When hospitals too often fail to disclose and to adequately deal with their problems, patients and their loved ones suffer. That’s what happened during the coronavirus pandemic, when individuals admitted for other reasons were infected in hospitals and died of Covid-19 at alarming rates. The federal government, separately, also is stepping up its efforts to….
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Hospitals struggle to keep nurses, as nursing homes stall on staff shots
The U.S. health care system and all who rely on it may be reaching painful reckonings on how the coronavirus pandemic keeps affecting caregiving personnel, whether with highly trained nurses who are forcing hospitals to pay them more or see them leave or with poorly paid and ill-trained aides who still aren’t getting Covid-19 shots….
Continue ReadingLethal Colorado cop case shines disturbing light on emergency medical care
Manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and other felony charges filed against paramedics in a Denver suburb will provide the public with a queasy close up look at not only the stresses weighing on medical first responders but also how complacent too many people have become as a crucial part of health care frays under fiscal pressures…..
Continue ReadingAll U.S. patients need a primary care doctor, panel of top experts recommends
The U.S. health system is in dire need of dramatic reforms to put patients first, most notably by ensuring that everyone in this country has a formally designated primary care physician to help monitor, navigate, and oversee their medical treatment. That is the latest recommendation of yet another blue-chip experts’ group: the National Academies of….
Continue ReadingState license boards warn doctors of consequences for sexual misbehavior
Although state licensing boards have taken more than their fair share of criticism for failing to discipline bad doctors as quickly and severely as circumstances merit, regulators appear to be trying to get ahead of a problem that especially plagues women patients and women health staff: doctors’ sexual misbehavior. This inappropriate conduct can encompass a….
Continue ReadingNursing homes’ continuing crisis inflicts big toll on residents with dementia
Even as news organizations reported that the coronavirus pandemic has taken a grievous toll on seniors institutionalized with dementia, a presidential panel on nursing home care split over common sense but limp recommendations on how the nation might reduce Covid-19’s savaging of the old, sick, and injured in long-term care facilities. The unsurprising, 180-plus pages….
Continue ReadingAs fans miss fall games, experts see decline in kids’ ER visits for head harms
Although many fans will be sad that football won’t dominate their lives as it usually does in the months after Labor Day, the pandemic-related constriction, postponement, and cancellation of so many prep and collegiate sports may have an upside: It likely will add to declines in the need for urgent care for dangerous and damaging….
Continue Reading600 of 15,000 nursing homes get gear as U.S. demands virus tests for staff
Five months after national media sounded alarms about a novel coronavirus savaging a Washington state long-term care center, federal regulators have begun to roust themselves with more vigor to safeguard hundreds of thousands of elderly, sick, and injured residents of nursing homes and other similar facilities. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — which….
Continue ReadingVideo evidence casts harsh light on authorities’ use of excessive force
In the running battle between authorities and individuals over excessive use of force, the eyes suddenly now have it: The advance of smart phone technology to ubiquity and with quality video recording is giving claimants powerful new evidence. It is not pretty for law enforcement excesses — and even potentially extra-legal escapades. Not one, not….
Continue ReadingConcern rises over bias in race-based algorithms for medical decision-making
High-tech wizards may be pushing medicine into a brave new world where important medical decisions rely on supposedly data-driven findings that also may be rooted in an old malignancy: discrimination against black patients. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine warns that race-based tools and formulas, algorithms aimed to assist doctors….
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