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Many Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities do not have long-term plans for when family members can no longer care for them. Families, researchers, and advocates worry that has set the stage for a crisis in which people with disabilities could end up living in institutional settings.
Even some medical experts who are skeptical of gender-affirming care say the White House is not promoting breast removal and genital surgery for teens. But that’s not what an ad, funded by a group led by a former adviser to President Donald Trump, would have you believe.
The nation’s largest private health system, HCA Healthcare, has faced years of scrutiny over its share of emergency room patients who are admitted to the hospital. And now U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from New Jersey, is calling for a federal investigation, prompting an escalating defense by the hospital system, based in Nashville, Tennessee.
Despite the end of Jim Crow segregation, its legacy lives on in medical debt that disproportionately burdens Black communities.
The cheaper over-the-counter aids are for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss — a market of tens of millions of people, many of whom have until now been priced out because prescription devices can cost thousands of dollars.
After a unanimous ruling from the high court, doctors who are accused of writing irresponsible prescriptions can go to trial with a new defense: It wasn’t on purpose.
Coming out of the pandemic, many rural hospitals are in even rougher shape than before. So rough that some are now practically being handed to investors for little more than a pledge to keep them open.
The community of Bristol straddles the border between two states with very different abortion laws. Tennessee prohibits most abortions at about six weeks and will soon ban them nearly outright. Virginia allows them at least through the second trimester. To maintain abortion access in the area, staff at a clinic on the Tennessee side of the state line are helping open a clinic about a mile down the road on the Virginia side.
Music festival promoters are allowing distribution of overdose reversal medication as fentanyl deaths continue to surge. But nonprofits and volunteers are often left to do the work, and more controversial forms of harm reduction aren’t openly allowed.
Tennessee expects to soon disenroll about 300,000 people from its Medicaid program. But families like the Lesters have suffered when bureaucracy and clerical mistakes caused them to unfairly lose coverage under the same program.
More than two years into the pandemic, parents face a child care crisis. That’s why some hospitals are considering starting child care centers to address recruitment and retention troubles.
A network of organizations help women use medication to end early pregnancies safely. But it’s a legal gray area in Tennessee and other states that restrict abortion.
By undoing that landmark decision, the law of the land since 1973, the court has empowered states to set their own abortion restrictions — so where people live will determine their level of access.
The landmark Roe v. Wade decision could soon be overturned. Two Knoxville-based providers of reproductive health care wonder how — and if — they will continue to serve their patients.
Most of the dozen states that haven’t fully expanded eligibility for Medicaid have extended or plan to extend the postpartum coverage window for new mothers. That could mean improved maternal health, but it’s only part of the puzzle when it comes to reducing the number of preventable maternal deaths in the U.S.
People talk about the sacrifices they made when health care forced them into debt.
For many women, abortion access has also meant better economic opportunities. But that could change in states that plan to ban most abortion access if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. And those constraints could have a big impact on Black women. In Tennessee, Black women have abortions at more than four times the rate of white women.
Meigs County in Tennessee reported one of the highest covid-19 vaccination rates in the South for much of the past year. But those reports were wrong because of a data error that has surfaced in other states, such as West Virginia and Montana, as well.
Hundreds of nurses gathered outside a Nashville courthouse to protest RaDonda Vaught’s prosecution for a medical mistake, and cheered when her probation sentence was announced.
Georgia may soon join a growing list of states decriminalizing the use of fentanyl testing strips. Bans of the strips — on the books in about half of states, experts say — stem from laws criminalizing drug paraphernalia adopted decades ago. But the testing devices are now recommended to help prevent overdose deaths.
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