Tracking State Rural Health Transformation Plans
Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News is working to collect and post approved plans as more states respond to emails and public records requests for their documents.
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Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News covers the health issues facing people who live in America’s rural reaches.
Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News is working to collect and post approved plans as more states respond to emails and public records requests for their documents.
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States are battling for their piece of $50 billion in federal rural health funding, but it’s not just hospitals vying for the money. Tech startups and policy demands are raising the stakes as Medicaid cuts loom.
The idea that airplane vapors are toxic to people or that there are ongoing efforts to intentionally change the climate made the social media rounds. Now, it has found advocates at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The health secretary’s statement doesn’t consider the impact that the Medicaid cuts advanced in the same law will have on health care in rural America.
Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News journalists made the rounds on national media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Ketamine, long used as an anesthetic or illegal party drug, is being combined with psychotherapy to treat severe depression and post-traumatic stress — a potential tool for those with high trauma rates, like firefighters and police officers. Yet the drug’s stigma and unregulated marketplace leave first responders in uncharted territory.
President Donald Trump called the Digital Equity Act unconstitutional, racist, and illegal. Then the $2.75 billion program for rural and underserved communities to gain internet access disappeared.
California’s nursing shortage is projected to worsen, and hospitals say funding cuts will only add strain. But front-line nurses blame heavy workloads, not a shortage, for driving workers away.
The Trump administration has restored promised funds to a program that teaches people in health care how to work with aging Americans.
People who maintained the nation’s land-based nuclear missile arsenal are coming down with similar cancers. The Air Force is wrapping up a large study of the health risks they may have faced.
Health care providers and debt collectors are biting from people’s paychecks to cover old medical bills. A Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News investigation in Colorado shows that this aggressive collection practice is widespread even in a state considered to have strong consumer protections.
Barbara Kingsolver won a Pulitzer Prize for her bestselling novel about Appalachia’s drug crisis. She invested some of the proceeds into a home for women trying to beat substance use disorders.
As a warming climate intensifies storms, Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News has identified more than 170 U.S. hospitals at risk of significant and potentially dangerous flooding. Climate experts warn that the Trump administration’s cuts leave the nation less prepared.
As the climate changes, hurricanes are intensifying more quickly, leaving Louisiana’s current mass evacuation plan in limbo. But transportation officials say the price is too high to switch to methods used in Florida and Texas.
Some states are enacting medical debt laws as the Trump administration pulls back federal protections. Elsewhere, industry opposition has derailed legislation.
Despite billions of tax dollars and two decades of effort invested in improving health care data sharing, Americans’ medical records often remain siloed, leading to duplicate testing, increased costs, and wasted time for patients and doctors.
North Carolina and Idaho are cutting their Medicaid programs to bridge budget gaps, raising fears that providers will stop taking patients and that hospitals will close even before the brunt of a new federal tax-and-budget law takes effect.
Doctors need to know when to screen for tick-borne diseases in their communities. But it’s getting harder for local health departments to get funding for tick surveys as federal public health grants from agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dry up.
In a rural, largely Republican region of California, homegrown efforts to bolster the medical workforce face an uphill battle, in part because of federal health care cuts approved by the GOP Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in July, as well as a state budget deficit.
In South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, many people go without health insurance, and the health system struggles as a result. Similar communities dot the nation, and more could face such difficulties under President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending law.
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