People who suffer traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are more likely to lose or change their private health insurance coverage just when they need it most, according to a recent U.S. analysis. Examining a three-year period, researchers also found that the more severe the brain injury, the quicker people lost or saw changes in their health coverage. Most subjects received health insurance through their jobs, so any change in coverage was likely due to changes in their employment, say the authors of the research letter in JAMA Surgery.
When it's time for medical care, where do you go? The doctor's office? An urgent care clinic? Or the nearest hospital? As many as 1 in 3 Americans sought care in an ER in the past two years, according to a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. That relatively high frequency may be a matter of convenience, even though many in the poll also report frustration with the cost and quality of care they received in an ER.
More hospitals have begun offering so-called desensitization therapy to help high-risk patients who have a willing but non-matching living donor receive an organ their bodies otherwise would reject. Some specialty centers have reported success but it wasn't clear how well the approach would work when used widely. "Desensitization is still not for every transplant center," said senior author Dr. Dorry Segev of Johns Hopkins University, which helped pioneer incompatible transplants.
A Colorado hospital has been sued by three former surgery patients who say they were among nearly 3,000 people possibly exposed to a blood-borne disease carried by a drug-addicted former medical technician, court records showed on Tuesday. The Swedish Medical Center in suburban Denver is accused of negligence in its hiring and supervision of a surgical technologist who was caught trying to switch a syringe containing the powerful opiate fentanyl citrate with another substance during a patient's surgery in January.
Victims of the largest hepatitis C outbreak in recent U.S. history dropped their claims against a ND nursing home on Tuesday, which joined them in suing a hospital that the victims and the nursing home believe is really at fault. The amended complaint filed in state district court alleges that the deaths of at least three people were tied to the outbreak. In court documents in a related federal lawsuit, Trinity Health has denied responsibility
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and four Democratic colleagues are pushing legislation that would help patients receive mental health care coverage. Warren said the bill introduced Monday would strengthen accountability for insurers by requiring them to disclose to federal regulators how they make coverage decisions and the rate of and reasons for denials of mental health claims.