When Dr. Craig Towers moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2010, the high-risk obstetrician encountered a crisis unlike anything he’d seen. Towers, who had practiced for 25 years in California and Wisconsin, found himself caring for an unusual number of pregnant women addicted to painkillers — and delivering newborns who were suffering withdrawal symptoms. Those babies, born shaking and...
Ten years ago, a pioneering AI scientist predicted that computers would replace human experts as readers of medical images. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. In 2016 Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel-winning “godfather of AI,” predicted that radiologists — the physicians who read X-rays, ultrasounds and other images to help make medical diagnoses — would find themselves replaced by computers...
For years, Larry Gruber used coupon cards from a drugmaker to help him meet his insurance plan’s out-of-pocket maximum, reducing his cost for psoriatic arthritis medication to $0 for the rest of the year. This year, his new health insurer, Oscar HMO of Florida, pocketed the coupon card and made Gruber use his own money to meet the cost-sharing requirements. (Scott McIntyre for KFF Health News)...
Dozens of doctors are routinely performing risky vascular procedures in medical offices, generating tens of millions of dollars in Medicare payments for potentially unnecessary procedures, according to a federal report released last month. The review, completed by the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services, flagged nearly 140 doctors across the country as...
(Heidi de Marco/KFF Health News) ~~~~~ Complaints about hospital food are certainly not new, and Jell-O and fruit juice are often the butt of related jokes. But the Trump administration has recently upped the ante. It is urging the public to report hospitals and nursing homes that serve sugary drinks, nutrition shakes, or meals that it says don’t meet dietary guidelines established last year by...
The vagus nerve, which carries information between the brain and heart, lungs and other organs, might regulate the activity of a tiny brain region called the locus coeruleus. Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images ~~~~~ Elizabeth Riley, Cornell University Most people think of Alzheimer’s disease as an illness of aging. But in fact, the brain changes that characterize it begin...
