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The proposal being weighed by federal officials would allow employers and insurers to decide that drug companies鈥 assistance doesn鈥檛 count toward their members鈥 deductible or out-of-pocket maximum spending limits. If plans opted for that approach, only payments made by patients themselves would be included in the calculation toward reaching those limits.
Big data plays a critical role in the success of current public health efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus. Privacy advocates, though, are watching closely.
Martha Phillips traveled to Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic in 2014 to serve as a nurse. Now, she’s working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, advising her colleagues on how to stay safe.
New York City and hospital officials recommend testing only the sickest people and encouraging others to stay home to get well. But other officials say wider tests are needed to ensure that essential workers don鈥檛 spread the disease.
As wardens across the country grapple with COVID-19 outbreaks, inmates are being released to prevent widespread contagion in overcrowded prisons.
Twins Edna Mayes and Ethel Sylvester, 92, are relying on each other through the pandemic, in which one of the hidden dangers is to their mental health.
Nurse Divina 鈥淒ebbie鈥 Accad had cared for veterans for over 25 years and was set to retire in April. But after contracting the novel coronavirus, she spent her final 11 days on a ventilator 鈥 and didn鈥檛 survive past March.
Daisy Doronila had a different perspective than most who worked at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, a New Jersey lockup 11 miles from Manhattan. It was a place where the veteran nurse could put her Catholic faith into action, showing kindness to marginalized people.
The military is called to action to battle the pandemic, even as the numbers of people infected among its ranks and veterans climb amid a shortage of doctors and nurses.
Nurse Vianna Thompson, 52, spent two night shifts caring for a fellow Veterans Affairs health care worker who was dying from COVID-19. Two weeks later, she too was lying in a hospital intensive care unit, with a co-worker holding her hand as she died.
As efforts ramp up to collect blood plasma from the first survivors of COVID-19, families of critically ill patients are jockeying to obtain the still-unproven antibody treatment.
Dr. J. Ronald Verrier, a surgeon at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, spent the final weeks of his audacious, unfinished life tending to a torrent of patients inflicted with COVID-19. He died April 8 at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in Oceanside, New York, at age 59, after falling ill from the novel coronavirus.
Jeff Baumbach, 57, was a seasoned nurse of 28 years when the novel coronavirus began to circulate in California. He鈥檇 worked in the ER, the ICU and on a cardiac floor. Hepatitis and tuberculosis had been around over the years but never posed a major concern.
Infection-report forms rarely indicate who is a health worker or whether they survived. States and hospitals tend to keep quiet, citing patient privacy.
“I know we will succeed somewhat and we will fail somewhat,” says one of the plan’s chief architects. “We won’t be able to find every single person 鈥 but we will hopefully prevent a lot of deaths.”
For older adults in retirement communities 鈥 a population especially vulnerable to COVID-19 鈥 striking a balance between reducing the risk of contracting the coronavirus and maintaining the quality of life is a new frontier.
Across the U.S., pediatric practices that provide front-line care for the nation鈥檚 children are struggling to adjust to crashing revenues, terrified parents and a shortage of protective equipment 鈥 and all while being asked to care for young patients who could well be vectors for transmission without showing symptoms.
KHN’s Julie Rovner answers viewers’ questions on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” about how the pandemic is affecting health policy as well as patients and their insurance.
Capitol Hill鈥檚 guarantee does not pertain to many 鈥渆ssential鈥 workers.
How can we know when to reopen society without testing many more people?
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