Parkland has until November to fix its discharge policy and governing board, or the hospital will lose its Medicare funding, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced today. On the plus side, Parkland isn’t placing patients who dare visit the hospital in jeopardy anymore, according to the feds. “We…
The VA Hospital system has taken a beating in the last several months. Between the Arizona scandal unearthed this spring about veterans dying while waiting for care and continued reports of absurdly long wait times — this summer, the average veteran in Texas waited 60 days for an appointment, compared…
Todd Arko relapsed to using cocaine when he was still on probation for possessing the drug, then decided he would rather die than go back to jail. At the age of 53, he tried to hang himself. The rope broke, crushing his heels as he collapsed to the ground. Arko…
It’s a nice clinic, it really is. With more space and amenities, it’s a credit to the private donors who payed for it and continue to fuel Planned Parenthood’s response to the Texas Legislature’s crackdown on abortion. It’s just unnecessary. The large janitor’s closet, the backup generator, the locker rooms,…
Parkland’s psychiatric services division has been getting a hell of a lot of bad press lately, and it continues today, with reports that an elderly woman in Parkland’s psych wing ended up with broken bones after she claims she was forced out of her wheelchair. Earlier this week, the Center…
On September 1 the most stringent portion of House Bill 2, the anti-abortion legislation passed by the Texas Legislature last year, is scheduled to go into effect. Any healthcare clinic in the state that provides abortions will be required to be an ambulatory surgical center. If the rule takes effect,…
She was recovering in a postpartum room at Baylor University Medical Center this spring, exhausted from giving birth, when her husband gave her the good news. “We got the placenta,” he told her. “It’s in the cooler.” Now she just had to get it off the hospital property without being…
The homeless man identified only as Patient No. 5 was in a wheelchair, recovering from a suicide attempt and three broken bones when Parkland Memorial Hospital staff discharged him to a homeless shelter. He didn’t want to go. “The patient stated he did not feel safe going to the shelter…
A state study released yesterday found that from 2002 to 2011, the female breast cancer rate for Flower Mound residents was significantly higher than surrounding areas.Even better? Officials have no idea why. Last April, after allegations of a faulty previous study, the Department of State Health Services agreed to conduct…
The number of abortions being performed in Texas has dropped moderately, clinics offering abortions are vanishing rapidly and women seeking abortions must travel much farther to get an abortion, according to almost 18 months of data compiled by researchers looking at the effects of Texas’ passage of some of the…
In 2011, there were 44 abortion clinics in Texas. By September, providers expect that number to drop to somewhere around six. While big-name health organizations like Planned Parenthood are trying to open new clinics that comply with strict state laws or challenge lawmakers in court, a scrappy protest group Stop…
Forget the measles and chikungunya. If you’ve perused the Children’s Medical Center website in the last few weeks, you know that there’s another, more troubling outbreak threatening to undo us all: selfies. The hospital has devoted itself of late to the psychology of selfies. Doctors there are worried about their…
If you more than glance at the website for NuVision Pharmacy, you might start having second thoughts about having the Dallas-based company compound your pharmaceuticals. Why, you might wonder by looking at the home page, did quality testing have to be expanded to check for endotoxins? Why is the “about…
It all stems from a positive thing, really. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more people have health insurance. A lot more. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, the state’s largest provider of health and accident insurance, picked up 700,000 subscribers during the ACA’s first enrollment period. In the months…
Planned Parenthood plans to open a new clinic in southern Dallas that will meet the stringent requirements imposed on abortion providers by the state of Texas, ensuring that Dallas has at least one clinic that can perform abortions under the new rules. The regulations, which were passed in the Wendy…
Future Texas Governor Greg Abbott hates nothing more than he hates abortions, Planned Parenthood and other women’s-health-related things, leading the Texas Democratic Party to describe him as “public enemy number one for women in Texas.” But now, in a major national fight pitting women’s health advocates against a corporate giant,…
For Ofa and Rex Clark of Allen, the typical newbie parent worries were multiplied by five on June 17 with the birth of their three daughters and two sons: The third set to arrive at Parkland Hospital in the hospital’s history. The babies — Vianca, Alessandra, Perrin, Noah and Scarlett…
Dallas County Health Director Zachary Thompson gathered the media on Monday to address reports, from Unfair Park and others, that there was a federal investigation into the department’s use of funding designed to treat people with HIV. To be clear, Dallas County Health Department Director Zach Thompson declared, there is…
Alex Smith is the executive director of the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority, the agency that oversees the North Texas public mental health care system. He’s made his living deciphering the ins and outs of the very messy system here, and is well versed in what it takes to properly…
Related: It Really Sucks to Be Old in Texas Texas’ notoriously porous mental-health system is in the news even more than usual this week. At Parkland, the psychiatric ER is yet again facing allegations of patient abuse. Last weekend, Dallas Police shot and killed Jason Harrison, a 38-year-old severely schizophrenic…
In a national report released yesterday by the AARP, findings rank each state in terms of long term care for the elderly. The report considers such factors as nursing home affordability and accessibility, family support, and quality of life and care. The upshot? It sucks to get old in Texas…
Dr. Austin King runs a private practice out of Abilene, and he’s been seeing veteran patients for years. Recently, one veteran came into the office with a neck cyst. After ordering a biopsy for the man, who is in his 80s, King, who’s president of the Texas Medical Association, ordered…
