When Sienna Salcedo isn’t working 12-hour shifts three times a week as a physician’s assistant at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, she’s flying down to West Palm Beach or Miami to host Botox parties.
Salcedo is part of a greater rash of nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and physician’s assistants who are leaving the hospital system — or bypassing it entirely — for the greener and more autonomous pastures of aesthetics.
This shifting workforce won’t come as a surprise to anyone working in or around the U.S. medical system in the past 50 years. Scholars have warned of a nursing shortage for decades, with many factors at play: A high patient-to-nurse ratio is just one of the many long-standing issues that nurses have faced — a concern that was only exacerbated by the pandemic.
Walgreens was accused of wrongly requiring insured customers to pay more than members of its Prescription Savings Club, who for a low annual fee could buy more than 500 widely prescribed generic drugs for $5, $10 and $15 for 30-day prescriptions, and $10, $20 and $30 for 90-day prescriptions without using insurance.
About $1.5 billion in annual Medicare payments to hospitals will be on the line Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears arguments in a case over whether the federal government shortchanges facilities that care for low-income seniors.
For generations, doctors have accepted being at the "mercy" of their pagers, working long hours with little time for family. However, the newest generation of docs has pushed back against this mindset, seeking more work-life balance and less stress.
Medicare regulators on Friday finalized rules to pay for some mental health apps, a breakthrough for digital therapeutics companies that have struggled for a foothold in the health care system.