A push is underway to create a National Patient Safety Board modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates plane crashes and other transportation disasters. But unlike the NTSB, some patient safety advocates say, the current proposal is toothless and wouldn’t provide transparency about the nation’s hospitals.
California officials are stepping up efforts to combat the spread of xylazine, a powerful animal sedative that’s increasingly being used by people, often with devastating results. It’s mostly been an East Coast phenomenon, but ‘tranq,’ as it is known, is beginning to appear in the Golden State.
As the leading cause of death for teens, firearm injuries are detrimental to more than just physical health. It takes a major toll on young people’s mental health.
Negotiation techniques can help health care providers and family caregivers find common ground with older adults who resist advice or support.
A bipartisan deal to raise the government’s borrowing limit dashed Republican hopes for new Medicaid work requirements and other health spending cuts. Democrats secured the compromise by making relatively modest concessions, including ordering the return of unspent covid funds and limiting other health spending.
When KFF Health News’ “What the Health?” podcast launched in 2017, Republicans in Washington were engaged in an (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The next six years would see a pandemic, increasingly unaffordable care, and a health care workforce experiencing unprecedented burnout. In the podcast’s 300th episode, host and chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner explores the past and possible future of the U.S. health care system with three prominent “big thinkers” in health policy: Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania, Jeff Goldsmith of Health Futures, and Farzad Mostashari of Aledade.
Montana, Alaska, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are among the latest states moving to provide health coverage for up to a year after pregnancy through the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
In what’s known as the Medicaid “unwinding,” states are combing through rolls to decide who stays and who goes. But the overwhelming majority of people who have lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.
The federal government’s arcane process for medical coding is influencing which reconstructive surgery options are available, creating anxiety for breast cancer patients.
KFF Health News has learned that a coalition of doctors, hospitals, insurers, and community clinics want to lock in a tax on health insurance companies to draw in extra Medicaid funding. It also wants to make the tax permanent.
