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Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Doc Gets 5 Years for Home Health Fraud

Houston physician Yolanda Hamilton, MD, was sentenced to 5 years in prison for her role in a $16-million Medicare fraud scheme, .

The 57-year-old owner of HMS Health and Wellness Center was also ordered to pay $9.5 million in restitution for the scheme, .

But while federal sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of 25 years, the judge overseeing the case decided she was "not as culpable as most offenders in Medicare fraud cases," according to the Chronicle. "I do not think Dr. Hamilton knew what she was getting into," the judge reportedly said in explaining the reduced sentence.

In October 2019, Hamilton was convicted by a federal jury on one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, one count of conspiracy to solicit and receive healthcare kickbacks, and two counts of making false statements.

Prosecutors said Hamilton made it look like patients qualified for and received home healthcare services when they didn't. Hamilton also paid the patients to receive home healthcare services that were often medically unnecessary.

As well, Hamilton required home health agencies to pay her kickbacks, disguised as a co-pay, in order for her to certify or re-certify patients for their services. Hamilton allegedly collected over $300,000 in kickbacks this way.

The Justice Department said Hamilton's co-conspirators, including other doctors and nurses, have also been either charged, found guilty, or pled guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.

Vaccine Hesitancy Among Healthcare Workers

Healthcare professionals want more data about a COVID-19 vaccine before they take it themselves, .

Surveys and statements from medical societies revealed a degree of vaccine hesitancy among doctors and nurses.

For example, a report from the University of California Los Angeles released last week showed 66% of Los Angeles healthcare workers who responded to an online questionnaire said they would delay taking a vaccine.

The American Nurses Association said a third of its members do not intend to take the vaccine and another third are undecided.

Two-thirds of doctors in New Jersey said they would take the vaccine, but some contacted by the state said they "did not want to be in the first round, so they could wait and see if there are potential side effects," New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said during a Nov. 9 press briefing.

"Of those who said they would not take the vaccine, many said they would be more than willing to get the vaccine at a later date, when more data is available," she said.

Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, told the Post that doctors are "vaccines' greatest champions, but this is the first time that a new vaccine has been developed at a rapid pace in the middle of a pandemic, as opposed to a much longer timeline."

"What I hear from physicians is some of the same concerns that are expressed by everyone," she said. "They worry the process has been politicized. They are concerned because they haven't seen any published data yet. And they don't feel comfortable making the decision one way or another until they see the evidence."

Healthcare leaders said it's critical for companies to publish full results from clinical trials as soon as possible in order to win the support of physicians and healthcare providers, who can then champion the vaccines to patients.

Lysol: Under the Lid

Bloomberg Businessweek has a detailed explainer on .

Sales of the popular disinfectant are unsurprisingly up more than 70% this year, and a plant in northern New Jersey has been working nearly around the clock to sate public demand as the COVID-19 pandemic rages.

A German chemist named Gustav Raupenstrauch created Lysol in 1889, and the brand is currently owned by parent company Reckitt Benckiser of the U.K. Its recipe is basic: ethanol, plus a quaternary ammonium compound (also known as a "quat"), plus a hit of fragrance.

Some 35 million cans of the stuff will be produced every month in North America by the end of the year, more than three times its pre-COVID peak. The northern New Jersey plant where it's made uses at least three 30,000-gallon tanker cars of ethanol that arrive by train, and can produce 700 to 800 cans per minute.

Bloomberg's Drew Armstrong writes, "For the record, Lysol works." Its ethanol and quat act as solvents that tear apart lipid envelopes of viruses, rendering them inert.

"That doesn't mean anyone should inject it, a treatment President Trump suggested doctors consider with disinfectants, including bleach, earlier this year," the article noted. "'Under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body,' the updated Lysol website currently reads, because that's where people are at these days."

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