The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
More than 93,000 COVID patients are hospitalized across the country. But beds and space aren’t the main concern for hospital administrators — It’s the health care workforce.
Widespread COVID testing has revealed uncomfortable truths about medical tests: A test result is rarely a definitive answer, but instead a single clue. A result may be falsely positive or negative, or it may show an abnormality that doesn’t matter. And as COVID testing has made too clear, even an accurate, meaningful result is useless unless it’s acted on appropriately.
Black Americans are less likely to receive mental health treatment than the overall population. But as needs soar this year, faith leaders are tapping health professionals to share coping skills churchgoers and the community can use immediately.
State and local public health officials are sure that bars and restaurants are spreading COVID. But they don’t always have much concrete evidence to support their convictions.
Four workers died at a facility with one of the largest U.S. outbreaks, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration never conducted an inspection. It’s a pattern that’s played out across the nation, a KHN investigation finds.
Tests for the coronavirus are supposed to be free. And, usually, they are. But sometimes … things happen. Here’s how to avoid getting a surprise bill for a test.
Across the nation, primary care practices that were already struggling are closing, victims of the pandemic’s financial fallout. And this is reducing access to health care, especially in rural and other regions already short on doctors.
A Trump administration maneuver allows executives who are leading the federal effort to keep investments in drug companies that would benefit from the pandemic response.
It was a surprise even in a family of lawyers. The process called “subrogation” began with one Nevada family’s health insurer denying their claim for an emergency room visit after 9-year-old fell off his bike.
COVID-19 cases are surging across the U.S., and most workplaces are still open for business. As workers fear catching the disease while on the clock, why aren’t more companies footing the bill for testing employees?
Small-business owners struggling to remain afloat are increasingly defying new shutdown orders, in some cases pointing to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry dinner as a reason not to comply.
Critically ill rural patients are often sent to city hospitals for high-level treatment, and as their numbers grow, some urban hospitals are buckling under the added strain. Meanwhile, mask-wearing and other pandemic prevention measures remain spotty in rural counties.
COVID-19’s toll weighs heavily on nurses, who can suffer stress and other psychological problems if they don’t believe they are able to help their patients sufficiently.
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.
It’s a complex program with many options — as well as confusing rules and nuances. Here’s how to get reliable guidance.
A shortage of nurses has turned hospital staffing into a sort of national bidding war, with hospitals willing to pay exorbitant wages to secure the nurses they need. That threatens to shift the supply of nurses toward more affluent areas.
The law will ban the manufacture and sale in California of personal care products that contain 24 toxics, including asbestos, formaldehyde and lead, and is expected to fill a gap in federal regulation as companies sell the new formulations nationwide.
Referrals of children to urgent care clinics or emergency rooms have become so prevalent that the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with interim guidance on how practices can safely continue to see patients. The academy recommended that pediatricians strive “to provide care for the same variety of visits that they provided prior to the public health emergency.”
Some consumers who received tax credits to purchase insurance from Affordable Care Act marketplaces report they’ve received letters in error from the government saying they didn’t file the IRS forms to account for how much money they made and how much funding they received from the government.
Eight months after California Healthline’s Heidi de Marco photographed LA under lockdown, she returned to the same iconic spots. Vehicle and foot traffic are up — as are coronavirus cases.
