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If Indiana officials approve a proposed hospital merger in western Indiana in the coming months, the state will have its first hospital monopoly created by a “Certificate of Public Advantage.†Other such deals have resulted in government reports documenting diminished care in Tennessee and North Carolina.
A medical residency program designed to train future primary care physicians in outpatient rather than hospital settings has proved an effective means to bring doctors to rural and underserved areas. But it hinges on unpredictable congressional funding.
President Joe Biden is campaigning for reelection on his efforts to cut costs for Medicare patients at the pharmacy counter. But independent pharmacists say one strategy makes it unaffordable for them to keep some brand-name medicines in stock.
The spread of an avian flu virus in cattle has again brought public health attention to the potential for a global pandemic. Fighting it would depend, for now, on 1940s technology that makes vaccines from hens’ eggs.
Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system in Tennessee and Virginia, benefits from the largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in the United States and is the only option for hospital care for a large swath of Appalachia.
Dairy farmers and veterinarians in northern Texas furiously investigated a mysterious illness among cattle before the government got involved. Their observations are telling.
A new analysis shows that students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.
Florida has served as a haven for Southern pregnant women with little or no access to abortions. But the Florida Supreme Court upheld a six-week abortion restriction that begins in May — so now women across much of the South seeking abortions will have to look farther afield.
Some tax filers’ returns are being rejected because they failed to provide information about Affordable Care Act coverage they didn’t even know they had.
The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing fluoride has some community leaders arguing that its addition to public drinking water is no longer necessary. But public health experts worry that, much like vaccines, fluoridation may be a victim of its own success.
Most of the doctors the FDA tapped to advise it on an Abbott medical device had financial ties to the company. The FDA didn’t disclose the payments.
Insurance agents say it’s too easy to access consumer information on the Affordable Care Act federal marketplace. Policyholders can lose their doctors and access to prescriptions. Some end up owing back taxes.
Disputes between hospitals and Medicare Advantage plans are leading to entire hospital systems suddenly leaving insurance networks. Patients are left stuck in the middle, choosing between their doctors and their insurance plan. There’s a way out.
Ballad Health was granted the nation’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in 2018. Since then, its emergency rooms have become more than three times as slow.
A recently unsealed lawsuit alleges Aledade Inc. developed billing software that boosted revenues by making patients appear sicker than they were.
The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening regulation of ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic gas used to sterilize medical devices. The agency is trying to balance the interests of the health care industry supply chain with those of communities where the gas creates airborne health risks.
While many Republican state lawmakers remain firmly against Medicaid expansion, some key leaders in holdout states are showing a willingness to reconsider. Public opinion, financial incentives, and widening health care needs make resistance harder.
Doctors, patients, and hospitals have railed for years about the prior authorization processes that health insurers use to decide whether they’ll pay for patients’ drugs or medical procedures. The Biden administration announced a crackdown in January, but some state lawmakers are looking to go further.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion and many states banned the procedure, reproductive health care organizations hired dozens of people to help patients arrange travel and pay for care.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans become disabled or die each year because of a diagnostic error. But some patients are at higher risk than others.
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