On Tuesday, New York became the first state to enact sweeping gun safety measures in the wake of last month’s horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The provisions of the NY Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signed into law yesterday, are far-reaching in their scope and address everything from high-capacity magazines to gun registration requirements.

But certain portions of the bill meant to address the mentally ill — particularly a requirement that medical professionals report patients with violent thoughts to public health authorities — have some experts concerned that the law might end up doing more harm than good for Americans in need of mental health services.

Medical professionals worry that the new legislation could deter mental health patients — regardless of whether or not they own a gun — from discussing thoughts of suicide or doing harm to others with their doctors, since they may fear the stigma of being reported to authorities. As Columbia University’s Dr. Paul Applebaum told the Washington Post, requiring doctors to report their mentally ill patients could put an enormous strain on the doctor-patient relationship, and potentially exacerbate the problem the new law is trying to address in the first place:

“It undercuts the clinical approach to treating these impulses, and instead turns it into a public safety issue,” Appelbaum said.

He also noted that in many mass shootings in the past, the gunman had not been under treatment and so would not have been deterred by a law like the proposed measure. Before the mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater last July, gunman James Holmes had been seeing a psychiatrist, but Appelbaum said he doesn’t know whether a law like New York’s would have made a difference.

Dr. Steven Dubovsky, chairman of the psychiatry department at the University at Buffalo, called the new measure meaningless. “It’s pure political posturing” and a deceptive attempt to reassure the public, he said.

The intent seems to be to turn mental health professionals into detectives and policemen, he said, but “no patient is going to tell you anything if they think you’re going to report them.”

And considering the fact that over half of all gun deaths are suicides, the SAFE Act’s onerous requirements regarding patients with “harmful” thoughts could even disproportionately affect suicidal Americans by making them feel insecure in their doctor’s offices.

Since the shooting in Newtown, what began as a meaningful conversation on the issues with America’s mental health care system has devolved into an effort to sidestep gun safety laws by scapegoating and stigmatizing Americans with mental health problems as the real root of gun violence — as the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre did during his bizarre press conference last month.

But people with mental illnesses are not actually prone to violence, and the fact that several high-profile mass murderers in recent years have suffered from mental health problems should not fool anybody into believing that all Americans living with mental illness are at risk of becoming murderers. Ultimately, as President Obama pointed out today while unveiling his sweeping gun safety proposals, “someone with a mental illness is far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than the perpetrator.”

In an effort to curb the growing epidemic of Americans abusing prescription drugs, the NYPD will begin asking pharmacies in the city to mix in so-called “bait bottles” containing GPS locator chips into their stocks of prescription drug medications, CBS News reports.

According to NYC Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, prescription drug abuse has become an unsustainable public health problem for the city. Police hope that putting locator chips in some medication bottles will allow them to effectively track stolen bottles and uncover large-scale prescription drug stash houses:

In prepared remarks provided in advance of his appearance [at a conference on health issues hosted by Bill Clinton], Kelly says the initiative was prompted by a spate of high-profile crimes associated with the thriving black market for prescription drugs, including the slaying of four people on Long Island during a pharmacy holdup in 2011. He also cites the case of a retired NYPD officer who, after retiring with an injury and getting hooked on painkillers, began robbing drug stores at gunpoint.

Prescription drug abuse “can serve as a gateway to criminal activities, especially among young people,” the commissioner says. “When pills become too expensive, addicts are known to resort to cheaper drugs such as heroin and cocaine. They turn to crime to support their habit.”

The NYPD has begun creating a database of the roughly 6,000 pharmacies in the New York City area with plans to have officers visit them and recommend security measures like better alarm systems and lighting of storage areas. Kelly says it also will ask them to stock the GPS bottles containing fake oxycodone.

NYPD’s medication-tracking initiative comes on the heels of earlier measures to track the distribution and sale of prescription drugs. Last summer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signed an expansive drug abuse prevention bill requiring, among other provisions, centralized electronic monitoring of prescription drugs and safe disposal programs for unused medications.

According to national surveys, prescription drug abuse is America’s fastest growing drug problem, and over a third of American youth over the age of 12 who abused drugs for the first time used non-prescribed medications. While 35 states have active Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), New York is the first to propose a sting operation of its kind in conjunction with pharmacies.

Over 700 veterans may have been exposed to the HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C viruses after a medical oversight allowed insulin pens to be shared between multiple patients at a Buffalo, NY hospital. According to hospital officials, the insulin pens — which are each supposed to be designated for a single patient, to help prevent the spread of diseases — were used incorrectly over a two-year period.

In November, pharmacy inspection rounds revealed that the hospital was storing insulin pens in supply drawers without any patient labels on them — despite the fact that the federal government has been warning against the practice of sharing insulin needles for years. In 2009, after a similar incident at a Texas hospital put more than 2,000 patients at risk, the Food and Drug Administration issued an alert about the issue.

