Barbara Feder Ostrov

As hospital chains and insurers across the U.S squeeze one another, hoping to increase their market share, many patients are suddenly finding their preferred doctors and hospitals are out of network.

A California college professor never imagined that trying to figure out what was causing her rash could wind up costing so much.

Medicaid was never intended to cover long-term care for everyone. Now it pays for nearly 40 percent of the nation's long-term care expenses, and the share is growing.

A nutrition app may not be the top priority for someone who struggles to pay for groceries. But cellphones have the potential to improve the health of people with low incomes, if they can get them.

Veterans can visit 14 CVS MinuteClinics in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, Calif., for simple care, lab tests and prescriptions. Will the experiment work well enough to go nationwide?

Medicare now pays doctors $86 to discuss end-of-life care in an office visit that covers topics such as hospice, living wills and do-not-resuscitate orders. But how should doctors get a chat rolling?

A health care startup made a wild pitch to Cara Waller, CEO of the Newport Orthopedic Institute. The company said it could get patients more engaged with their care by automating physician empathy.

It "almost made me nauseous," she said. How can you automate something as deeply personal as empathy?

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When a Shigella outbreak at a San Jose, Calif., seafood restaurant sickened dozens of people last weekend, Yelp reviewers were on the case — right alongside public health officials.

"PLEASE DO NOT EAT HERE!!!!" Pauline A. wrote in her Oct. 18 review of the Mariscos San Juan #3 ...

If you're struck by a macaw, sucked into a jet engine or are having relationship problems with your in-laws, fear not: Your doctor now has a medical diagnosis code for that.

On Thursday, doctors, hospitals and health insurers must start using the ICD-10, a vast new set of alphanumeric codes ...

Today is the day — the beginning of the end for the venerable (but woefully open to abuse) magnetic stripe, a technology pioneered in the 1960s. Enter the more secure age of the chip, or "EMV" cards.

At least in theory.

It's actually a bit more complicated. Here are three ...

The sales pitch for contact lenses that help kids see better by reshaping their corneas sounds futuristically appealing. Sleep overnight in the lenses, pop them out in the morning and experience perfect or near-perfect vision for an entire day.

Beth Levenson of Williamsburg, Va., thought the lenses, even at a ...

Earlier this year, Caryn Hoadley received an unexpected letter after a routine mammogram.

The letter said her mammogram was clean but that she has dense breast tissue, which has been linked to higher rates of breast cancer and could make her mammogram harder to read.

"I honestly don't know what ...