New Hampshire is the first Northeastern state to ban gender-affirming health care for minors after its Republican governor gave final approval to bills that will ban the use of certain prescription medications and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria beginning next year. Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a former U.S. senator who won New Hampshire's gubernatorial election in November, signed two bills restricting access to transition-related care in the state, which already prohibits rare genital surgeries for minors to transition.
The number of people with COVID-19 in the U.S. is low but increasing, according to the CDC. COVID-19 is trending up in many mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southern, and West Coast states. The agency said infections are 'growing or likely growing' in 40 states, based on ED visit data as of July 29. Infections were unchanged in nine states. The weekly percentage of emergency department visits among people diagnosed with COVID-19 is low, but growing, CDC says.
For all the debate about artificial intelligence in health care, one quietly transformative shift is taking place not through machines, but through video calls.
A growing number of U.S. hospitals are now using virtual nurses to handle admissions and discharges remotely.
The promise? Relief for burnt-out bedside nurses, better care coordination and fewer patients bouncing back to the hospital within weeks.
About 1,000 nurses at Magee-Womens Hospital are set to decide whether they’d like to be represented by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania later this month.
The organizing effort at one of the region’s leading labor and delivery centers is the latest in a growing labor movement among health care professionals in Pennsylvania. On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board set voting dates for Aug. 19 and 23 for the 1,000 nurses at Magee. UPMC, which owns the hospital, said in a statement Monday that the health system “encourages all eligible employees to vote so that their voices will be heard.”
Nearly 6 of 10 vaccine-eligible U.S. children hospitalized for COVID-19 from 2022 to 2024 had at least one underlying medical condition, and less than 4% were current with their vaccinations, CDC-led researchers reported in Pediatrics.
On the same day last week that CMS rolled out plans to ease the flow of health information, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT made two fairly significant announcements at an event in the Eisenhower building. 'The first was that we were going to continue our work on certification, and that this was going to include certification of APIs to improve interoperability,' Tom Keane says. 'The other thing I talked about is how we were going to enforce the information blocking.' Keane did not specify a timeline for when the agency would start certifying what are known as APIs, which are the means by which information is sent and received between applications. He also didn’t provide information about when or how that the ONC would start enforcing information blocking, the practice of preventing payers, patients, and providers from accessing electronic health information. The agency hasn't yet penalized companies that unreasonably limit access to health data.