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ϳԹ News covers the health issues facing people who live in America’s rural reaches.
ϳԹ News is working to collect and post complete application materials, by state, here and will update this repository as new materials, released in response to public records requests, arrive.
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Independent medical practices keep closing as doctors join behemoth hospital groups or leave the field. Research suggests that’s bad news for patients. Studies repeatedly conclude that consolidation in the health care industry is driving up costs while showing no clear evidence of improved care.
Smoke- and ash-filled air can trigger or exacerbate severe respiratory conditions. But the medical specialists who treat these illnesses are often scarce where they are most in need.
The laws criminalizing abortion in many conservative U.S. states are expected to boost birth rates among teens, whose bodies often aren’t built for safe childbirth. For adolescents, the emotional and physical challenges of carrying a pregnancy to term can be daunting.
In many cities, social workers and counselors are responding to mental health emergencies that used to be solely handled by police. That approach is spreading to rural areas even though mental health professionals are scarcer and travel distances are longer.
Russell Cook was expecting a quick and inexpensive visit to an urgent care center for his daughter, Frankie, after she had a car wreck. Instead, they were advised to go to an emergency room and got a much larger bill.
Two Missouri towns are without operating hospitals after private equity-backed Noble Health left both facilities mired in debt, lawsuits, and federal investigations. The hospitals’ new operator, Platinum Health, agreed to buy them in April for $2 and laid off the last employees in early September.
Refugees are arriving in the U.S. in greater numbers after a 40-year low, prompting some health professionals to rethink ways to provide culturally competent care amid a shortage of mental health services.
Iowa, under federal pressure to improve care for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, is set to join 45 other states that have closed most or all of their state institutions for such residents.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
More than two years into the pandemic, hospital budgets are beginning to crack. One of the biggest drivers of financial shortfalls has been the cost to find workers.
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy has eliminated tumors in some late-stage cancer patients, but the cost and complexity of care mean rural Americans have trouble accessing the treatment.
Five years after HIV tore through a rural Indiana town as a result of widespread drug use, a syringe and needle exchange program was set up in rural Nevada to prevent a similar event.
A study published in JAMA leads to questions about the uneven distribution of pediatric nephrologists nationwide. Children with end-stage kidney disease feel the impact.
Coming out of the pandemic, many rural hospitals are in even rougher shape than before. So rough that some are now practically being handed to investors for little more than a pledge to keep them open.
Know-how gained through the covid pandemic is seeping into other public health areas. But in a nation that has chronically underfunded its public health system, it’s hard to know which changes will stick.
The U.S. Labor Department investigates Noble Health after former employees of its shuttered Missouri hospitals say the private equity-backed owner took money from their paychecks and then failed to fund their insurance coverage.
Santa Fe, Texas, was a mental health care desert until a 17-year-old gunman killed 10 people at the local high school in 2018. Now the city, which sits in a rural stretch between Houston and Galveston, has a resiliency center, where anyone affected by the shooting can get free counseling. But even with an influx of mental health care, the community struggles with the aftermath.
Inflation hasn’t hit Americans like this in decades. And families living with chronic diseases have little choice but to pay more for the medicine, supplies, and food they need to stay healthy.
Nonprofit federally funded health centers are a linchpin in the nation’s health care safety net because they treat the medically underserved. The average profit margin is 5%, but some have recorded margins of 20% or more in three of the past four years.
The community of Bristol straddles the border between two states with very different abortion laws. Tennessee prohibits most abortions at about six weeks and will soon ban them nearly outright. Virginia allows them at least through the second trimester. To maintain abortion access in the area, staff at a clinic on the Tennessee side of the state line are helping open a clinic about a mile down the road on the Virginia side.
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