KFFHN Weekly Edition: Oct. 13, 2023
What Mobile Clinics in Dollar General Parking Lots Say About Health Care in Rural America
Sarah Jane Tribble
Dollar General’s pilot mobile clinic program has been touted by company officials, rural health experts, and analysts as a model that could help solve rural America’s primary care shortage. But its Tennessee launch has been met with local skepticism.
‘I’m So Burned Out’: Fighting to See a Specialist Amplified Pain for Riverside County Woman
Molly Castle Work
Teresa Johnson has been in extreme pain for more than a year after what she believes was a severe allergic reaction to iodine. Her Medi-Cal plan approved her referral to a specialist, but it took her numerous phone calls, multiple complaints, and several months to book an appointment.
Police Blame Some Deaths on ‘Excited Delirium.’ ER Docs Consider Pulling the Plug on the Term.
Markian Hawryluk and Renuka Rayasam
The American College of Emergency Physicians will vote in early October on whether to disavow its 2009 research paper on excited delirium, which has been cited as a cause of death and used as a legal defense by police officers in several high-profile cases.
California Bans Controversial ‘Excited Delirium’ Diagnosis
Samantha Young
California is the first state to ban the controversial diagnosis known as “excited delirium,” which has been used increasingly to justify excessive force by law enforcement. A human rights advocate described the law, signed this week by Gov. Gavin Newsom, as a “watershed moment” in criminal justice.
Thousands Got Exactech Knee or Hip Replacements. Then, Patients Say, the Parts Began to Fail.
Fred Schulte
In a torrent of lawsuits, patients accuse Florida device maker Exactech of hiding knee and hip implant defects for years. The company denies the allegations.
Feds Hope to Cut Sepsis Deaths by Hitching Medicare Payments to Treatment Stats
Julie Appleby
A new rule sets specific treatment metrics for suspected sepsis cases in an effort to reduce deaths, but some experts say the measures could add to antibiotic overuse and need to be more flexible.
Feds Rein In Use of Predictive Software That Limits Care for Medicare Advantage Patients
Susan Jaffe
Software sifts through millions of medical records to match patients with similar diagnoses and characteristics and then predicts what kind of care an individual will need and for how long. New federal rules will ensure human experts are part of the process.
PrEP, a Key HIV Prevention Tool, Isn’t Reaching Black Women
Sam Whitehead
New HIV infections occur disproportionately among Black women, but exclusionary marketing, fewer treatment options, and provider wariness have limited uptake of preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, drugs, which reduce the risk of contracting the virus.
Mothers of Color Can’t See if Providers Have a History of Mistreatment. Why Not?
Sarah Kwon
Many women, especially Black women, have reported discrimination in maternity care, but expectant mothers lack tools to see where this happens. Funding and regulations to measure disparities have been slow in arriving, but some innovators are trying to fill the void.
Facing Criticism, Feds Award First Maternal Health Grant to a Predominantly Black Rural Area
Sarah Jane Tribble
Mississippi has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the U.S. Now, it also has a federal grant to help in rural areas. The award could signal more flexibility from federal officials.
The New Vaccines and You: Americans Better Armed Than Ever Against the Winter Blechs
Amy Maxmen
Flu, covid, and respiratory viruses kill thousands of Americans each year, but the latest batch of vaccines could save lives.
Rare ‘Flesh-Eating’ Bacterium Spreads North as Oceans Warm
Christopher O’Donnell, Tampa Bay Times
A rise in cases of Vibrio vulnificus and its spread northward have heightened concern about the bacterium, which can cause human tissue to rot and skin to decay. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is trying to make more doctors aware of the dangerous pathogen.
Narcan, Now Available Without a Prescription, Can Still Be Hard to Get
Jackie Fortiér, LAist and Nicole Leonard, WHYY
Narcan is available without a prescription. Addiction treatment experts hope this move will increase access to the medication, which can reverse opioid overdoses. But hurdles remain: cost and stigma.
Bodies Remember What Was Done to Them
Trust is hard to build and easy to break. In Episode 6 of the “Eradicating Smallpox” podcast, meet Chandrakant Pandav, a health worker who used laughter and song to try to rebuild trust with communities harmed by India’s sometimes violent and coercive family planning campaign.
More Schools Stock Overdose Reversal Meds, but Others Worry About Stigma
Rae Ellen Bichell and Virginia Garcia Pivik
Colorado is among several states that ensure schools have access to the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone for free or at reduced cost. But most districts hadn’t signed up by the start of the school year for a state distribution program amid stigma around the lifesaving treatment.
John Green vs. Johnson & Johnson (Part 1)
Dan Weissmann
Pharmaceutical patents can drive up the costs of lifesaving medications. Hear what author and YouTube star John Green is doing to make tuberculosis drugs more accessible to the people who need them most.
Trump Misplaced Blame When He Said Drug Shortages Were Biden’s Fault
Michelle Andrews
Former President Donald Trump, who’s running for another term in the White House, recently blamed drug shortages on his successor, President Joe Biden. Our findings don’t align with Trump’s claims; by some measures, drug shortages increased more on Trump’s watch than on Biden’s.
Social Security Chief Orders Broad Review of Benefit Overpayments
David Hilzenrath and Jodie Fleischer, Cox Media Group
In the wake of an investigation by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group, the SSA acting commissioner said a special team will review “overpayment policies and procedures” and report directly back to her.
House Panel to Hold Hearing on Erroneous Social Security Payments
David Hilzenrath and Jodie Fleischer, Cox Media Group
Congress is beginning to take action on the Social Security Administration’s clawbacks of payments it mistakenly made to poor, retired, and disabled Americans.
Listen to the Latest ‘KFF Health News Minute’
“Health Minute” brings original health care and health policy reporting from the KFF Health News newsroom to the airwaves each week.
Health Funding in Question in a Speaker-Less Congress
A bitterly divided Congress managed to keep the federal government running for several more weeks, while House Republicans struggle — again — to choose a leader. Meanwhile, many people removed from state Medicaid rolls are not finding their way to Affordable Care Act insurance, and a major investigation by The Washington Post attributes the decline in U.S. life expectancy to more than covid-19 and opioids. Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, Victoria Knight of Axios, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews physician-author-playwright Samuel Shem about “Our Hospital,” his new novel about the health workforce in the age of covid.
An Encore: 3 HHS Secretaries Reveal What the Job Is Really Like
In this special encore episode, KFF Health News’ “What the Health?” asks three people who have served as the nation’s top health official: What does a day in the life of the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services look like? And how much of their agenda is set by the White House? Taped in June before a live audience at Aspen Ideas: Health, part of the Aspen Ideas Festival, in Aspen, Colorado, host and chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner leads a rare conversation with the current and two former HHS secretaries. Secretary Xavier Becerra and former secretaries Kathleen Sebelius and Alex Azar talk candidly about what it takes to run a department with more than 80,000 employees and a budget larger than those of many countries.
Journalists Track Opioid Settlement Cash and New Fees for Emailing Your Doctor
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Goody Gumdrops! It’s Freakin’ Time to Submit Your Scariest Halloween Health Care Haikus.
Submissions are open for KFF Health News’ fifth annual Halloween Haiku competition. Send us your best scary poems — if you dare.