Opinion | Can Radical Empathy Fix Our Healthcare System?
The history of medicine has been a long story of increasingly minute specialization. When we celebrate momentous breakthroughs in healing — authorizing the COVID-19 vaccine or performing the first successful heart transplant — what we applaud is the ability of our researchers and physicians to zero in on one condition and deliver increasingly efficient treatments […]
House Committee Advances Bill to Streamline Prior Authorization
WASHINGTON — In a moment of comity that’s becoming increasingly rare in Congress, the House Ways & Means Committee voted unanimously by voice vote to send to the House floor a bill to improve prior authorization procedures in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. “This kind of opportunity has become all too rare, and I hope that […]
Fast, efficient COVID-19 biosensor under development: Researchers are improving technology to test for the coronavirus at a ‘population scale’ in order to stay on top of shifting variants
As the BA.5 omicron variant continues to spread, health experts are increasingly preparing for a future in which such COVID-19 variants emerge, surge and recede similar to seasonal flu. An important part of staying on top of these changes will be the ability to quickly monitor the virus at a “population scale,” an effort that […]
Water resources to become less predictable with climate change: Declining snowpack will cause more variability in runoff, streamflow
Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more and more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the Northern Hemisphere by later this century, according to a comprehensive new climate change study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The research team found that, even in regions that keep receiving about the same […]
Long COVID Patients Turn to ‘Blood Washing’ Procedure
With long COVID patients becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of available treatments, some have now taken to traveling to Cyprus, Germany, and Switzerland for experimental “blood washing,” according to a recent investigation by The BMJ and ITV News. Over the past year, people experiencing this often debilitating condition have visited private clinics for apheresis, […]
Early Abortions Are Getting More Expensive
Patients paid increasingly more for medication abortion and first-trimester procedural abortion from 2017 to 2020, while the percentage of facilities accepting health insurance declined, researchers found. From 2017 to 2020, median patient charges for medication abortion rose from $495 to $560, representing a 13% increase, which was higher than healthcare inflation alone, at 8%, according […]
OPINION: So You Don’t Want To Defund The Police? Here’s Why You Should Fund Public Defense.
Whether police admit it or not, their profession is on fire. They are increasingly tasked with jobs that fall outside their area of competence, from domestic violence response to crisis de-escalation to mental health first aid. And more police spending hasn’t paid the dividend of reduced crime. Police officers in the U.S. have also proved […]
How To Maintain Your Friendships If You’re Dealing With Anxiety Or Depression
Due in no small part to the pandemic, increasingly high numbers of people have reported feeling overwhelmed or burned out these days, and mental health disorders like anxiety and depression are on the rise. These struggles can take a toll on our relationships with partners, colleagues, family members and even friends. “Friendships, especially close or […]
New invention keeps qubits of light stable at room temperature
As almost all our private information is digitalized, it is increasingly important that we find ways to protect our data and ourselves from being hacked. Quantum Cryptography is the researchers’ answer to this problem, and more specifically a certain kind of qubit — consisting of single photons: particles of light. Single photons or qubits of […]
COVID-19 hospitalizations increase among unvaccinated pregnant women: Cases at major public hospital show role of Delta variant in severe illnesses
Unvaccinated pregnant women are increasingly being hospitalized with COVID-19 during a nationwide surge of the Delta variant, according to research from UT Southwestern Medical Center. The study — which covers more than 1,500 cases in the Dallas area since May 2020 — offers a snapshot of what doctors believe is happening in communities across the […]