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What stories grabbed you in 2019? NC Health News most-read stories of the year

December 30, 2019 by Editor

What stories grabbed you in 2019? NC Health News most-read stories of the year - North Carolina Health News

What piqued your interest this year? We review which stories grabbed peoples' attention, got passed around and shared widely.

By NC Health News Staff Lessons from Abroad: How Europeans tackled opioid addiction and what the U.S. could learn from them. For years, NC Health News has reported on the drug-related deaths, diseases and losses that have resulted from the opioid crisis. Life expectancy in the United States has dropped for two years in a […]

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House budget override narrows path to Medicaid expansion

September 12, 2019 by Rose Hoban

House budget override narrows path to Medicaid expansion - North Carolina Health News

The path for North Carolina to extend health insurance benefits to low-income workers was always rough, but events at the legislature Wednesday made the path rockier.

By Rose Hoban In a dramatic turn of events early Wednesday morning, House Republicans successfully held a vote to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the state budget when few Democrats were in the chamber to vote against the measure. (See box.) The vote means now the budget override moves to the Senate chamber, where […]

A graphic with money in the background. Medicaid transformation graphic, prepaid health plan, medicaid expansion

Legislative funding proposal needed to facilitate Medicaid changeover

August 26, 2019 by Rose Hoban

Legislative funding proposal needed to facilitate Medicaid changeover - North Carolina Health News

In order for Medicaid to shift to managed care later this year, the General Assembly needs to pass legislation and fund it. But the proposal contains a poison pill for the Department of Health and Human Services.

By Rose Hoban For the past eight weeks, Gov. Roy Cooper and the General Assembly have been locked in a budget stalemate largely over the governor’s desire to expand the Medicaid program to cover an estimated additional half million people, while the Republican majority in the legislature have staunchly refused to move on the question. […]

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North Carolina continues to slow creation of beds for dementia patients

August 8, 2019 by Emily Davis

North Carolina continues to slow creation of beds for dementia patients - North Carolina Health News

A reader wrote to NC Health News after noticing the ongoing moratorium on new beds in Alzheimer's special care units in the 2019 legislative budgets. What’s the rationale behind the moratorium, and what does it mean?

By Emily Davis North Carolina is greying, and with it, more people are predicted to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, approximately 170,000 people lived with Alzheimer’s disease in North Carolina in 2018. This statistic is projected to increase by 23.5 percent in 2025, to a total of […]

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Mental health providers, small MD offices look for delay on electronic records

May 23, 2019 by Rose Hoban

Mental health providers, small MD offices look for delay on electronic records - North Carolina Health News

A looming deadline to connect to the state’s growing health information exchange has had small practices scrambling - and hoping the legislature would give them a reprieve.

By Rose Hoban The deadline is awfully close. By law, June 1 is the day for most of the state’s hospitals, physician’s offices, mental health providers and others to be hooked into the state’s growing health information exchange, known as NC Health Connex. But for many small physicians’ offices and mental health providers that deadline […]

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Nursing students ready to go to rural NC, but need more autonomy

April 4, 2019 by Taylor Knopf

Nursing students ready to go to rural NC, but need more autonomy - North Carolina Health News

This year’s nursing advocacy day at the General Assembly was a display of the number and breadth of nursing practice in North Carolina.

By Taylor Knopf A sea of white coats descended on the state capital Wednesday as more than a thousand nursing students from around the state came to push lawmakers on some of the biggest health care issues of this legislative work session. The main talking points during the N.C. Nurses Association’s “2019 Nurses Day at […]

Mental health providers, others ask for delay to electronic health record requirement

March 13, 2019 by Rose Hoban

Mental health providers, others ask for delay to electronic health record requirement - North Carolina Health News

June 1 is the date for many psychiatrists, counselors, drug treatment centers and others to be hooked up to the state’s health information exchange.

By Rose Hoban As North Carolina quickly moves toward transforming Medicaid from a state-paid system to one run by managed care companies, lawmakers have been pushing providers to get their health records into electronic form. Now, as deadlines loom, some of those providers are pushing back. While most hospital systems and large clinics and physician […]

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Advanced practice nurses press legislature for autonomy from MD supervision

February 28, 2019 by Rose Hoban

Advanced practice nurses press legislature for autonomy from MD supervision - North Carolina Health News

This year, the nurses have some powerful allies, and perhaps timing, favoring their quest for more independence.

By Rose Hoban Debbie Varnam runs a busy primary care practice in the Brunswick County town of Shallotte. The town is small enough that her 2,500 or so patients at Seaside Wellness make up a sizable portion of the town. Varnam says she’s also got a collegial relationship with other practitioners in the area, including […]

NC Health Policy and Trends to Watch For in 2019 – Part 2

January 2, 2019 by Editor

NC Health Policy and Trends to Watch For in 2019 – Part 2 - North Carolina Health News

We asked our reporters to take a look in their cloudy crystal balls and tell us what might be the big issues to follow in the coming year. Today, we look ahead to environmental health and legislative issues and the future of Medicaid.

By Greg Barnes, Sarah Ovaska-Few & Rose Hoban Environmental health issues will continue to make headlines At N.C. Health News, environmental health reporting promises to start the New Year where it left off in 2018. GenX, the environmental story that dominated the headlines last year, will be back in the news by early January, […]

shows a red cross with the word Medicaid printed on it, in front of a pile of dollar bills. For Medicaid transformation

Medicaid Changes Get Thumbs Up, as State Pushes Forward with Managed Care

October 26, 2018 by Sarah Ovaska

Medicaid Changes Get Thumbs Up, as State Pushes Forward with Managed Care - North Carolina Health News

The plan includes looking hard at social problems that keep people from being healthy and integrates solutions to those problems into plans.

By Sarah Ovaska-Few North Carolina’s Medicaid overhaul cleared a major hurdle this week with the federal government giving an official nod to plans to switch to a managed-care system. Approval by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in what’s known as a Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver means the N.C. Department of Health and […]

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