Spotlighting original BirdDog reporting and why a few headlines from elsewhere matter for Tennessee.
Photo by ev on Unsplash
FROM BIRDDOG
Anesthesia group, BCBST ink deal
FROM ELSEWHERE
1. Where even Walmart won’t go: how Dollar General took over rural America
Chris McGreal, The Guardian
A great read about a small town’s reaction to a company based just a short drive up I-65 in Goodlettsville. It’s the fastest growing retailer in the country, opening new locations at a “rate of three a day… targeting rural towns and damaged inner-city neighbourhoods.”
Excerpt: “Buhler’s mayor, Daniel Friesen, watched events unfold in Haven (Kansas) and came to see Dollar General not so much as an opportunity as a diagnosis. … As Friesen saw it, Dollar General was not only a threat to all that but amounted to admission his town was failing.”
2. A new role for paramedics: treating patients at home
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey
Excerpt: “Under the supervision of physicians, and with special training, these paramedics — part of an emerging field known as community paramedicine or mobile integrated health — can examine patients, administer medications, and provide care instructions.”
Around Tennessee in areas where the hospital closed, EMTs are juggling more calls for more routine problems. They are becoming on-the-ground deliverers of care.
3. ‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’
Alana Semuels, CityLab
Excerpt: How online shopping and cheap prices turned Americans into hoarders
Shopping gives people a dopamine hit so hitting online stores makes you feel good.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, shoppers in the U.S. sent $240 billion in 2017 on goods, such as jewelry, luggage and telephones. That’s twice as much as in 2002 (adjusted for inflation).