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Patients and providers say health insurers’ preapproval requirements lead to delays and denials of needed medical treatments. Insurers argue that prior authorization keeps costs down.
In several red states, officials say few or no abortions happened in 2023, raising alarm among researchers about the politicization of vital statistics.
The Montana health department says the Board of Public Assistance is redundant and a bureaucratic hurdle that helps few people. Current and former board representatives say the rare cases in which the panel helps people are important.
Several states require schools to assemble teams of law enforcement and education officials to identify students who could become mass shooters and intervene before it’s too late. But some experts say the efforts often face a lack of guidance and significant pressure, putting them at risk of maligning innocent students.
Unsure how to help the troubled psychiatric facility, legislators look to shore up other parts of the state’s mental health system.
Controversy over raw milk reflects the push-pull the Trump administration faces in rolling back regulations and offering consumers more choices. For now, the CDC still recommends against consuming raw milk and the FDA bans its interstate sale.
The moves under consideration include relocating a residential facility for people with developmental disabilities, renovating the state’s psychiatric hospital, and opening a new unit of the hospital in Helena.
Health leaders say a tool to boost medical coverage for Native Americans, a population that has long faced worse health outcomes than the rest of the nation, has been underused by many states and tribes since it was written into the Affordable Care Act more than a decade ago.
To deliver on pledges from the new Trump administration to make America healthy again, policymakers will need to close gaps in longevity among racial and ethnic groups.
Some hospitals are bringing in dogs to spend entire shifts with doctors and nurses. The trained canines help staffers cope with the stress of their work amid high levels of burnout.
The number of unhoused seniors in the U.S. is expected to triple by 2030. About half of this population is becoming homeless for the first time. Homeless services struggle to help. Finding affordable housing that’s also accessible for older Americans with medical conditions is an extra challenge.
Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia — states with some of the worst health outcomes — also have some of the highest childhood vaccination rates. But doctors and health officials worry a rising tide of vaccine skepticism is causing those public health bright spots to dim.
Though abortion rights supporters prevailed on ballot measures in seven of the 10 states where abortion was up for a vote on Nov. 5, the state supreme courts voters have elected indicate legal fights to come aren’t clear-cut.
The growing toll of climate-related disasters is a risk to the emotional well-being of young people. An Orange County, California, pediatric emergency doctor wants to add questions about climate change to standard mental health screenings conducted in pediatricians’ offices and other settings where kids seek care.
Legislative leaders say the decision whether to renew Montana’s Medicaid expansion program this year will loom over behavioral health spending and hospital regulation, among other topics.
The move, which comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, represents a challenge to the new administration.
Advocates say it is discrimination and are arguing for “insurance fairness” on the grounds that people who have joints surgically replaced typically don’t face the same kinds of coverage challenges.
A legislative effort to expand access to prenatal care in rural Oregon with mobile clinics was scuttled because those clinics would have provided abortions in rural areas. Opposition to the proposal shows that, even in states that ensure access to abortions, that care isn’t universally available or accepted.
Street medicine providers and homeless outreach workers who travel into Las Vegas’ drainage tunnels have noticed an uptick in the number of people living underground, and it can be difficult to persuade them to come aboveground for medicine and treatment.
Homelessness experts and community leaders say vulnerability questionnaires have worsened racial disparities among the unhoused by systematically placing white people in front of the line ahead of Black people. Now places like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Austin, Texas, are developing alternative surveys to reduce bias.
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