Stephen Matthew Shumaker counted on in-home, in-person demonstrations to drive his water filtration business, which serves the Atlanta area. So when covid-19 hit and no one was inviting people indoors, he turned to the air-cleaning part of his operation. He sent cards in the mail advertising air purifiers using “ActivePure” technology to new homeowners: “KILL…
The care was ordinary. A hospital in Modesto, California, treated a 30-year-old man for shoulder and back pain after a car accident. He went home in less than three hours. The bill was extraordinary. Sutter Health Memorial Medical Center charged $44,914 including an $8,928 “trauma alert” fee, billed for summoning the hospital’s top surgical specialists…
Dr. Kingsley R. Chin was little more than a decade out of Harvard Medical School when sales of his spine surgical implants took off. Chin has patented more than 40 pieces of such hardware, including doughnut-shaped plastic cages, titanium screws and other products used to repair spines — generating $100 million for his company SpineFrontier,…
The pandemic has highlighted poor care in America’s nursing homes, where nearly 175,000 people have died of covid-19 — a third of all deaths from the disease nationwide. Even before the pandemic, patient advocates pointed to dangerous conditions in U.S. nursing homes, including staffing shortages and infection control failures. Many nursing homes didn’t provide quality care, they charged. Studies have found that…
With all of the money that has been going out the door as a result of COVID, many are asking what, if any collaborate efforts will be undertaken by the law enforcement communities? The answer is going to lay with the Offices of Inspectors’ General (collectively known as the OIGs). As part of the recent…
In 1993, Dr. David Silber, a dentist now practicing in Plano, Texas, was fired from the first dental clinic he worked for. He’d been assigned to a patient another dentist had scheduled for a crown preparation — a metal or porcelain cap for a broken or decayed tooth. However, Silber found nothing wrong with the…
Two national pharmacy chains that the federal government entrusted to inoculate people against covid-19 account for the lion’s share of wasted vaccine doses, according to government data obtained by KHN. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 182,874 wasted doses as of late March, three months into the country’s effort to vaccinate the masses…
Investors who own large shares of nursing home companies now are demanding that the operators improve staff working conditions and the quality of care.
Patricia Denny and her husband, Jeff, had hoped to one day get an RV and travel the country. Instead, Jeff has been forced into retirement at age 54 by a lung disease caused by the asbestos that’s polluted the small town of Libby, Montana, for decades. Jeff Denny’s lungs are damaged from the asbestos he…
A Humana Inc. health plan for seniors in Florida improperly collected nearly $200 million in 2015 by overstating how sick some patients were, according to a new federal audit, which seeks to claw back the money. The Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s recommendation to repay, if finalized, would be “by far the largest” audit…