Patient Safety Watchdog Gives Baylor Low Marks

Most of Dallas major hospitals look pretty good in the Hospital Safety Score Survey released this week by the Leapfrog Group, a patient safety watchdog organization. Methodist Charlton Medical Center, Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and UT Southwestern University Hospital all got A’s on their report cards…

Texas Facing Medicaid Crunch

The last thing the state of Texas’ Republican leadership wants to do is give in and accept the Medicaid expansion mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Texas has the highest uninsured population in the country, but no matter how many Texans might receive access to healthcare if the state would…

Tarrant County Plans to Fight Zika With Homemade Kits

Wednesday, Tarrant County announced that it’s identified its second and third Zika virus cases of the winter. One patient traveled recently to Puerto Rico, the other to El Salvador, both of which are currently in the midst of a Zika outbreak. No other identifying information about the patients has been…

Fourth Zika Case Confirmed in Dallas County

A 55-year-old “non-pregnant” patient from DeSoto who traveled recently to El Salvador is the fourth person to test positively for infection with the Zika virus in Dallas County, the county’s Health and Human Services Department said Tuesday. Of the four Dallas cases so far confirmed by the Centers for Disease…

Dallas County to Start Doing Its Own Zika Testing Today

Starting Monday, the waiting will no longer be the hardest part. Thanks in part to lab equipment installed during the fall 2014 Ebola scare, Dallas County will be able to test for the Zika virus at its facilities. Results will be available in as little as 24 hours, rather than…

A Texas Doctor Again Puts on His Hat as Virus Hunter

Dr. Christopher Perkins just started his job as director of Dallas County Health and Human Services in 2012 when an emerging disease took root in Texas. The West Nile virus, spreading across the United States on the wings of mosquitoes, infected hundreds of people in Dallas county — more than…

Four More Being Tested for Possible Zika Virus in Dallas County

Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson confirmed Thursday that four additional individuals were being tested for the Zika virus, following Dallas County’s first two cases of the mosquito-borne virus being discovered Tuesday. The two confirmed cases include one person who recently traveled to Venezuela and another person…

Pair Behind Infamous Planned Parenthood Videos Indicted in Houston

The Center for Medical Progress’ David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the two “reporters” who filmed a video that they said showed a Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast official talking about selling baby parts but actually didn’t, have been indicted in Harris County. Both Daleiden and Merritt are charged with tampering with…

Somehow, Texas Is Still Getting Fatter

In 2012, after two decades of steadily marching skyward, Texas’ obesity rate dropped, from 30.4 percent to 29.2 percent. That hardly made Texas thin, to be sure; the state was still the 19th fattest state in the chubbiest country in human history, but the drop theoretically meant that there were…

More Than 100,000 Texas Women Have Tried to Self-Induce Abortion

Demonstrating the frontier spirit of self-reliance so praised by Texas’ conservative lawmakers, at least 100,000 women have escaped an abortion industry reeling from a law that closed about half the state’s abortion clinics. House Bill 2, the tough anti-abortion bill the Legislature passed in 2013, has left large swaths of the…