Best Practices

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. A key congressional committee asked insurance giant Cigna on Tuesday to provide corporate documents so that lawmakers can examine the company’s practice of denying health care claims without ever opening a patient file. The House Committee on Energy...

More than $50 billion in settlement funds is being delivered to thousands of state and local governments from companies accused of flooding their communities with opioid painkillers that have left millions addicted or dead. That’s an enormous amount of money — double NASA’s budget and five times the revenue of an NBA season. But how that massive windfall is being deployed and how future dollars...

I have a friend, a very smart fellow, who early in the pandemic began masking. At the time, masks were not being recommended by health authorities, let alone mandated. I didn’t think much about his decision. It didn’t affect me. I was what you might call a mask agnostic. Perhaps masks were beneficial, perhaps not. As the pandemic continued, however, I found myself more and more in the “anti-mask...

It takes around 17 years for medical research to translate into clinical practice. shapecharge/E+ via Getty Images ~~~~~~~~~~ Scientific knowledge, as measured by numbers of papers published, has been estimated to double every 17.3 years. However, it takes an average of about 17 years for health and medical research – going from basic lab studies on cell cultures and animals to clinical trials...

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Series: Uncovered - How the Insurance Industry Denies Coverage to Patients When a stubborn pain in Nick van Terheyden’s bones would not subside, his doctor had a hunch what was wrong. Without enough vitamin D in the blood, the body will pull that...

To crack down on price gouging, proposed legislation in Missouri calls for allowing felony charges against health care staffing agencies that substantially raise their prices during a declared emergency. A New York bill includes a cap on the amount staffing agencies can charge health care facilities. And a Texas measure would allow civil penalties against such agencies. These proposed...