Many insurers are restricting access to new drugs that are easier to take and that promise higher cure rates because the price tags can run $95,000 or more.
In everyday medical care, the practice of reflection is too often overlooked. Remembrance is what makes us human. Keeping tabs on who has died over the years keeps one doctor humble.
When patient and doctor don't speak the same language, it's not enough to have an ad hoc interpreter. You need an adult fluent in both languages — who can also cut through medical jargon.
A legally blind woman who has led a fight to make Medicare pay for care even when patients' medical conditions don't improve is in court to get Medicare payment for her own home care.
"When I first saw him he had a little bit of eye movement and that was really the only way he could communicate," says Eric Sellers, who helped a patient use a brain-computer interface to communicate.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, leader of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, disagrees, says the quarantine could hamper efforts to combat the deadly outbreak in West Africa.
The woman was isolated Friday as she returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa. She had no symptoms of the disease; she developed a fever and was taken to a nearby hospital.
The majority of hospitals are training their staff to care for Ebola patients, a survey finds. But infection control specialists say that can mean losing the capacity to handle more common infections.
If you live in Rochester, Minn., you'll get used to seeing wheelchairs left in odd places. The city is home to the Mayo Clinic, after all. But some of those wheelchairs venture far afield indeed.
About 75,000 patients a year die from infections they caught in the hospital. A Kaiser Health News analysis finds that nearly 700 hospitals across the nation have higher than expected infection rates.