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CDC to reduce funding for states’ child vaccination programs
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reducing funding to states for child vaccination programs, according to an agency email obtained by KFF Health News. The funding cut “is a significant change to your budget,” said the email to immunization managers, dated June 27 and signed by two CDC officials. The immunization managers […]
Special Medicaid Funds Help Most States, but Prompt Oversight Concerns
Emanuel Medical Center in rural Georgia racks up more than $350,000 a month in losses providing health care for low-income and uninsured patients. But a new state funding proposal could significantly reduce those deficits, not just for the 66-bed Swainsboro facility but for most rural hospitals in Georgia, according to state Medicaid officials. It’s not […]
Squeezed by temp nurse costs, hospital systems create their own staffing agencies
Like many nurses these days, Alex Scala got a big pay hike when she switched jobs recently. Scala also received a welcome mix of assignments when she joined Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network. She signed on with a newly created team that works shifts in various units within the system’s 14 hospitals. After working as a […]
Path Cleared for Georgia to Launch Work Requirements for Medicaid
Georgia is set to become the only state to have work requirements for Medicaid coverage. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s reelection — and a surprising Biden administration decision not to appeal a federal court ruling — have freed the state to introduce its plan that would allow for a limited increase in the pool of low-income […]
EPA action boosts grassroots momentum to reduce toxic ‘forever chemicals’
ROME, Ga. — The intake pumps that once drew 6 million gallons of water a day from the Oostanaula River now sit mostly dormant in this northwestern Georgia city. Local officials contend that years of contamination miles upstream sent toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, into Rome’s water supply, rendering it potentially dangerous […]
A rural Georgia community reels after hospital closes
Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe. The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived. The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived was less than a mile from Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, but the ambulance couldn’t take her to the one-story […]
Understaffed state psychiatric units leave patients in limbo
Many patients dealing with mental health crises are having to wait several days in an ER until a bed becomes available at one of Georgia’s five state psychiatric hospitals, as public facilities nationwide feel the pinch of the pandemic. “We’re in crisis mode,’’ said Dr. John Sy, an emergency medicine physician in Savannah. “Two weeks […]
Georgia defends insurance waiver as company interest builds
Georgia officials have pushed back against a federal health agency’s request for more financial information on the state’s insurance waiver plan. A letter dated July 2 says that Georgia’s approach to replace the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare.gov enrollment set-up with a privately run process has already been approved by the feds. The Georgia “Section 1332’’ waiver has […]
War against lead contamination widens in west Atlanta neighborhood
In a well-kept west Atlanta yard Saturday, two women held up small pieces of a rock-like material they had spotted on the ground. It wasn’t rock, the two agreed: It was slag. Rosario Hernandez and Eri Saikawa know plenty about west Atlanta’s deposits of slag. The stuff is a byproduct of smelting, and many years ago people […]
Cameras in nursing homes: Bill advances after close vote
A Senate health committee narrowly passed a bill this week that promotes the use of cameras in rooms of residents of long-term care facilities to prevent neglect or abuse. The split vote reflected the panel’s vigorous debate over the differences between cameras that are hidden, and those that would be visible and known to the […]
Hospitals, nursing homes first in line as COVID vaccine coming soon
Georgia expects to receive several hundred thousand doses of COVID vaccines this month for its initial distribution, the state’s top public health official said Tuesday. The first groups to get shots will be health care workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities, said the commissioner, Dr. Kathleen Toomey, at a news conference at […]
The good news on Moderna’s vaccine trial resonates in Atlanta
“Relief. Excitement. Hope. A fantastic day for all of us.’’ That’s how Dr. Colleen Kelley of Emory University School of Medicine described her reaction to preliminary results announced Monday by the biotech company Moderna about its COVID-19 candidate vaccine. The Massachusetts-based company said its clinical trial has shown the vaccine to be apparently 94.5 percent effective against the […]