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As hospitals across the country are forced to delay or cancel certain medical procedures in response to the surge in patients with COVID-19, those hard choices are disrupting care for some people with serious illnesses.
Many health officials around the nation have not released data on the ethnic and racial demographics of people tested for the new coronavirus. But public health experts said the anecdotes are adding up, and they fear the response to the pandemic will result in predictable health care disparities.
Wisconsin hospitals had filed at least 104 lawsuits in small claims court since the state declared a public health emergency March 12. Most now say they are suspending the cases; one hospital has dismissed them after a reporter’s calls.
In Philadelphia, New Orleans and Los Angeles, former safety-net hospitals sit empty in the middle of the city. But reopening a closed hospital, even in the midst of a pandemic when health resources are scarce, is not easy or cheap.
Revenue is way down for primary care, specialty physicians and some hospitals as patients avoid non-urgent visits. Practices small and large are doling out layoffs and furloughs to staff.
People in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction have to weather a new storm of depression, anxiety and isolation during the pandemic, just as the social supports of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs move online.Â
To weather uncertain times, it's important to acknowledge and grieve losses — even if they seem small in the scheme of the global pandemic, psychologists and grief experts say.
Many of the nation’s safety-net clinics for low-income patients are having to turn their model of care upside down overnight to deal with the realities of the pandemic — a challenge both financially and logistically. Federal funding is on the way.
Six states — Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas —  have taken steps to limit inappropriate prescriptions for the medicine and preserve supplies for patients who take it for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
As illness from the new coronavirus stresses the health care system, nurses said they are being forced to make do with less and learning to be good stewards of available equipment and protective gear.
There is currently no central coordination of the supply of protective garb and masks in U.S. hospital inventories. A CDC project wants hospitals to share that information for the good of all.
Sarah and Andy fell in love while working to keep drug users from overdosing. But when his own addiction reemerged, Andy's fear of returning to prison kept him from the best treatment.
When patients need long-term treatment with intravenous antibiotics, hospitals usually let them manage their treatment at home — but not if they have a history of injection drug use. A Boston program wants to change that.
Until very recently, the separate company that runs the emergency department at Nashville General Hospital in Tennessee was continuing to haul patients who couldn't pay medical bills into court.
As climate change bears down, a haphazard web of weather safeguards is a particular blow to the disabled. In Oklahoma, no state laws require homeowners or landlords to install storm shelters. If a community wants to open a storm shelter for the public, that's up to local officials, But there's no database that Oklahomans can consult showing where public or wheelchair-accessible shelters are located.
When the first confirmed U.S. patient was pinpointed in Washington state, health clinic workers there weren't rattled. They were prepped by new statewide protocols on contagion containment, in the wake of last year's measles scare.
Years ago, doctors sometimes lied about whose sperm they used for artificial inseminations. Could it happen now? Some argue regulation is weak in the multibillion-dollar fertility treatment industry.
Fewer Americans are dying in a hospital, under the close supervision of doctors and nurses. That trend has been boosted by an expanded Medicare benefit that helps people live out their final days at home in hospice care. But as home hospice grows, so has the burden on families left to provide much of the care.
U-Haul will not hire nicotine users in 21 states where it is legal to do so. Ethicists say such policies disproportionately affect the poor and are a sign of employers becoming overly involved in workers' lifestyle choices.
For rural physicians, the burden of responding to the opioid epidemic falls squarely on their already loaded shoulders. For one doctor in a small Wisconsin village, there was no question that she wanted to rise to the challenge.
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