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JoNel Aleccia was a senior correspondent for KFF Health News until October 2022.
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A possibility that the blood of people who had COVID could save others has set off a mad scramble for donors — with top-dollar offers and a plan that relies on the blood of 10,000 Orthodox Jewish women.
Public officials are putting high hopes on new blood tests as a means of determining who has developed antibodies to COVID-19, and with those antibodies, presumed immunity. But experts caution the tests are largely unreliable and the science is still catching up.
COVID-19 is changing medical care, not only for vulnerable elders but also for pregnant women and their babies entering the world.
As efforts ramp up to collect blood plasma from the first survivors of COVID-19, families of critically ill patients are jockeying to obtain the still-unproven antibody treatment.
Josie and George Taylor of Everett, Washington, are two of the first people in the U.S. to recover from novel coronavirus infections after joining a clinical trial for the antiviral drug remdesivir.
New guidelines issued Tuesday could speed a century-old therapy to those critically ill with the pandemic virus.
Barbara Dreyfuss died March 1 after contracting COVID-19 at a Seattle-area nursing home. Her earlier decision to document her final wishes may offer an example for families as the deadly virus spurs interest in end-of-life care.
As the novel coronavirus marches across the country, it is upending how families and funeral homes honor the dead — and, ultimately, put them to rest.
Drs. Keith Jerome and Alex Greninger fast-tracked a test for the deadly new coronavirus weeks before it began spreading in the U.S. Their work has been key to detecting community transmission and ramping up the nation’s testing capacity.
Cancellations and no-shows for blood drives in states where the virus is spreading — and in ones where it’s not — pose risks for the nation’s inventories.
The spread of coronavirus disease to a skilled nursing facility in Washington state underscores the risk the deadly new virus poses in elder care facilities, where illnesses caused by more common pathogens, like seasonal influenza, often spread rapidly.
Scores of organs — mostly kidneys — are trashed each year and many more become critically delayed while being shipped on commercial airliners, a new investigation finds.
Neil Mahoney had terminal cancer. He also had a legal right to aid-in-dying. But his faith-based hospital called it “morally unacceptable.” So he turned to a network of Colorado doctors to fulfill his last wish.
Across the U.S., people with early dementia are signing new advance directives to confirm their end-of-life wishes while they still have the ability to do so. But doctors say the documents may offer a false sense of security.
Manufacturers of lucrative drugs say they’re offering discounts off the high sticker prices ― but taxpayers footing the big bills might never know what the state is paying or if it’s getting a good deal.
In Colorado case, the right to aid a cancer patient’s death runs up against faith-based hospital policies. As more states have passed laws, about 1 in 6 acute care beds nationally is in a hospital that is Catholic-owned or -affiliated.
Kathy Brandt and her wife, Kim Acquaviva, national experts in hospice and palliative care, shared intimate details of Brandt’s experience with terminal cancer before her death Sunday.
Geriatricians are outraged over a new requirement to pay for training in order to administer the MoCA test, a widely used tool to screen for cognitive problems. The test’s creator said he was worried about accuracy and liability.
Banking on new cost estimates, a bipartisan coalition in Congress is poised to try — once again — to end a three-year limit on coverage for lifesaving medication required to keep the organs functioning.
It’s never easy to tell a patient about a terminal illness, but a longtime doctor whose own diagnosis was botched says physicians must do better.
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