Rural Hospitals Are Caught in an Aging-Infrastructure Conundrum
Small, community hospitals face challenges in paying for the capital improvement projects they need to stay open.
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Small, community hospitals face challenges in paying for the capital improvement projects they need to stay open.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services is months behind in paying organizations contracted to connect people to care. The interruption is likely to have lasting effects, even after the state catches up.
Casinos in several states are fighting efforts to ban smoking, and trying to roll back existing anti-smoking laws. One planned facility even moved outside a city’s limits because of voter-approved smoking restrictions.
Abortion restrictions in 18 states have curtailed access to training in skills that doctors say are critical for OB-GYN specialists and others. A new California law makes it easier for out-of-state doctors to get experience in reproductive medicine.
Even in states where laws protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care, malpractice insurance premiums are keeping small and independent clinics from treating patients.
The Biden administration is allowing states to use money from the insurance program for low-income and disabled residents to pay for gun violence prevention. California and six other states have approved such spending, with more expected to follow.
Medicaid officials in Utah conducted a survey to answer a burning question in health policy: What happened to people dropped from the program in the post-pandemic “unwinding”?
Deep gaps in rural America’s child care system threaten communities’ stability by shrinking the workforce and inhibiting economic potential. Now that pandemic-era federal aid for child care programs and low-income families has ended, it’s up to state and local leaders to find solutions.
Family medicine doctors already deliver most of rural America's babies, and efforts to train more in obstetrics care are seen as a way to cope with labor and delivery unit closures.
More than 1 million immigrants, most lacking permanent legal status, are covered by state health programs. Several states, including GOP-led Utah, will soon add or expand such coverage.
Thousands of medical devices are sold, and even implanted, with no safety tests.
In the past year, opioid settlement money has gone from an emerging funding stream for which people had lofty but uncertain aspirations to a coveted pot of billions being invested in remediation efforts. Here are some important and evolving factors to watch going forward.
As opioid settlement dollars land in government coffers, a swarm of businesses are positioning themselves to profit from the windfall. But will their potential gains come at the expense of the settlements’ intended purpose — to remediate the effects of the opioid epidemic?
Federal officials issued their first guidelines on preparing morel mushrooms after a deadly food poisoning outbreak in Montana, noting the toxins in the delicacy aren’t fully understood.
Thousands of people shared their experiences and related to the financial drain on families portrayed in the “Dying Broke” series, a joint project by ϳԹ News and The New York Times that examined the costs of long-term care.
Major policy changes and disavowals have made this a watershed year for curbing the use of the discredited “excited delirium” diagnosis to explain deaths in police custody. Now the ripple effects are spreading across the country into court cases, state legislation, and police training classes.
Some states haven't begun using opioid settlement funds intended to help curb the opioid epidemic. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Americans died of an overdose last year.
Colorado officials say they haven’t been able to stand up a program to import drugs from Canada because of drugmaker opposition — and the Biden administration’s inaction.
Native American leaders see bison herds and ancestral gardens as ways to bring healthy eating to their people.
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