Local News

The King County Medical Examiner has identified the small aircraft pilot who was killed Tuesday in Fall City as Dr. John Ciliberti, a former medical director of the emergency department at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue. The medical examiner’s office said Ciliberti, 70, whose Cessna 182 crashed at Snoqualmie Falls Golf Course early in the day, died …

The legal case was grim: a falling-out between partners in an energy-drink company, an alleged deadly drink laced with caffeine and hallucinogens, and a sudden death during a “zombie run.” But a mock-trial team from Seattle Prep was jubilant Saturday night in Madison, Wis., after winning top honors at the National High School Mock Trial Competition. The…

Update: 9:42 p.m. A shooting about 6:30 p.m. Saturday outside Horizon Elementary School in Everett has put one teenage male in the hospital, and prompted a search for the shooter. Witnesses told police a small group of  teenagers were playing basketball when a larger group of about 15 to 20 males in their late teens arrived…

After months of concern that Harborview Medical Center was planning to close or relocate its primary-care clinics, officials Wednesday said the existing clinics would stay put. In December, Harborview clinic faculty and staff said they had been told that officials wanted to move primary-care clinics out of the hospital. The news prompted opposition by faculty and…

Eileen Whalen, a noted trauma-services expert who has served as executive director of Harborview Medical Center since 2008, has abruptly resigned. In a short memo to staff on Friday, Johnese Spisso, chief health system officer, UW Medicine, and vice president for medical affairs, University of Washington, said Whalen’s resignation became effective on Thursday. Spisso said she will…

The Washington State Hospital Association, representing 98 hospitals around the state, has sued the state over new rules that add state scrutiny of hospital affiliations and mergers to a law that previously allowed the state to review only hospital “sales, purchase or lease” arrangements. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Thurston County Superior Court, asks the court to invalidate…

The Seattle-based Polar Star, the  Coast Guard’s only active heavy polar icebreaker, is on its way to the Antarctic to assist a Russian ship and a Chinese icebreaker reportedly stuck in thick ice. The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long, which helped with the rescue of 52 passengers from the Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy earlier in the week, is…

The horse may be out of the barn on this one, with most hospitals in Washington settled into mergers and affiliations with bigger systems — many of them Catholic, with the attendant restrictions on reproduction and end-of-life care. Even so, the state’s Department of Health has hatched new rules requiring that any hospital changing control in…

Nobody doubts that when Dr. Maxine Hayes retires at the end of this year she’ll still be giving advice about how to avoid catching the flu.

“Wash your hands!” the state health officer is fond of saying at this time of year. For 16 years, Hayes has advised governors and secretaries of health not only on influenza outbreaks, but on a wide variety of public-health issues, including disease investigation, health promotion, chronic disease prevention, and emergency response.

“Maxine has served our agency, the people of our state, and the public-health system incredibly well and will be greatly missed,” said Secretary of Health John Wiesman in a statement. “She’s well-known and admired on a national level, and we’re grateful to have had such a wonderful leader and champion of public health in our midst for all of these years.”

Dr. Kathy Lofy, an agency medical epidemiologist, will serve as acting state health officer beginning Jan. 1. As a consultant to the health department’s offices of communicable disease epidemiology and infectious disease, Lofy oversees influenza surveillance.  She is the state’s former epidemic intelligence service officer and foodborne disease epidemiologist.

A 70-year-old Alaskan pilot and charter-business owner convicted of alcohol importation could face a $1 million fine and jail time, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports. Ken Jouppi and his business, KenAir, were found guilty of turning a blind eye to the illegal alcohol carried in his Cessna 206 by a passenger flying to Beaver,…