“What has happened can only be described as the grossest of irresponsible and dangerous behavior,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said of the incident. And representatives from the Buffalo area, including Rep. Brian Higgins (D) and Rep. Chris Collins (R), are now seeking an investigation into the hospital’s practices:

“Beyond the fact that the error occurred at all, most concerning was the length of time it took the Buffalo VA to catch the error — over two years, as well as the three-month delay in informing patients who may have been exposed,” Higgins, whose district includes the city of Buffalo, wrote in a letter to the VA on Monday. “Also detail why affected patients weren’t notified immediately.” [...]

“Unfortunately, since the day that new technology was introduced at the VA, they did not have a protocol in place that let the nurses know they were not supposed to use the cartridge on more than one patient,” Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Collins told CNN affiliate WGRZ. Collins also called the situation in Buffalo “unacceptable.” [...]

Higgins has also requested a detailed response outlining what steps will be taken to prevent any similar issues in the future.

An official from the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Melissa Schaefer, told the Associated Press the CDC believes these incidents still go underreported despite previous warnings from federal public health officials. Part of the problem may be that some medical professionals, like the staff at the Buffalo-area hospital, may believe it’s safe to reuse insulin pens if they simply change the needle within the pen.

But Scaefer explained that’s not the case. “Reuse of insulin pens for more than one patient essentially is akin to syringe reuse,” she said. “You can get back flow of blood into that syringe or cartridge that contains the insulin and then you potentially expose others patients. And changing the needle wouldn’t make it safe for multi-patient use.”

In a move that could end up serving as a model for both private and public health care systems across the country, New York City’s public hospitals are poised to begin linking doctors’ paychecks to the quality of the care they provide patients, the New York Times reports.

Obamacare already attempts to shift the nation’s health care model towards one that rewards better care quality — rather than the volume of services provided — by tying safety net hospitals’ reimbursement rates to procedural benchmarks and patient satisfaction questionnaires. But elements of the yet-to-be-finalized NYC proposal would go even further than that, potentially tying physician groups’ salaries and bonuses to a variety of performance indicators in an effort to improve care quality and lower health care costs:

“I would expect that we’re going to see this become more and more prevalent in compensation arrangements,” said Alan Aviles, president of the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s 11 public hospitals and is the country’s largest public health system, handling more than 1 million emergency room visits a year.

The corporation’s plan would make doctors’ raises dependent on their performance on quality measures. The details are being negotiated with the doctors’ union, but both sides expect to reach an agreement that incorporates the idea. [...]

The public hospital system has come up with 13 performance indicators. Among them are how well patients say their doctors communicate with them, how many patients with heart failure and pneumonia are readmitted within 30 days, how quickly emergency room patients go from triage to beds, whether doctors get to the operating room on time and how quickly patients are discharged.

Union officials said they were still fighting for wage increases, in addition to performance bonuses. The union has also proposed expanding the indicators to 20, including measures that would give doctors bonuses for going to community meetings, giving lectures, getting training during work hours, screening patients for obesity and counseling them to stop smoking. It has also proposed excluding some patients — like developmentally disabled patients, homeless people and those who have no place to go — from incentives aimed at reducing the time patients spend in the hospital.

The strategy is not without risks. Just as doctors take advantage of the current scheme — in which a caretaker is reimbursed by public insurance programs for the bulk and length of the services provided — through shoddy practices such as “self-referring” and “upcoding” their safety net patients, they might also learn how to game this new system. Other countries with pay-for-performance models have had mixed results as to the efficacy of such programs.

But with quality indicators that are structured soundly and an effective oversight and enforcement mechanism, the pay-for-performance plan presents the opportunity to improve care while curbing costs. Most importantly, it encourages a proactive health care system that is actually centered on Americans’ general well-being, rather than the reactionary “sick care” paradigm that currently dominates the American medical landscape.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has declared a state of emergency in response to the recent flu outbreak, which the Centers for Disease Control reports has reached “epidemic” levels. Cuomo’s announcement ensures that children will have expanded access to the flu vaccination, since the governor’s order temporarily allows pharmacists to administer flu shots to patients between 6 months and 18 years old.

“We are experiencing the worst flu season since at least 2009, and influenza activity in New York State is widespread, with cases reported in all 57 counties and all five boroughs of New York City,” Cuomo said in a statement over the weekend. In addition to New York, 46 other states are also reporting high levels of flu cases this year, and Boston’s mayor also declared a state of public health emergency last week.

Less than half of Americans decided to get a flu shot by the end of December, even though vaccination is the best method to protect against influenza. Expanding access to vaccinations in pharmacies, as New York state is now attempting to do, could help start to address that discrepancy. But some enduring myths about vaccinations, a lack of widespread understanding about the potential dangers of influenza, and the fact that flu shots — unlike vaccinations against mumps and measles — aren’t tied to the ability to attend work or school could also contribute to Americans’ reticence to get the shot.

New York City’s health commissioner points out that it’s still not too late to get a shot. Americans who get vaccinated are about 60 percent less likely to come down with the flu, and public health officials say that some protection is better than nothing at all. However, as public awareness about the flu outbreak has spread and increasing numbers of Americans may be convinced to get a shot, pharmacies are worried about not being able to meet the rising demand.

Fortunately, the CDC reports the worst could be over since the current flu season may have already peaked. That’s especially good news for the 29 states that slashed their public health budgets from 2010 to 2012 and may not be prepared to combat a public health emergency.