By Michelle Crouch From SouthPark to Steele Creek, Mountain Island Lake to Waxhaw, sleek and efficient freestanding emergency rooms are springing up across the Charlotte region to serve patients, no hospital required. Since 2010, Atrium Health has opened eight standalone emergency rooms in the Charlotte metro area, part of a nationwide building boom. Two more […]
Posted inCharlotte Ledger
Urgent Care? Hospital ED? Freestanding ED?
By Michelle Crouch With urgent cares, freestanding emergency rooms and special orthopedic and behavioral centers opening across the state, deciding where to go for a medical emergency is more complicated than it used to be, when the hospital ER was the only option. Doctors said they often get calls from friends and family members asking […]
Posted inMental Health
The impact of legalized sports betting on college athletes, gamblers and North Carolina
By Jessica Walker UNC Media Hub The student-athletes on UNC-Chapel Hill’s baseball team have received negative messages from fans expecting certain performances before. But now that sports betting is legal in North Carolina, as of March 11, the messages and pressure from sports bettors may increase. Carter Hicks, the baseball director of player and program […]
Posted inOral Health
Making a case for oral health care and more access to dentists
By Anne Blythe If a group of dentists, policymakers and health care analysts got their way, North Carolina would do some revamping of its oral health care infrastructure to make routine cleanings and preventative care more accessible to hundreds of thousands of people. If routine dental care were more accessible to large segments of the […]
Posted inSubstance Use
Parents of overdose victims press lawmakers for better Good Samaritan laws
By Jennifer Fernandez GREENSBORO — Randy Abbott lost his daughter to a drug overdose in 2015. No one called for help in time. Diannee Carden’s son died from a heroin overdose in 2012. No one called for help in time. As North Carolina continues to lose more people to overdoses every year — a record […]
Posted inMental Health
Planting the seeds for a care farm to help people with mental health needs
By Rose Hoban The impulse to retreat to nature to improve and sustain one’s mental health has a long history — from the times of Hippocrates, who’s often credited with saying “nature is the physician of diseases,” to Henry David Thoreau who voyaged into the woods to “live deep and suck out all the marrow […]