Category: Hospitals

Pandemic Leads Doctors to Rethink Unnecessary Treatment

Covid-caused delays in medical treatments and surgeries are producing data for health care providers to take another look at what’s needed and what isn’t.

Is Your Living Room the Future of Hospital Care?

In the latest sign that in-home acute care is catching on, two big players — Kaiser Permanente and the Mayo Clinic — announced plans to collectively invest $100 million into the company Medically Home to help scale up their programs.

The Making of Reluctant Activists: A Police Shooting in a Hospital Forces One Family to Rethink American Justice

In 2015, Houston police officers stepped into Alan Pean’s hospital room, closed the door and shot him through the chest. Nearly six years later, his survival has brought the Pean family a wrenching legacy and conflicted sense of purpose.

Telemedicine Is a Tool — Not a Replacement for Your Doctor’s Touch

The pandemic has demonstrated that virtual medicine is great for simple visits. But many new types of telemedicine promoted by start-ups more clearly benefit providers’ and investors’ pockets, rather than yielding more convenient, high-quality and cost-effective medicine for patients.

Covid ‘Doesn’t Discriminate by Age’: Serious Cases on the Rise in Younger Adults

With older adults vaccinated, doctors say a growing share of their covid patients are in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, as more contagious variants circulate among people who remain unvaccinated.

What a Difference a Year Makes in Colorado’s Case for a Public Option Plan

Before the pandemic, Colorado was building momentum to pass what’s known as a “public option” health plan that would lower insurance premiums and force hospitals to accept lower payments. But now with hospitals and health care providers enjoying support as front-line heroes in the pandemic, state legislators have stripped the option from their bill.

Pandemic Imperiled Non-English Speakers More Than Others

Covid patients who did not speak English well were 35% more likely to die, data from one Boston hospital shows.

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Picking Up the Pace of Undoing Trump Policies

The Biden administration has started to speed efforts to reverse health policies forged under Donald Trump. Most recently, the administration overturned a ban on fetal tissue research and canceled a last-minute extension of a Medicaid waiver for Texas. That latter move may delay the Senate confirmation of President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Medicare and Medicaid programs, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) seeks to fight back. Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Rachel Cohrs of Stat and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.

UVA Health Will Wipe Out Tens of Thousands of Lawsuits Against Patients

The Virginia hospital giant had already stopped suing patients with less than $107,000 in household income.

A Year Into Pandemic, Federal Officials Design New Mask Guidelines to Better Protect More Workers

Changes would allow N95 sales for industries other than healthcare and signal an end to the hospital practice of reusing the masks considered essential for worker safety.