Journalists Explore Health Care Disparities and Policy Pitfalls
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
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KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Physician assistants are pushing to be renamed “physician associates,” complaining their title is belittling and doesn’t convey what they do. “We don’t assist,” they insist. Doctors’ groups fear there’s more than just a name in play.
Hospitals in Montana and Idaho reported threats and harassment from public officials and family members of patients who were denied treatment with a drug not authorized to treat covid-19.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
With few options for health care in their rural community, a Tennessee couple’s experience with one outrageous bill could have led to a deadly decision the next time they needed help.
Congress last year shielded consumers from unexpected out-of-network charges, but hospitals and doctors have decried the arbitration plan put forward by the Biden administration for negotiating these bills as favoring insurers. More than 150 members of the House agree.
As hospital systems and insurers adjust to the pandemic, their contract negotiations grow increasingly fraught. Contracts for in-network care are ending without a new deal, leaving patients suddenly with out-of-network bills or scrambling to find new in-network providers.
KHN gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Many small hospitals have shuttered their labor and delivery units as births decline. For those who resist the trend, some studies suggest that hospitals with low deliveries are more likely to see complications for patients. Doctors and public health experts say there is no magic number to determine when it is best to close an obstetrics unit.
Hospitals and doctors are facing more demands for ivermectin as a covid-19 treatment, despite a lack of proof it works. In some Republican-dominated states, pushing for ivermectin interventions has become a conservative rallying cry.
In light of the pandemic’s shocking death toll among seniors, organizations are trying new strategies to help older Americans get better care.
More than 9 in 10 general acute-care hospitals have been penalized at least once in the past decade.
The latest iteration of President Joe Biden's social-spending package would close the health insurance gap for at least 2.2 million people, making a huge difference especially in the South, where political opposition has blocked Medicaid expansion.
About 21% of patients diagnosed with covid during a hospital stay died, according to data analyzed for KHN. In-hospital rates of spread varied widely and patients had no way of checking them.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Certain patients who couldn't get in to see a doctor earlier in the pandemic, or were avoiding the covid risks inside hospitals, have become too sick to stay away. Many ERs now struggle to cope with an onslaught of demand.
The federal government’s hospital penalty program finishes its first decade by lowering payments to nearly half the nation’s hospitals for readmitting too many Medicare patients within a month. Penalties, though often small, are credited with helping reduce the number of patients returning for another Medicare stay within 30 days.
“Obstetrical emergency departments” are a new feature in some hospitals that can inflate medical bills for even the easiest, healthiest births. Just ask the parents of Baby Gus.
The pandemic has so seriously strained already tight state psychiatric hospitals in Georgia, Virginia, Texas and elsewhere that these facilities for the poorest and most vulnerable people with mental illness struggle to admit new patients.
The state’s unique health system controls what hospitals can charge for services.
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