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A grant is nudging the nascent UNLV School of Medicine closer to its fundraising goals...The United Health Foundation has awarded the school a $3 million grant to develop educational programs and three planned community clinics...United Health Foundation’s grant will strengthen and support UNLV’s commitment to build a cutting-edge medical school that ensures quality health care in the community for generations to come...United Health Foundation was established by UnitedHealth Group, which includes Southwest Medical Associates...Robert McBeath, president and CEO of Southwest Medical Associates, said the company has been a big supporter of UNLV’s efforts to develop a medical school and would like to continue its relationship with the school...The partnerships are important because it brings the training of the medical students in line with the needs of the community...

Less than two years after University Medical Center received $25.5 million in loans and eliminated hundreds of positions, the hospital is in the midst of a financial "rebirth," according to CEO Mason VanHouweling...At a meeting of the Clark County Commission...the county revealed UMC is expected to receive a $31 million subsidy — the same subsidy it received for the 2016 fiscal year and far less than it requested in years past...VanHouweling said the hospital has been able to "turn a financial corner"...As a facility that serves a large number of indigent patients, the hospital requires at least some funding from the county to function...It was never designed to generate the type of revenue that private hospitals today can generate...UMC is planning to modernize and remodel infrastructure at its main campus as well as at its primary and quick care facilities. The hospital also plans to move to a new electronic health records system and upgrade technology in operating rooms...the hospital is carefully watching for any possible reductions to disproportionate share hospital, or DSH payments, which help to offset the costs of care given to indigent patients. DSH payments are expected to be reduced nationwide, which would hurt UMC.

Northern Nevada HOPES, a Reno medical facility, has a new $13 million facility. The clinic itself has been around for 20 years…"This building is going to give us an opportunity to expand our services and serve so many more people," said Sharon Chamberlain, CEO of Norther Nevada HOPES…HOPES has been serving Northern Nevada since 1997…The whole family can get treatment here. All the way from their medical needs up to their counseling and psychological needs… The new facility is state-of-the-art with separate patient exam rooms for adults and children. In the building, x-rays as well as blood work can be done on site. The clinic also offers case management so patients don't fall through the cracks… HOPES will be able to serve 10,000 patients a year…The clinic has moved into the new facility, but it is not completely paid for yet. HOPES is looking for an additional $2 million to pay off their loans…Normal services at the clinic are paid for through a combination of grant funding, health insurance and pharmacy fees.

...the new Southern Nevada Health District facility hasn’t completed its makeover yet...The 110,000-square-foot space, which formerly housed a Target store, officially debuted during an open house Tuesday. The building is in the final stages of an $11 million renovation that began in July...It had to be accessible. It had to be within an area where we have a lot of the population that we service affordable...It had to be a building that was going to be able to hold all of our services, and it had to be affordable...Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman declared Tuesday Southern Nevada Health District Day and complimented the district for its central location...Services including family planning, sexual health and epidemiology...

College of Southern Nevada has unveiled a plan to build a $43 million health sciences building at its Henderson campus...School officials aim to use the 70,000-square-foot building as a training facility for aspiring health care workers at CSN and Henderson-based Nevada State College. CSN President Michael Richards...will introduce the state-funded proposal to Nevada’s higher education board...to help craft a policy agenda for Southern Nevadans in the 2017 Legislature...Barbra Coffee, Henderson’s director of economic development, touted the CSN proposal as a way to help feed the region’s growing need for health care workers. She pointed to a hospital-building boom in the Las Vegas Valley as well as ongoing efforts to create medical schools at UNLV and Henderson-based Roseman University...

America's love affair with prescription drugs began in the 90s when narcotic pain killers left the hospital and headed home in the form of a pill..."Pain killers began being prescribed at such a high rate, and the folks who were prescribing them didn't necessarily have any training," said Jennifer Delette-Snyder...of Join Together Northern Nevada..."Think of Heroin. An opioid in a pill is the synthetic form of that type of a drug,"..."A surge in painkiller prescribing has been the main driving force over this epidemic and of the heroin epidemic," said Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the CDC...This week the agency started to combat the problem by issuing new guidelines (for) the prescriptions of opioids. The guidelines say opioids should not be the default solution for pain care..."People don't realize that these opioids are lethal. No one ever takes a pill thinking that it is going to kill them and this is the type of awareness that we are trying to build," said Teresa Benitez-Thompson, Nevada Assemblywoman from District 27...Doctors in Nevada now have to log opioid prescriptions in a database. The practice prevents patients from doctor shopping as well as prevents doctors from accidentally over prescribing...Delette-Snyder says both the CDC actions and the legislature actions have the potential to save lives, but she says we need to stay the course and only look to opioids for only the most extreme situations...Physicians could go back to prescribing only Ibuprofen, but only time will tell if they will. The CDC guidelines are only guidelines. They are not a mandate.

...the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released its seventh annual County Health Rankings, which, despite their name, aren’t a competition between U.S. counties to see who’s the best at health. Rather, the report exists to assess all the counties in the U.S. based on factors ranging from tobacco use and access to healthcare to air quality and even education…on the whole and for most of the country, the report doesn’t look terrible. Generally speaking, premature death numbers–a key indicator of overall community health–have been steadily going down. That is, unless you live in a rural area...There are 46 million people who live in rural communities. Nearly one in six Americans lives in a rural area…And the challenges they are facing are showing up in how they are not living as long as other Americans… Many of those rural counties, in fact, are already finding ways to address their local problems by offering services that are otherwise out of reach…some rural areas are getting together with communities nearby and combining to offer services that would be impossible to do alone…

Clark County health officials confirmed the second case of Zika virus disease statewide and in Southern Nevada on Monday, less than a week after the first case was reported...A woman who recently visited Brazil contracted the disease and became sick March 18, Southern Nevada Health District medical epidemiologist Tony Fredrick said...We do expect that we will report more positive cases in the future. However, it is important for the public to continue to understand that to date these cases have all been acquired outside of the United States...The health district has sent 22 total samples for testing, with 10 returned so far. Of those 10, two have been positive...

University of Nevada School of Medicine matched 64 of its graduating class with residency programs all over the country Friday morning. The reveal on where students will do residency programs was a surprise until each opened boxes listing programs...Kaleb Wartgow was one of the nearly 30,000 medical students in the U.S. matched to residency programs at hospitals around the country...But Wartgow...from the 2016 graduating class of the University of Nevada School of Medicine, is likely just one of a few absolutely sure he wants to someday practice family medicine in rural Nevada...He was one of 64 from...the...class of 2016 that found out Friday where they will spend the next few years of training. Wartgow, who grew up in Gardnerville and is a 2006 graduate of Douglas High, said he hopes to someday practice medicine in Smith Valley...

Sunrise Health System opened a new Urgent Care Extra location...at Camino Al Norte and Ann Road...The clinic...offers medical care for minor injuries and illnesses along with services like blood tests and X-rays...This is the 16th urgent care facility that Sunrise Health has opened in the Valley...