Blog

• KFF Health News: The Concierge Catch – Better Access for a Few Patients Disrupts Care for Many

  July 01, 2024: “You had to pay the fee, or the doctor wasn’t going to see you anymore.” That was the takeaway for Terri Marroquin of Midland, Texas, when her longtime physician began charging a membership fee in 2019. She found out about the change when so...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Older Women Are Different Than Older Men. Their Health Is Woefully Understudied.

  June 20, 2024: Medical research has shortchanged women for decades. This is particularly true of older women, leaving physicians without critically important information about how to best manage their health. Late last year, the Biden administration promised to ...Read more >

• Forget Ringing the Button for the Nurse. Patients Now Stay Connected by Wearing One.

  May 22, 2024: 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, batte...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Stranded in the ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care and Suffer Avoidable Harm

  May 09, 2024: 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 ...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Biden Administration Sets Higher Staffing Mandates. Most Nursing Homes Don’t Meet Them.

  April 25, 2024: The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so. The new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are t...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Nearly 1 in 4 Adults Dumped From Medicaid Are Now Uninsured, Survey Finds

  April 18, 2024: Nearly a quarter of adults disenrolled from Medicaid in the past year say they are now uninsured, according to a survey released Friday that details how tens of millions of Americans struggled to retain coverage in the government insurance program fo...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Your Doctor or Your Insurer? Little-Known Rules May Ease the Choice in Medicare Advantage

  April 03, 2024: Bart Klion, 95, and his wife, Barbara, faced a tough choice in January: The upstate New York couple learned that this year they could keep either their private, Medicare Advantage insurance plan — or their doctors at Saratoga Hospital. The Alban...Read more >

• KFF Health News: The Burden of Getting Medical Care Can Exhaust Older Patients

  March 27, 2024: Susanne Gilliam, 67, was walking down her driveway to get the mail in January when she slipped and fell on a patch of black ice. Pain shot through her left knee and ankle. After summoning her husband on her phone, with difficulty she made it back ...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Concerns Grow Over Quality of Care as Investor Groups Buy Not-for-Profit Nursing Homes

  March 14, 2024: Shelly Olson’s mother, who has dementia, has lived at the Scandia Village nursing home in rural Sister Bay, Wisconsin, for almost five years. At first, Olson said, her mother received great care at the facility, then owned by a not-for-profit organ...Read more >

• KFF Health News: Say That Again: Using Hearing Aids Can Be Frustrating for Older Adults, but Necessary

  February 28, 2024: It was an every-other-day routine, full of frustration. Every time my husband called his father, who was 94 when he died in 2022, he’d wait for his dad to find his hearing aids and put them in before they started talking. Even then, my father...Read more >