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Latest KFF Health News Stories

In Search Of Age-Friendly Health Care, Finding Room For Improvement

KFF Health News Original

Simple alterations — like better signs, seating, parking or door design — can make it easier for older patients to navigate health care facilities. Here are several changes doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals could make.

Vaping By The Numbers

KFF Health News Original

The explosive rise in a serious lung illness linked to vaping spotlights the popularity of e-cigarettes among teens and young adults. Vaping is now so pervasive among young people that federal health officials say its use has fueled a sharp reversal in what had been a celebrated two-decade decline in overall tobacco use by teenagers.

California Hospitals And Nursing Homes Brace For Wildfire Blackouts

KFF Health News Original

Facing billions of dollars in legal claims for the role its equipment has played in a spate of deadly wildfires, California utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric plans to step up efforts to cut power to broad regions of the state during high-risk weather conditions. The potential for prolonged blackouts has prompted disaster preparations by hospitals, nursing homes and home care providers.

Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills

KFF Health News Original

As lobbyists purporting to represent doctors and hospitals fight attempts to control surprise medical bills, it has become increasingly clear that the force behind the effort is not just medical professionals, but also investors from private equity firms.

Hospital Giant Sutter Health Faces Legal Reckoning Over Medical Pricing

KFF Health News Original

A long-awaited class-action lawsuit against Sutter is set to open this month in San Francisco Superior Court. The hospital giant stands accused of violating California’s antitrust laws by leveraging its market power to drive out competition and overcharge patients.

Listen: Health Officials Warn People To Stop Vaping

KFF Health News Original

California Healthline reporter Ana Ibarra appeared Monday on WNYC to discuss the recent outbreak of mysterious lung diseases related to vaping, including 60 possible cases in California.

Millions Of Diabetes Patients Are Missing Out On Medicare’s Nutrition Help

KFF Health News Original

Health experts say the little-used benefit represents a lost opportunity for older adults to improve their health — and for the program to save money by preventing costly complications from diabetes and chronic kidney disease.

‘Crackhouse’ Or ‘Safehouse’? U.S. Officials Try To Block Philly’s Supervised Injection Site

KFF Health News Original

An average of three people a day died of opioid overdose in Philadelphia in 2018. But efforts to combat the crisis with a supervised injection site could be stymied by “the crackhouse statute,” a portion of federal law meant to protect neighborhoods during the crack epidemic of the 1980s.