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School nurses treat children daily for a wide range of illnesses and injuries, and sometimes serve as a young patient’s only health provider. They also function as a point person for critical public health interventions. Yet many states don’t require them, and school districts struggle to hire them.
Ballad Health, the only hospital system across a large swath of Tennessee and Virginia, has fallen short of quality-of-care and charity care obligations — even as it’s sued thousands of patients for unpaid bills.
“People want covid-19 to be in the rearview mirror,” one nursing home official says. Faced with a slow rollout of the updated covid vaccines, and without state mandates for workers to get vaccinated, most skilled nursing facilities are relying on persuasion to boost vaccination rates among staff and residents.
Both sides, still at loggerheads over pay and staffing, agreed to keep bargaining after unions announced a possible strike Oct. 4-7. If no deal is reached, a walkout by about 75,000 KP workers in five states could disrupt care.
The proposal would require major hiring at the most sparsely staffed homes. But the proposal is already badly received by the nursing home industry, which claims it can’t boost wages enough to attract workers.
Chagas disease, caused by a parasite, affects people primarily in rural Latin America. But an estimated 300,000 residents of the U.S. have the disease, which can cause serious heart problems. Patient advocates call for much more aggressive efforts to fight it.
Last month, Florida joined a growing number of states in banning sales taxes on diapers to make them more affordable for older adults and families with young children. Though diapers are essential for many, they are not covered by food stamps. Nor are incontinence products for older adults typically covered by Medicare. The cost can easily add up on a fixed income.
Kristie Fields, a cancer patient in Virginia, was urged to go public to seek financial help. She worried about feeding hurtful stereotypes.
A quality-control crisis at an Indian pharmaceutical factory has left doctors and their patients with impossible choices as cheap, effective, generic cancer drugs go out of stock.
In what’s known as the Medicaid “unwinding,” states are combing through rolls to decide who stays and who goes. But the overwhelming majority of people who have lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.
After local leaders in rural Nevada reached an impasse over a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic, an anti-abortion activist pitching local abortion bans across the U.S. arrived at their remote City Hall.
The median life expectancy for a U.S. baby born with Down syndrome jumped from about four years in 1950 to 58 years in the 2010s. That’s largely because they no longer can be denied lifesaving care, including surgeries for heart defects. But now, aging adults with Down syndrome face a health system unprepared to care for them.
A state lawmaker wants all incoming college students to get an HPV vaccine, as part of a push to drive up vaccination rates and prevent cervical cancer. At least four other states have enacted a similar mandate.
Since 2005, central Appalachia has recorded a tenfold increase in cases of severe black lung disease among long-term coal miners. Now, federal regulators are expected to propose a new rule to protect against silica dust, which causes the most severe form of black lung, progressive massive fibrosis.
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.
The United States is suffering from a severe shortage of affordable housing. But elected officials have done little to fix a problem that puts many Americans at greater risk for sickness and shortens lives.
New U.S. Census Bureau data shows a large segment of Californians are working from home for part or all of the week. Researchers say the shift will ripple through the broader economy in ways big and small.
Private equity firms have shelled out almost $1 trillion to acquire nearly 8,000 health care businesses, in deals almost always hidden from federal regulators. The result: higher prices, lawsuits, and complaints about care.
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.
On top of fearing for their children’s lives, new parents of very fragile, very sick infants can face exorbitant hospital bills — even if they have insurance. Medical bills don’t go away if a child dies.
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