, doctors who violate the new law five times would lose their licenses. The threshold on losing a license would be reduced to three violations by 2020...Several doctors who attended the meeting say the proposed rules don't specify the exact conduct that could lead to penalties or the loss of medical licenses...The doctors voiced concerns that they could be punished for relatively minor mistakes or employee errors.