FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Katherine Sager, Nordic Consulting; Overdose deaths in Wisconsin decline 10% over 12-month period, CDC estimates show

September 20, 2024

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Katherine Sager, chief consulting officer at Nordic Consulting.

This Madison-based firm provides various services for the health care industry in the United States, Canada and Europe, ranging from staffing to health IT support and more. It has more than 700 health care customers, including large multi-site health systems with thousands of workers and smaller community hospitals as well.

Sager shares insights from her time in the health sector, touching on some of the top trends defining modern health care IT. She notes the industry is still feeling the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as staffing shortages, provider burnout and higher costs are posing challenges for health care organizations.

“The other thing that we see as a major theme right now is cybersecurity,” Sager said, adding the Change Healthcare breach earlier this year may have affected as many as one-third of all Americans. “The impact on hospitals and clinics was huge.”

She’s also tracking the role of AI in the health care industry, especially as it relates to electronic health records.

“How can it be used to help with decision making? What are the right ways to use it, what are the ethics around that? There’s a lot of really interesting research being done on that right now,” she said.

Sager says curiosity and interest in the technology’s potential is tempered with trepidation, noting AI likely has a role in low-risk tasks or work that’s not directly related to patient care.

“AI can be tuned over time, it can learn, it can continue to become more precise,” she said. “And so there’s lots of ways that over time, as you continue to refine it, it can become very effective and very helpful … Like any tool, it has to be applied appropriately.”

The interview also explores Nordic’s approach to staffing support, how the business has evolved over the years and the path ahead for future growth.

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

— Drug overdose deaths are projected to have declined nearly 10% in Wisconsin over the 12-month period ending in April, roughly in line with the national trend.

That’s from the latest CDC estimates, which show predicted overdose deaths in the state dropped from 1,785 in April 2023 to 1,612 in April 2024.

This decline comes as the United States has “shifted from an opioid epidemic to a polysubstance epidemic,” according to Michelle Haese, director of substance use initiatives for the state Department of Health Services.

In an emailed statement yesterday, she said the agency can’t “definitively state” why this trend is occurring, but touted the work of health officials in educating people about drug abuse, reducing stigma, boosting access to treatments, removing barriers to getting help and more. Haese argues approaching the drug abuse epidemic as a public health issue “appears to have played a major role in impacting our interventions” across the continuum of care.

Still, she said the work of those fighting the drug abuse epidemic is far from over, and many different efforts are playing an important role.

“Though far too many lives continue to be lost the decrease is a positive sign,” Haese said. “Ultimately, the data is telling us to keep investing and maintaining the course we are taking, as we hope the decrease is sustainable and brings us to a time when losing people to an overdose is no longer a reality.”

See the data.

Top headlines from the Health Care Report…

— State health officials are warning of a spike in whooping cough activity in Wisconsin, with more than 10 times as many cases reported so far this year as in 2023.

For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.

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— Wisconsin’s unemployment rate ticked down to 2.9% in August as total employment hit another record high with 3,051,900 people employed.

The state Department of Workforce Development yesterday released the latest preliminary estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The estimates showed nonfarm jobs had a statistically significant increase of 35,300 over the year, bringing the total to 3,047,300.

Meanwhile, the state unemployment rate was down slightly from July’s rate of 3% and remained below the national rate of 4.2%. The state’s labor force participation rate held at 65.5%, above the national rate of 62.7%.

Scott Hodek, section chief for DWD’s Office of Economic Advisors, says the economy overall continues to grow but at a slower rate.

“So we are still seeing the economy move forward,” he said during an online briefing yesterday. “We do still have job growth and low unemployment rates, but we are seeing the national economy slow some. But given the Federal Reserve rate cuts, we’ll probably see some more positive movement there in the future.”

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday moved to cut interest rates by half a percentage point as inflation has cooled.

See the release.

— The White House has released a video of President Joe Biden speaking with a Wisconsin couple who own a woodworking business to tout the Biden administration’s efforts to expand internet access.

The video shows Biden on a video call with Emile and Camille Smith of Seneca while sitting at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. Biden in the video compares what his administration is doing to provide internet to all communities to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt helping provide electricity to rural America.

Camille told Biden the couple’s ZIP code is home to just 129 people. Emile said they were amazed by how quickly they got high-speed internet access after Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act.

“We’ve been operating here for about 30 years. The internet was such a challenge for us, a challenge for the future of what we were going to do here,” he says.

Emile says now that they have access to high-speed internet, “it’s just opened our opportunities back up.”

— Project Democracy has a new ad featuring Wisconsin business leaders who tout their support for Kamala Harris.

The group said it’s spending six figures on the buy over the final seven weeks of the race to target 465,000 swing voters. The spots will run on streaming services, social media and online news sites.

In the spot, David Lubar, president and CEO of Lubar & Co, says Donald Trump “is chaos.”

Tom Florsheim Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of Weyco Group Inc., adds business “depends upon the rule of law.”

“When chaos ensues, none of that can happen,” says Betsy Brenner, former publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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