Sally Nix was furious when her health insurance company refused to pay for the infusions she needs to ease her chronic pain and fatigue. Nix has struggled with a combination of autoimmune diseases since 2011. Brain and spinal surgeries didn’t ease her symptoms. Nothing worked, she said, until she started intravenous immunoglobulin infusions late last year. Commonly called IVIG, the treatment...
A federal lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) on August 1 argues the state of California is violating the free speech rights of doctors by mandating that they include “implicit bias” training in their continuing medical education (CME) courses. CME courses are a standard professional development practice that can cover a wide range of topics relating to medical care. The purpose...
The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s 988 hotline marked its one-year milestone this month. Mental health experts say the three-digit number made help more accessible than before. The hotline was designed with the idea that people experiencing emotional distress are more comfortable reaching out for help from trained counselors than from police and other first responders through 911. Since the...
Since the CMS-HCC risk adjustment payment paradigm took effect in 2003, our company has seen considerable changes, but this year takes the cake, as they say. Frankly, a moment (or really, a week) of silence would be appropriate to mourn the sunsetting of the current MRA program. Seriously. Every year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes a long document detailing...
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Federal lawmakers this week introduced a bill aimed at reducing the more than 20,000 pregnancies that end in stillbirth every year in the U.S. The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act would explicitly allow federal funding earmarked...
Scientists are revealing new secrets of the reflex that protects our lungs, spreads disease and irritates us all Michael Shiloh had been studying tuberculosis for about two decades when he started wondering about a seemingly basic question: What makes people with TB cough? This is the disease’s hallmark symptom and a main mode of transmission, but despite training as an infectious disease...
