HOUSTON — Patients admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital get a monitoring device about the size of a half-dollar affixed to their chest — and an unwitting role in the expanding use of artificial intelligence in health care. The slender, battery-powered gadget, called a BioButton, records vital signs including heart and breathing rates, then wirelessly sends the readings to nurses sitting in a 24-hour control room elsewhere in the hospital or in their homes. The device’s software uses AI to analyze the voluminous data and detect signs a patient’s condition is deteriorating. Hospital officials ...
Kaiser Health News
James Lemons, 39, wants the bullet removed from his thigh so he can go back to work. Sarai Holguin, a 71-year-old woman originally from Mexico, has accepted the bullet lodged near her knee as her “compa” — a close friend. The Injured They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten. In the first of our series “The Injured,” a Kansas family remembers Valentine’s Day as the beginning of panic attacks, life-altering trauma, and waking to nightmares of gunfire. Thrown into the spotlight by the shootings, they wonder how they will recover. Read More Mireya Nelson, 15, ...
Kaiser Health News
When doctors began using the drug sotorasib in 2021 with high expectations for its innovative approach to attacking lung cancer, retired medical technician Don Crosslin was an early beneficiary. Crosslin started the drug that July. His tumors shrank, then stabilized. But while the drug has helped keep him alive, its side effects have gradually narrowed the confines of his life, said Crosslin, 76, who lives in Ocala, Florida: “My appetite has been minimal. I’m very weak. I walk my dogs and get around a bit, but I haven’t been able to golf since last July.” He wonders whether he’d do better on a...
Kaiser Health News
When dermatologist Adewole “Ade” Adamson sees people spritzing sunscreen as if it’s cologne at the pool where he lives in Austin, Texas, he wants to intervene. “My wife says I shouldn’t,” he said, “even though most people rarely use enough sunscreen.” At issue is not just whether people are using enough sunscreen, but what ingredients are in it. The Food and Drug Administration’s ability to approve the chemical filters in sunscreens that are sold in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and France is hamstrung by a 1938 U.S. law that requires sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified a...
Kaiser Health News
President Joe Biden counts among his accomplishments the record-high number of people, more than 21 million, who enrolled in Obamacare plans this year. Behind the scenes, however, federal regulators are contending with a problem that affects people’s coverage: rogue brokers who have signed people up for Affordable Care Act plans, or switched them into new ones, without their permission. Fighting the problem presents tension for the administration: how to thwart the bad actors without affecting ACA sign-ups. Complaints about these unauthorized changes — which can cause affected policyholders to...
Kaiser Health News
Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises. Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary. “You walk through ER hallways, and they’re lined from end to end with patients on stret...
Kaiser Health News
Miguel Divo, a lung specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, sits in an exam room across from Joel Rubinstein, who has asthma. Rubinstein, a retired psychiatrist, is about to get a checkup and hear a surprising pitch — for the planet, as well as his health. Divo explains that boot-shaped inhalers, which represent nearly 90% of the U.S. market for asthma medication, save lives but also contribute to climate change. Each puff from an inhaler releases a hydrofluorocarbon gas that is 1,430 to 3,000 times as powerful as the most commonly known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. “That abso...
Kaiser Health News
KFF Health News senior correspondent Samantha Young discussed Medicaid and climate change on KCBS Radio’s “On-Demand” podcast on April 29. Click here to hear Young on KCBSRead Young’s “AC, Power Banks, Mini Fridges: Oregon Equips Medicaid Patients for Climate Change“KFF Health News contributor Andy Miller discussed Medicaid unwinding on WUGA’s “The Georgia Health Report” on April 26. Click here to hear Miller on “The Georgia Health Report”Read Phil Galewitz’ “Millions Were Booted From Medicaid. The Insurers That Run It Gained Medicaid Revenue Anyway.“KFF Health News Nevada correspondent Jazmin...
Kaiser Health News
Since becoming a father a few months ago, I’ve been nursing a grudge against something tiny, seemingly inconsequential, and often discarded: instructional manuals. Parenthood requires a lot of gadgetry to maintain a kid’s health and welfare. Those gadgets require puzzling over booklets, decoding inscrutable pictographs, and wondering whether warnings can be safely ignored or are actually disclosing a hazard. To give an example, my daughter, typically a cooing little marsupial, quickly discovered babyhood’s superpower: Infants emerge from the womb with talon-strength fingernails. She wasn’t afr...
Kaiser Health News
Marisol Pantoja Toribio found a lump in her breast in early January. Uninsured and living in California without legal status and without her family, the usually happy-go-lucky 43-year-old quickly realized how limited her options were. “I said, ‘What am I going to do?’” she said in Spanish, quickly getting emotional. She immediately worried she might have cancer. “I went back and forth — I have , I don’t have it, I have it, I don’t have it.” And if she was sick, she added, she wouldn’t be able to work or pay her rent. Without health insurance, Pantoja Toribio couldn’t afford to find out if she ...
Kaiser Health News
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