Gazette Daily News Briefing, January 8
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for January 8, 2024.
According to the National Weather Service it will be cloudy on Monday in the Cedar Rapids area, with a high near 35 degrees. The low will drop down to 30 degrees later on in the evening.
Monday evening will also be when heavy snowfall could arrive, so do your emergency shopping during the day if you want to completely avoid snow. The National Weather Service projections show a 20 percent chance of snow at 5 p.m. that rockets up to a 100 percent chance of snow by 8 p.m.
And the snow could come in bunches, with a potential for up to 3 inches by the end of Monday and a total of 6 inches by the time you wake up Tuesday morning, with the potential with more snow to come on top of that. As a result, a Winter Storm Warning is in effect from 6 p.m. tonight until the start of Wednesday morning.
Cedar Rapids has an 85 percent chance of seeing more than 6 inches of snow by the time the snowfall ends, and a 27 percent chance of more than a foot. Chances increase farther south: Ottumwa has an 88 percent chance of seeing 6-plus inches of snow, and a 36 percent chance of seeing more than a foot.
Just weeks away from “day one” of the University of Iowa-Mercy Iowa City process designed to morph the 150-year-old Mercy Hospital into UI Health Care’s “downtown campus,” job offers are going out to more than 1,100 prospective transitioning employees.
Of more than 90 physicians employed by Mercy when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Aug. 7, UIHC in the final weeks of December made job offers to a majority of those who remained.
More than half of those offered have accepted to date, and the acceptances continue to come in according to UIHC spokeswoman Laura Shoemaker.
“It is our hope that all Mercy Iowa City physicians will choose to transition to UI Health Care as we grow our team and work to deliver high-quality care to our patients and communities.”
In addition to Mercy physician offers, UIHC is in the process of offering employment agreements to about 1,100 Mercy staff members — including advanced practice providers, nurses, nursing assistants, receptionists, administrators, janitorial workers, and food service providers.
UI Health Care Vice President for Medical Affairs Denise Jamieson told The Gazette that transitioning 1,100 new employees and the Mercy system to fit under the UIHC umbrella, all while dealing with lingering Mercy expenses and investing in the hospital’s aging infrastructure, will be, to put it mildly, a complicated task.
“Change can be very stressful, but I don't think there's any way anybody is going to look back five or 10 years from now and say, ‘We should have just let Mercy close’,” Jamieson said, pointing to worsening overcrowding issues at UIHC in addition to Mercy’s storied history and loyal patient base. “We need the beds to be able to serve the community.”
I will leave you today with a happy thought. It is just one week until the Iowa Caucuses arrive, which means there is just over one week left until political ads stop following you wherever you go.
Think of that as you shovel snow tomorrow, and it might just make your load feel lighter. But remember to use your legs to lift either way.
