Major Insurers Running Billions of Dollars Behind on Payments to Hospitals and Doctors
Patients are caught in the middle as insurers clamp down on paying for treatments or force prior authorizations for care.
Hospitals
481 - 500 of 1,119 Results
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Student Nurses Who Refuse Vaccination Struggle to Complete Degrees
The Biden administration is requiring workers at health care facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid payments to be vaccinated. For the minority of nursing students who have refused a shot, the new policy could mean they can’t get the training they need in a hospital or other health care venue.
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A Colorado Town Is About as Vaccinated as It Can Get. Covid Still Isn’t Over There.
San Juan County, Colorado, is one of the most vaccinated counties in the U.S. Leaders across the country continue to expound on the vaccine as the path forward in the pandemic. But San Juan’s experience the past few weeks with its first covid hospitalizations shows that, even with an extremely vaccinated population, masks are still necessary.
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Readers and Tweeters Feel Americans’ Pain
KHN gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
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Hospitals Confront Climate Change as Patients Sick From Floods and Fires Crowd ERs
Patients sickened in heat waves, flooding and wildfire have raised awareness of climate change’s impact on health. Now, some hospitals are building solar panels and cutting waste to reduce their own carbon footprints, with support from a new office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But the industry is moving slowly.
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The Part of the ‘Free Britney’ Saga That Could Happen to Anyone
Britney Spears was forced into psychiatric care — and compelled to pay for it. That can happen to any patient who has an episode of serious mental illness, piling financial woes onto their stress and vulnerability.
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At an Overrun ICU, ‘the Problem Is We Are Running Out of Hallways’
Billings Clinic in Montana is past the tipping point as it looks for places to add intensive care unit beds and is on the cusp of rationing care to deal with the surge of sick covid patients in a state with significant anti-vaccination sentiment.
By Nick Ehli -
‘An Arm and a Leg’: They Turned Grief Into Action
This episode highlights how New York enacted a charity care law, one of the precursors to the federal provision on charity care in the Affordable Care Act.
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Covid-Overwhelmed Hospitals Postpone Cancer Care and Other Treatment
Patients with advanced cancer and heart disease are among those who have had to have surgeries and other treatments delayed and rescheduled as a high number of critically ill, unvaccinated covid patients strain the medical system.
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ICUs Are Filled With Covid — And Regret
Unvaccinated people are filling intensive care beds and dying of covid in record numbers in Tennessee and other Southern states. Many tell their nurses and doctors they regret the decision not to get the vaccine when they could.
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Under Pressure, Montana Hospital Considers Adding Psych Beds Amid a Shortage
A hospital in Bozeman, Montana, is considering whether to add inpatient psychiatric care after a concerted push from mental health advocates. But even if it adds beds, hospitals across Montana provide a cautionary tale: finding enough workers to staff such beds is its own challenge, and some behavioral health units routinely reach capacity.
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ECMO Life Support Is a Last Resort for Covid, and in Short Supply in South
Many more people could benefit from the lifesaving treatment than are receiving it, which has made for messy triaging as the delta variant surges across the South and in rural communities with low covid vaccination rates.
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Lack of a Vaccine Mandate Becomes Competitive Advantage in Hospital Staffing Wars
After months of burnout from the pandemic, hospitals are scrambling to fill nursing and other jobs. Some administrators, particularly in rural areas, are afraid to implement vaccine mandates that alienate their short-handed staffs.
By Lauren Weber -
Delta Cutting ‘Like a Buzzsaw’ Through Oregon-California Border Counties
Zoom in on states with overall good vaccination rates and you see a checkerboard effect, with rural areas far lagging urban zones. That’s allowed the pandemic to rage in places like Jackson County, Oregon, overwhelming hospitals.
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Jaw Surgery Takes a $27,119 Bite out of One Man’s Budget
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.
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KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Vaccine Approval Moves the Needle on Covid
The FDA’s formal approval of the first vaccine to prevent covid-19 may or may not prompt doubters to go out and get shots, but it has clearly prompted employers to make vaccination a work requirement. Meanwhile, moderates and liberals in the U.S. House put aside their differences long enough to keep a giant social-spending bill on track, at least for now. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Tami Luhby of CNN and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.
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Mission and Money Clash in Nonprofit Hospitals’ Venture Capital Ambitions
Nonprofit hospitals of all sizes have been trying their luck as venture capitalists, saying their investments improve care through the creation of new medical devices, health software and other innovations. But the gamble at times has been harder to pull off than expected.
By Jordan Rau -
‘An Arm and a Leg’: Meet the Mississippi Lawyer Who Helped Start the Fight for Charity Care
The man famous for taking on Big Tobacco in the '90s, and winning, launched a series of ill-fated national lawsuits against nonprofit hospitals. This episode is the first in a series looking at the origins of charity care.
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‘Tainted’ Blood: Covid Skeptics Request Blood Transfusions From Unvaccinated Donors
In another twist on covid vaccine hesitancy, blood centers say they are starting to hear from transfusion patients demanding blood from unvaccinated donors. Experts say the option is neither practical nor medically justifiable.
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A Quarter of US Hospitals, and Counting, Demand Workers Get Vaccinated. But Not Here.
Amid a surge in covid-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant, nearly 1,500 health systems across the nation are requiring their employees to get vaccinated. In Montana and Oregon, that’s not an option.