Nevada is serving a greater number of mentally ill children in recent years. “This is an epidemic,” said Dr. Jay Fisher. Decades ago, he said, physicians looked to vaccines to preventing epidemics. “This is going to be much more difficult to solve. It’s a 12-headed beast.”
The rising prevalence of "narrow" health insurance networks has set off alarms. But do such networks keep patients from getting good care? Not necessarily. The more relevant question is whether a provider network is adequate or not.
More and more, doctors like are looking to parents to help make difficult decisions on how much treatment to give babies born very sick and premature, as well as figuring out when it's time to let them go. There's now more emphasis on parents' values and preferences in such cases.
Anne and Omar Shamiyeh first learned something was wrong with one of their twins during an ultrasound, when Anne was 18 weeks pregnant. "The technician was, like, 'Well, there's no visualization of his stomach,'" Anne recounted. "And I was like, 'How does our baby have no stomach?'"
“Out-of-network” means “bad idea.” Right? Yet many patients do willingly choose out-of-network doctors for medical care, whether it's for a complex surgery or for managing their diabetes. Going out-of-network isn't for everyone, but it can have benefits for those who make a fully informed choice.
Can you buy health care like computers? For years, health policy gurus, employers and entrepreneurs have argued you could. But growing evidence tells us that the focus on turning patients into shoppers has real limits.
On Monday, Montana became the 30th state to expand Medicaid. On Tuesday, election results cast Kentucky's Medicaid expansion into doubt. What does this all have to do with kids' health? When it comes to children's health insurance, a state's Medicaid status can make a big difference.
Health insurance premium hikes have been modest in recent years, but out-of-pockets costs are another story. Our Thursday webinar on "Out of Pocket: Surprise Costs After Health Reform" offered a primer on the trends and a host of story ideas for reporting on these topics.
Across the country, patients who receive out-of-network care can face “exorbitant” charges for medical services compared to Medicare’s rates for the same procedures, and the prices can vary dramatically. But what explains these differences? It depends on who you ask.
C-sections have been in the news a lot lately, and the seemingly conflicting messages are enough to sow confusion. But the fact remains that the procedure is way too common in the majority of hospitals throughout the country. And that has consequences for both moms' health and health care costs.
