Sarah Varney reports on the implementation of the federal health law in the states and the effect of state budget woes on public programs, county governments and vulnerable populations including children and the elderly. Most recently, Sarah was the health reporter for KQED’s statewide news program The California Report.
SHINE Medical Technologies is building a plant in Wisconsin to produce a vital radioactive isotope called molybdenum-99, a vital radioactive isotope used to detect cancer and other potentially fatal maladies in millions of people every year.
John Corlett, president of the Center for Community Solutions, a think tank based in Cleveland, says many voters didn’t take Trump’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act seriously.
When it comes to managing inbound phone calls, underperformance has devastating cost implications.
Medicare currently requires patients to give up life-sustaining therapies in order to receive hospice benefits. That trade-off strikes some black families as unfair.
BURNSVILLE, N. C.—It’s been a bitterly cold winter in the Blue Ridge Mountains for Julia Raye and her 13-year-old son, Charles. But despite the punishing weather, 2015 has been looking good: Raye is finally able to afford insulin and the other medications she needs to keep her diabetes under control. She’s a self-employed auditor who […]
Psychological disorders, including depression, bipolar disorder and trauma-related disorders, are rampant among inmates, and mental illness itself is a risk factor for landing in jail. “We’ve, frankly, criminalized the mentally ill, and used local jails as de facto mental health institutions,” said Alex Briscoe, the health director for Alameda County in northern California. The statistics […]
OAKLAND, Calif. — It’s been two months since Rodrigo Salido left the maximum security wing at Santa Rita jail, and two months without pills for his bipolar disorder. The medication, Risperdal, prescribed by a jailhouse psychiatrist, had quelled Salido’s angry moods. “It helped me be more relaxed,” he said. “Not as much on the edge […]
A new report from Relatient, A Data-Driven Guide to Patient Access Succes, highlights how focusing on data accuracy and relevance can enhance the performance of healthcare practices.
In the corporate world of American health care, with its consolidating hospital chains and doctors’ groups, psychologists and other mental health therapists are still mostly Mom-and-Pop shops; they’ve built solo practices, hanging their own shingles, not unlike Lucy in the Peanuts gang: “Psychiatric Help 5¢, The Doctor Is In.” But that business model is shifting […]
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Luisa Blue, head of the local Service Employees International Union in San Jose, has five more months to spend a million dollars. The union received a grant from Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace and...
HURON, Calif. — Farm labor contractors across California -- the nation's biggest agricultural engine -- are anxiously studying a provision of the Affordable Care Act, which will require hundreds of thousands of field workers to be covered by heal...
JACKSON, Miss. — Uninsured Americans who are hoping the new health insurance law will give them access to weight loss treatments are likely to be disappointed. That’s especially the case in the Deep South where obesity rates are some of the...
Closing cancer health equity gaps require medical breakthroughs made possible by new funding approaches.
When movie stars become unbankable, they’re no longer a slam dunk at the box office. When investments become unbankable, they’re relegated to the junk pile. For ordinary Americans deemed unbankable, those who don’t have a traditional ...
As Congress debates an ambitious and far-reaching effort by the Obama administration to streamline medical care and rein in spending for the nation’s sickest and most expensive patients, Arizona – with its finger-wagging Republican governor and Tea Party enthusiasts – is occupying an unusual place in the national landscape: as a model for how a generously-funded, tightly regulated government program can aid vulnerable, low-income patients.
California health officials describe the clinicas as a parallel health care system, servicing a vast number of uninsured Latino residents, yet the officials say they have little understanding of who owns and operates them, how they are regulated and the quality of the medical care they provide.