Lauren Sausser - KFF Health News

Infant mortality rates across the South are by far the worst in the U.S. A look at South Carolina — where multimillion-dollar programs aimed at improving rates over the past 10 years have failed to move the needle — drives home the challenge of finding solutions.

Designed to prevent doctors from deploying expensive, ineffectual procedures, preauthorization has morphed into a monster that denies or delays care, burdens physicians with paperwork and perpetuates racial disparities.

Hospitals using volunteers is commonplace. But some labor experts argue that deploying unpaid workers to do tasks that benefits the bottom line lets for-profit facilities skirt federal laws, deprives employees of work, and potentially exploits the volunteers.

As public health departments work on improving their message, the skepticism and mistrust often reserved for COVID-vaccines now threaten other priorities, including flu shots and childhood vaccines.

More than two years into the pandemic, parents face a child care crisis. That’s why some hospitals are considering starting child care centers to address recruitment and retention troubles.

Trauma surgeons say that the weapons used in mass shootings are not new but that more of these especially deadly guns are on the street, causing injuries that are difficult to survive.

The Association of American Medical Colleges plans to roll out new diversity, equity, and inclusion standards aimed at teaching doctors, among other things, how to treat patients who are overweight with respect.

Despite years of efforts to reduce the use of C-sections in delivering babies, rates remain high, especially in the South. Black women, particularly, are more likely to give birth by C-section.