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Although covid vaccines have been available to children as young as 5 for more than a month, they’re not being offered in some rural Montana counties, and parents don’t know where to find them in others.
Patients with other ailments are frustrated, and nurses and doctors are stressed and burned out, as unvaccinated covid-19 patients fill ICU and acute care beds.
Montana nonprofit hospitals receive millions of dollars in tax exemptions as charities each year in exchange for giving back to their communities. A KHN review found that some of Montana’s richest medical centers are falling behind most state and national hospitals.
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.
National paid sick leave provisions for covid expired, and an uncertain covid winter is around the corner. Colorado, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are among the places trying to fill the gap, but many employees still face financial pressure to go to work while sick.
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 kids back in school, business is picking back up for professional nitpickers. But how are kids getting head lice if they’re physically distancing in the classroom?
Health officials hope the rollout of covid shots for young children and other initiatives will boost routine vaccine rates that dropped during the pandemic and narrow socioeconomic disparities.
More than 1,000 independent rural pharmacies have closed since 2003, leaving 630 communities with no retail drugstore. As 41 million people stuck in pharmacy deserts make do, the remaining drugstores struggle to survive.
Theater companies and musical ensembles are restarting live performances after a crippling pandemic pause. In some conservative states, artists find creative ways to get around state laws that go against public health recommendations.
Vehicle emissions, oil and gas drilling and climate change have combined to create more days with unhealthy levels of the colorless, odorless gas from Denver to Phoenix.
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.
A former Montana health department leader said Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration killed a public service campaign planned for last summer that promoted covid vaccines for teens. Health organizations want to fill the void with information on vaccines for children 5 and up.
“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.
Local health officials who quit or were forced out during the pandemic have been replaced by people who must face an increasingly polarized public with fewer powers than their predecessors.
The Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes are working with academics and policy experts on possible solutions. Their challenge is how to attract the needed mental health personnel to the remote reservation.
The availability of covid testing and turnaround times for results still vary widely around the country, some 19 months since the pandemic was declared a national crisis. A jumbled testing system, technician burnout and squirrely spikes in demand are all part of the problem.
Hundreds of towns, cities and states across the U.S. have ignored part of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and now it’s costing them billions of dollars to comply.
At issue is whether transplant patients who refuse the shots are not only putting themselves at greater risk for serious illness and death from covid-19, but also squandering scarce organs that could benefit others.
The American Rescue Plan Act, passed by Congress in March, provides $130 billion to cities, counties and tribes — with few restrictions on how the money can be spent.
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