Category: NPR

The hospital ship, designed to treat war casualties, has left port in San Diego for Los Angeles. Its mission: treating patients who do not have COVID-19 to free up hospital beds.

Despite Trump’s public remarks, infectious disease experts say it’s premature to think hydroxychloroquine will help against COVID-19. But patients with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis rely on the drug.

There was already a shortage of medical personnel in rural America before the coronavirus. Medical staffing firms are now trying to send health workers to underserved small towns.

People with disabilities are asking the federal government to stop what they say are care-rationing plans from states and hospitals, which could possibly deny them treatment for COVID-19.

Ten years ago, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Kaiser Health News reporter Julie Rovner speaks with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about its impact and how COVID-19 may affect it.

“You must increase your capacity by 50%,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo tells hospitals in his state. “You must. Mandatory directive from the state. Find more beds, use more rooms.”

“We don’t want Dallas or New Orleans or Chicago to turn into the next New York,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Monday morning.

About half of U.S. rural hospitals operate in the red on a good day. Now facing a pandemic, hospital CEOs warn that, without federal help, their doors may close when the community most needs them.

The wave of critical patients is expected to arrive first at Seattle-area hospitals, which have spent recent weeks trying to shore up supplies of “staff and stuff.” No one is sure they have enough.

Some state exchanges have begun allowing new enrollment to help ease consumers’ worry about health care costs. It’s also so the uninsured won’t inadvertently spread the coronavirus by avoiding care.