The federal health authorities reported Thursday that nearly one-third of women of reproductive age had had an opioid painkiller prescription filled every year from 2008 to 2012. Experts said the practice carried considerable risks for birth defects. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed health insurance claims data from Medicaid and private insurers for women ages 15 to 55 and found that an average of 39 percent of women on Medicaid filled an opioid prescription in a pharmacy each year from 2008 to 2012, compared with 28 percent of women with private insurance.
For those who need a transplant, the wait for an organ in America is growing longer: As Nobel economist Gary Becker lays in out in a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, 95,000 Americans were on the waiting list for new kidneys in 2012, but only 16,500 kidney transplants occurred that year. Today, there are over 78,000 candidates waiting for an organ transplant. The exchange of kidneys represents what economists call a repugnant market: It could be made more efficient if people were allowed to pay for them, but there are ethical concerns about introducing money into the equation.
Nurse practitioner and physician assistant (NP/PA) care in the ICU could have a mortality benefit compared with care teams solely comprising resident physicians, a study showed.
A measles outbreak that began at Disneyland is spreading across California and beyond, prompting health officials to move aggressively to contain it — including by barring unvaccinated students from going to school in Orange County. The outbreak has increased concerns that a longstanding movement against childhood vaccinations has created a surge in a disease that was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Heath officials said 59 cases of measles had been diagnosed in California as of Wednesday, with an additional eight related cases spread through Utah, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Mexico. Among those infected are five workers at Disneyland, where the outbreak was spotted in mid-December; 42 of the 59 California cases have been linked to the Disneyland outbreak.
Money talks. A temporary Medicaid pay raise that was part of President Barack Obama's health law made it easier for poor adults to get appointments with primary care doctors, according to a study published Wednesday. Paying more to doctors who participate in the federal-state insurance program for the poor usually improves access for patients, but the law's two-year limit on the raise, its slow rollout and other regulatory problems made many skeptical about how physicians would react to the extra money — which in many states equated to a 50 percent pay hike or more.
Schools reopened in Guinea this week, just as Mali became the region's latest country to be declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization, following Nigeria and Senegal. The two developments are signs that life is slowly returning to normal as West Africa recovers from the world's worst-ever Ebola epidemic. It is far from over yet. But there is, at last, hope that the end of the outbreak may be within sight. There have been 21,614 cases of Ebola in this epidemic, and 8,594 deaths, according to the latest WHO figures. But crucially, the number of new cases is declining in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the countries worst affected.