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Seattle’s Northwest Kidney Centers, which pioneered kidney failure treatment 50 years ago, now pairs dying patients with hospice services, without forcing them to forgo the comfort dialysis can provide.
A Seattle patient discovers the hard way that you can still hit a lifetime limit for certain types of care. And health plans can vary a lot from one job to the next, even if the insurer is the same.
Doctors in Washington state used human body bags filled with ice and water to rapidly cool the sickest patients affected by record heat last month.
Congress has poured tens of billions of dollars into public health since last year. While health officials who have juggled bare-bones budgets for years are grateful for the money, they worry it will soon dry up, just as it has after previous crises such as 9/11, SARS and Ebola. Meanwhile, they continue to cope with an exodus from the field amid political pressure and exhaustion that meant 1 in 6 Americans lost their local health department leader.
Peace Arch Park on the U.S.-Canadian border has become a rare place where families and friends on either side of the border can see one another in person. But it raises questions on covid safety as the two countries handle the pandemic differently.
Clinicians at pediatric hospitals are experimenting with “smell training” among children who had covid-19 and have now lost this sense.
Hundreds of Americans suspect they contracted covid early in the pandemic and recovered, only to get infected again months later. But because the U.S. does so little genetic sequencing of covid samples, we don’t know much about reinfection rates.
Harborview Medical Center was at the epicenter of the first wave of coronavirus in the U.S. Staffers have a better understanding of the disease as cases surge, but fatigue and a lack of backup staff are big challenges.
A proposal in Washington state would use right-to-try laws to allow terminally ill patients access to psilocybin — the famed magic mushrooms of America’s psychedelic ’60s — to ease depression and anxiety.
As coronavirus cases surge, state officials can’t afford to wait for a new president to take office before taking action. But some governors’ initiatives seem to be little more than policy tweaks or symbolic gestures.
Thousands of animals in the U.S. have been tested for the coronavirus, as researchers work to understand its transmission and which other species might be at risk. So far, dozens have tested positive, mostly cats and dogs exposed to sick owners.
Parents are turning to spooky scavenger hunts, pumpkin-carving and movie nights as alternatives to trick-or-treating. Health professionals have their own advice on how to safely celebrate Halloween during the pandemic.
A KHN review found more than 20 states either don’t count or have incomplete data on the use of COVID-19 antigen tests, leaving the public in the dark about the true scope of the pandemic.
Gyms are reopening with fewer people and more protocols, and they want to rehabilitate their pandemic-battered image. Although there's not much evidence, they say science is on their side.
Skeptics say the lack of enforceable federal safety standards geared toward the coronavirus allows these employers to prioritize the harvest over worker safety.
Virginia Mason Health System and CHI Franciscan announced plans in July to merge 12 hospitals and more than 250 other treatment sites in the Puget Sound region and the Yakima area. Some patient advocacy groups warn the proposal would jeopardize access to needed services, such as emergency termination of pregnancies, contraception and physician aid in dying.
'Germicidal' ultraviolet light technology has a proven track record against indoor transmission of tuberculosis and other airborne microbes. It's now being used in some restaurants and on subways.
Amid questions about the accuracy of the COVID-19 antibody tests flooding the market — and the usefulness of the results they provide — the FDA has belatedly stepped in to try to rein in the chaos.
The pandemic has forced millions of families to weigh the risks of vulnerable grandparents getting too close to their beloved grandchildren — against the heartache of staying away.
From cafeteria staff to doctors and nurses, hospital workers around the country report frustrating failures by management to notify them when they have been exposed to co-workers or patients known to be infected with COVID-19.
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