A study looking at births in Britain finds home-births safer, while another U.S. study finds babies born at home face higher risk of death. It turns out having ways to get moms to the hospital quickly when complications arise might be the most important variable.
Healthcare Systems & Policy
Waiting for Medicaid eligibility is a common experience in Bexar County, Tex., and one big reason why women don't receive prenatal care as early as they should. It contributes to the rising number of babies born to women who received prenatal care after their first trimester — or not at all.
Thousands of babies are born every year in Bexar County, Texas, to mothers who receive no prenatal care. Those women are more likely to give birth prematurely, increasing the odds that their newborns will develop immediate and long-lasting health problems that can be both costly and fatal.
We thought we knew the main reasons why doctors perform too many C-sections in the U.S. But a recently reported study points to another cause: Doctors are often wrong in predicting babies' weight, and that can lead to unnecessary cesareans.
Are insurance policies too complicated to understand? They always have been and always will be unless there are changes in the way policies work, or until there are rules to make it easier for buyers to compare options.
In the past couple of years, the Affordable Care Act has provided thousands of residents at Wyandotte County with health insurance, creating a surge in demand for health care in a county that had already been designated a Health Professional Shortage Area by the federal government.
In pediatric practices across Florida, doctors are struggling to serve patients in the face of paltry reimbursement rates and more intense demands from Medicaid insurance companies.
When it comes to lowering high infant mortality rates, Rwanda has become an encouraging if unexpected example of what can be done with "big data made small."
Whether it's doctors or restaurants, it turns out that our brains are more likely to be influenced by narrative reviews, such as those on Yelp, than by other rating systems and metrics.
A deep dive into the data on federal pay-for-performance programs for hospitals turned up a few key lessons along the way for Healthline's Jenna Flannigan, including the importance of understanding what health metrics are actually measuring.