Latest KFF Health News Stories
Wellness Apps And Websites Go For New Clients: Insurance Companies
Cigna’s partnership with MyFitnessPal is part of a trend, as insurers pair up with online weight-loss and wellness platforms to try to encourage healthy behavior.
Letters To The Editor: Nurse Practitioners In Primary Care; The Future Of Bare-Bones Health Plans
Letters to the Editor is a periodic KHN feature in which readers can comment on our recent stories.
Prevention For Profit: Questions Raised About Some Health Screenings
Tests offered by for-profit companies are mostly non-invasive and fairly affordable. But some of them are not recommended by national organizations because they can lead to further testing that does more harm than good.
Zients Vows Healthcare.gov Will Work Smoothly By End Of November
A subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, which built the federal data hub, will oversee the fixes.
Health Law Brings Changes In How Therapists Do Business
Mom-and-Pop shops give way to large group practices that often accept discounted rates from insurers.
Oregon Experiment Puts Therapists On Primary Care Teams
Medicaid patients can see different kinds of doctors in one visit, and the hope is it will provide better patient care, eventually at less cost to the state.
Texas Doctors, Hospitals Don’t Know If They’re In Or Out Of Obamacare Plans
Many physicians and hospitals have been unable to determine which health plans offered in the health law’s insurance marketplace include them in their provider networks.
Finally Home, Traumatically Injured Vets Face New Lives As VA Faces Costs
No one can tally the full cost of caring for veterans with life-lasting wounds, but the financial price — immeasurable compared to the emotional toll on vets and their families — will increase as they age.
Pay For Hospital CEOs Linked More To Technology, Patient Satisfaction Than Quality, Study Finds
Harvard researchers find no difference in CEO compensation between hospitals that rate well in providing good care and those that do poorly.
Looking For D.C.’s Best Hospitals? Here’s A Little Advice
A cottage industry of nonprofits and companies offer grades and rankings of hospitals. But they often measure different things.
Costliest 1 Percent Of Patients Account For 21 Percent Of U.S. Health Spending
Most of these patients have multiple chronic illnesses and all too often they wind up in emergency rooms because they have enormous difficulty navigating the increasingly fragmented, complicated and inflexible health-care system.
Experts Suggest Software Problems, Not Just Demand, May Be Behind Marketplace Glitches
Insurance companies confirm a small number of successful signups through the federal website.
Houston Embraces Obamacare Outreach, Despite Cruz and Perry
A coalition of the city’s health department, county clinics and groups like the Urban League and Enroll America is trying to get the word out to Houston’s 800,000 uninsured residents about the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces, which will open Oct. 1.
After The Floods, Colorado Hospital Braces For Winter
Estes Park Medical Center escaped the flood damage that hit most of the area. But two roads leading to the town known as the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park are impassable. One snowstorm could close the remaining road and ground helicopters, leaving the hospital and its patients stranded.
Many Cancer Patients Overtreated In Final Days
Care is particularly aggressive in the Philadelphia area, according to a Dartmouth Atlas study.
States Balk At Terminating Medicaid Contracts Even When There’s Fraud Or Poor Patient Care
Officials won’t use “nuclear option” for fear of disrupting services to patients.
The Overlooked Obamacare Sales Force: Hospitals
Nobody has a bigger financial stake in the success of Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges than hospitals. And few may work harder to sign up consumers than hospitals themselves.
A Road To Health? Rural Alaska Town Argues For Access
A road in King Cove, Alaska would give 1,000 residents better access to emergency health care, but it would slice through a wildlife refuge. The decision rests with new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who toured the town in late August.
Rural Hospitals in Texas Wary of Proposed Medicare Cuts
A federal proposal to reduce the number of hospitals that carry the ‘critical access’ designation could cost 60 Texas hospitals that status, along with their enhanced Medicare reimbursements, potentially jeopardizing their survival.
Nurse Practitioner’s Life Story Prepares Him To Work With Homeless
As a primary care clinician at a health care clinic in northeast D.C., Douglas Reed’s life growing up in the neighborhood near the clinic prepared him to care for the residents there — and the special needs they have.
