A study of roughly 2,700 shootings in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia found that racial disparities in gun injuries and deaths widened during the covid-19 pandemic. Researchers looked only at assaults, excluding accidents or incidents of self-harm.
Carolina Reyes, a physician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, says providers and health systems have a role in tackling systemic racism. She’s also married to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
A recent Gallup Poll suggests that Americans are putting off medical care because of costs. Inflation and rising rents make it harder for people to make ends meet.
Doctors have no national standards on when to order urine tests to check whether adult ADHD patients are properly taking their prescription stimulants. Some patients are subjected to much more frequent testing than others.
Fresh produce prescription programs are getting a boost in Montana as a way of helping people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. The approach may be a model for other rural states to promote healthy eating in food deserts.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is making a bold push for Medicaid health plans to provide more housing support. He argues it’s cheaper to pay for rent than to allow homeless people to fall into crisis, which requires costly care in hospitals, nursing homes, and jails.
American women are more likely to deliver their babies prematurely than women in most developed countries. It’s a distinction that coincides with high rates of maternal and infant death, billions of dollars in costs, and even lifelong disabilities for the children who survive.
The federal government wants to change the way health insurers use prior authorization — the requirement that patients get permission before undergoing treatment. Designed to prevent doctors from deploying expensive, ineffectual procedures, prior authorization has morphed into an unwieldy monster that denies or delays care, burdens physicians with paperwork, and perpetuates racial disparities. New federal rules may not be enough to tame it.
Many Black patients also try to be informed and minimize questions to put providers at ease. “The system looks at us differently,” says the founder of the African American Wellness Project.
More than 600,000 people are released from prisons every year, many with costly health conditions but no medications, medical records, a health care provider, or insurance.
