Shefali Luthra

Families with income that varies from month to month can find it hard to maintain enrollment in Texas' Medicaid program. The question is whether the program trims waste or creates more red tape.

Many health care aides were able to get insurance through the Affordable Care Act. But with the law's future uncertain, they don't know how their jobs or their doctor bills will be affected.

Doctors treating people addicted to opioids often need approval from insurers before giving drugs that ease withdrawal. The delay can be risky for patients. Insurers are starting to come around.

Whether it's toddlers mistaking pills for candy or teenagers taking opioids on purpose, the huge rise in access to opioid painkillers has led to more children being poisoned and hospitalized.

Psychiatric patients have longer ER stays than patients with physical problems, research shows, and have trouble finding inpatient care and follow-up treatment. Kids can be among the hardest hit.

But they'll have to wait a while. The portion of the $394 million Congress allocated to help pregnant women find out more quickly if they have Zika isn't expected to get to strained labs until 2017.

Researchers found that in states with medical marijuana laws on the books, the number of prescriptions dropped for drugs to treat anxiety, depression, nausea, pain, seizures and sleep disorders.

The pokes and prods inflicted on children in the hospital at all hours can make it hard for them to get a decent night's sleep. Children's hospitals are now rethinking how they work at night.

Most states require insurers to pay for autism treatments. But that hasn't done much to get therapy to children who need it, a study finds. It's important to get treatment as early as possible.

Doctors aren't used to discussing financial barriers to care, and many think it's inappropriate to bring up money at all during conversations with patients.

Hospitals have pushed staff to wash their hands in an effort to curb the spread of dangerous microbes. But patients' hands are infected, too, a study finds, and can spread bugs to other facilities.

Depression prompts people to make about 8 million doctors' appointments a year, and more than half are with primary care physicians. A study suggests those doctors often fall short in treating depression because of insurance issues, time constraints and other factors.

More often than not, primary care doctors fail to ...

A growing number of primary care doctors, spurred by frustration with insurance requirements, are bringing "health care for billionaires" to the masses, including people on Medicare and Medicaid, and state employees.

It's called direct primary care, modeled after "concierge" medical practices that have gained prominence in the past two decades. ...

Abuse of older people, which can take the form of sexual or emotional abuse, physical violence and financial manipulation, affects at least 10 percent of older Americans, according to a review article published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

That figure, researchers note, is likely an underestimate, ...

In anesthesiology, it pays – literally – to be a man.

At least, that's what's suggested by a study examining this specialty's demographics and salaries in 2007 and again in 2013. The study, by the RAND Corp., a nonpartisan research institute, was published Thursday in the journal Anesthesiology.

This ...

Doctors' practices are increasingly trying to reach their patients online. But don't expect your doctor to "friend" you on Facebook – at least, not just yet.

Physicians generally draw a line: Public professional pages – focused on medicine, similar to those other businesses offer – are catching on. Some might ...

When Wendy Sue Swanson started out as a pediatrician eight years ago, it never crossed her mind to bring up the option of intrauterine devices – an insertable form of long-acting contraception – when she had her regular birth-control discussions with teenage patients who were sexually active.

"The patch had ...

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are taking on more and more responsibility for primary care these days. And an analysis of Medicare data finds many of these health care providers are performing procedures you might not have expected.

More than half of the 4 million procedures that office-based nurse practitioners ...