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California officials are stepping up efforts to combat the spread of xylazine, a powerful animal sedative that’s increasingly being used by people, often with devastating results. It’s mostly been an East Coast phenomenon, but ‘tranq,’ as it is known, is beginning to appear in the Golden State.
A push is underway to create a National Patient Safety Board modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates plane crashes and other transportation disasters. But unlike the NTSB, some patient safety advocates say, the current proposal is toothless and wouldn’t provide transparency about the nation’s hospitals.
After emergency surgery, an American expatriate with Swiss insurance now carries the baggage of a five-figure bill. Costs for medical care in the U.S. can be two to three times the rates in other developed countries, so foreigners and expats with good insurance in their home countries need travel insurance to protect themselves from “crazy prices.”
Drugmakers, pharmacies, and physicians blame pharmacy benefit managers for high drug prices. Congress is finally on board, too, but will it matter?
A study of roughly 2,700 shootings in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia found that racial disparities in gun injuries and deaths widened during the covid-19 pandemic. Researchers looked only at assaults, excluding accidents or incidents of self-harm.
A growing number of states — including Maryland, Colorado, and Massachusetts — are using tax forms to point people toward lower-cost health coverage available through state insurance marketplaces.
Despite record enrollment in health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act, some consumers who bought coverage and agents who helped them do so have had a tough start to the new year: Many say it’s hard to find an in-network doctor or hospital.
Spending the money effectively and equitably is a tall order for state and local governments, and a lack of transparency in the process is already leading to fears of misuse.
It’s about the money — on both sides — as arguments swirl about patient safety, rising prices, and paying back on-the-job training.
With their brains still developing and poor impulse control, teens who carry firearms might never plan to use them. But some do.
Older people often aren’t being screened for anxiety disorders, even though it is a common affliction — one masked by other problems when growing old.
The veterinary tranquilizer xylazine, the choice du jour of local drug dealers to cut fentanyl, leads to necrotic ulcers and leaves street medics and physicians confused about how best to deal with this wave of the opioid crisis.
As flexible treatment options spurred by the covid pandemic wane, patients relying on medications classified as controlled substances worry that without action to extend the loosened rules, it’ll be harder to get their meds.
An investigation of records from 25 county jails across Pennsylvania showed that nearly 1 in 3 "use of force" incidents by guards involved a confined person who was having a psychiatric crisis or who had a known mental illness.
An examination of billing policies and practices at more than 500 hospitals across the country shows widespread reliance on aggressive collection tactics.
Hospitals have depended on travel nurses to fill shifts, especially during covid surges. Now some larger systems, reeling from high contract labor costs, have created staffing units, aiming to lure nurses who want more work flexibility and better pay than staff RNs get.
Some people say it’s reasonable for densely populated areas to receive more settlement funds, since they serve more of those affected. But others worry this overlooks rural communities disproportionately harmed by opioid addiction.
A months-long KHN examination of the system meant to bar fraudsters from Medicaid, Medicare, and other federal health programs found gaping holes and expansive gray areas through which banned individuals slip to repeatedly bilk taxpayer-funded programs.
Yes, the U.S. is experiencing an unusual spate of childhood RSV infections. But the critical shortage of hospital beds to treat ailing children stems from structural problems in pediatric care that have been brewing for years.
Health insurers and health care systems across the country are violating disability rights laws by sending medical bills that blind and visually impaired people cannot read, a KHN investigation has found. By hindering the ability of blind Americans to know what they owe, some bills get sent to debt collections.
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