health care

Van Zyl and Garcia Flores hold hands as van Zyl promises to do everything she can to ease his pain and control symptoms.

A Palliative Care Doctor Weighs California's New Aid-In-Dying Law

4:23pm January 04, 2016

by Angus Chen

This year, California becomes the fifth state to legalize lethal drug prescriptions for terminally ill patients. Renee Montagne talks to Carin van Zyl, a palliative care doctor, about the options.

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Todd Davidson/Getty Images/Illustration Works

Forgot Something Again? It's Probably Just Normal Aging

12:52pm January 04, 2016

by Patti Neighmond

Around age 50, people may begin to forget things. This can be scary. But there are clear differences between the onset of dementia and totally normal, age-related lapses in memory.

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A elderly patient with chronic debilitating back pain receives a bottle of liquid morphine during a home visit from a representative of Hospice Africa Uganda.

How Uganda Came To Earn High Marks For Quality Of Death

3:00pm January 03, 2016

by Rae Ellen Bichell

It took a British doc, a simple recipe for liquid morphine and a lot of re-education.

East Cleveland medic Anthony Savoy says his city's ambulances are diverted frequently to a hospital further away, and that can add one or two minutes to response times.

Cleveland Pressures Hospitals To Keep ERs Open To All Ambulances

7:54am January 02, 2016

by Sarah Jane Tribble

When you call an ambulance, you expect to go to the nearest hospital. But patients are often diverted to more distant emergency rooms. Cleveland wants hospitals to stop the practice.

Duke Gillingham, president of Oasis Foods, in Hillside, N.J., says about two-thirds of his roughly 180 employees declined to enroll in the company health plan for 2015. Many make less than $15 an hour, and found the company plan too expensive.

N.J. Factory Turns To Medicaid To Insure Lowest-Paid Employees

4:28pm January 01, 2016

by Fred Mogul

Starting Jan. 1, midsize companies must offer health insurance to their workers or risk a penalty. A firm that has already faced that problem is helping low-paid employees enroll in Medicaid, instead.

If your insurer waived the fee to see your primary care doctor, would you go more often?

Obamacare Insurers Sweeten Plans With Free Doctor Visits

10:39am December 31, 2015

by Phil Galewitz

Some insurers are betting that lowering the barrier to seeing a doctor will encourage people to get needed care sooner. If it works, the health plans could save more than they spend on the benefit.

Doctors Look To Prevent Abuse In Midst Of Opioid Epidemic

4:30pm December 30, 2015

The U.S. is in the grips of a prescription drug epidemic, fueled in part by an explosion in opioid prescriptions over the past several decades. Roughly half of those prescriptions are written by primary care doctors. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Dr. Wanda Filer, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, about her experience prescribing opioids and what doctors can do to prevent abuse.

VA addiction therapist Brandon Coleman, now on administrative leave, testified about widespread problems with privacy breaches before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs in September.

Privacy Violations Rising At Veterans Affairs Medical Facilities

9:37am December 30, 2015

Deceased veterans' documents were sent to the wrong widows. VA workers snooped on patients who had committed suicide. And whistleblowers contend the VA violated their medical privacy.

2015 Was Another Rough And Tumble Year For Obamacare

7:33am December 30, 2015

by Scott Horsley

The Affordable Care Act survived another challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court this year. But the still-fragile marketplace is showing the strain of rising health care costs.

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Sue McConnell is one of more than 130 transgender veterans receiving treatment at the Tucson Veterans Affairs hospital.

New VA Clinic Opens For Transgender Vets

8:17pm December 29, 2015

by Jimmy Jenkins

The Tucson Veterans Affairs hospital is expanding treatment to the needs of trans veterans, one of the first such facilities in the U.S. to do so. The clinic's services include hormone treatment.

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