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Rural hospitals have been closing at a quickening pace in recent years, but a number of inner-city hospitals now face a similar fate. Experts fear that the economic damage inflicted by the COVID pandemic is helping push some of these urban hospitals over the edge at the very time their services are most needed.
Respiratory symptoms stemming from coronavirus infection and smoke inhalation are too similar to distinguish without a full workup. This is complicating the jobs of health care workers as wildfires rage up and down the West Coast.
COVID patients have been commingled with uninfected patients in California, Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, New York and beyond. While officials have penalized nursing homes for such failures, hospitals have seen less scrutiny.
The proposal details a wide-ranging agenda to remedy the gaps in health care and myriad challenges in rural America. In addition to more telehealth options, it includes shifts in hospital payments and expanded funding for school-based mental health programs.
Doctors are diagnosing a new stage of COVID-19 recovery: patients who take much longer than usual to regain consciousness after coming off a ventilator. And a growing number of doctors are worried some patients aren’t being given the time they need to wake up.
Rural hospitals were already struggling before the coronavirus emerged. Now, the loss of revenue from patients who are afraid to come to the emergency room, postponing doctor’s appointments and delaying elective surgeries is adding to the pressure.
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center serves patients who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus: They are essential workers, have chronic diseases and are members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. When the safety-net hospital kicks off enrollment for its COVID-19 vaccine trial Wednesday, it will look to those patients to participate.
The rolling shortages of personal protective gear continue even in hospitals, as buyers look directly for manufacturers — often through a maze of companies that have sprung up overnight.
Poor information-sharing between hospitals and public health agencies has hurt the response to the pandemic. Some health care systems and IT companies are making inroads, but an overhaul would cost billions.
KHN and The Guardian unveil an interactive database documenting front-line health care worker deaths. The majority of them are people of color — and nurses face the highest toll.
“Lost on the Frontline” is an ongoing project by Kaiser Health News and The Guardian that aims to document the lives of health care workers in the U.S. who died from COVID 19, and to investigate why so many are victims of the disease.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought knee and hip replacements to a virtual halt because they aren’t usually considered emergency procedures. But they are profitable, and hospital systems are now counting on the surgeries to help restore their financial health.
President Donald Trump keeps promising a comprehensive plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. And he keeps not delivering. Meanwhile, members of Congress and White House officials seem unable to agree on a new COVID-19 relief bill. And Missouri becomes the sixth state where voters approved a Medicaid expansion ballot measure. Tami Luhby of CNN, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico and Kimberly Leonard of Business Insider join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health stories of the week they think you should read, too.
Virginia Mason Health System and CHI Franciscan announced plans in July to merge 12 hospitals and more than 250 other treatment sites in the Puget Sound region and the Yakima area. Some patient advocacy groups warn the proposal would jeopardize access to needed services, such as emergency termination of pregnancies, contraception and physician aid in dying.
Americans are avoiding hospitals and clinics by the millions, even when they shouldn’t, and many experts expect a jump in preventable disease diagnoses after the COVID crisis eases. Paradoxically, the pandemic may have been good for some heart patients, however.
KHN’s Julie Rovner discusses the Trump administration plans to change how hospitals report their data on coronavirus cases and concerns among critics that may allow officials to use the material to make political points.
Democrats want to bind employers to follow a safety plan, while Republicans seek to shield employers and doctors from lawsuits.
Attorneys say some state workers’ compensation laws leave workers and families struggling for benefits after a COVID illness or death.
Unlike earlier in the year, most hospitals are not proactively canceling elective surgeries, even in some places seeing spikes in coronavirus patients.
In an investigation last year, KHN detailed the rise and fall of Miami businessman Jorge A. Perez’s rural hospital empire, which spanned eight states and encompassed half of the rural hospital bankruptcies in 2019.
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