Georgia officials have pushed back against a federal health agency’s request for more financial information on the state’s insurance waiver plan. A letter dated July 2 says that Georgia’s approach to replace the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare.gov enrollment set-up with a privately run process has already been approved by the feds. The Georgia “Section 1332’’ waiver has…
Frank Berry is retiring after six years of heading the state’s main health care agency. He will be replaced by Gov. Brian Kemp’s deputy chief of staff for operations, Caylee Noggle, who will take over as commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) on July 1. Berry, 55, has been Community Health commissioner…
For years, in rankings of health indicators by state, Georgia typically landed in the high 30s to low 40s. But never at the bottom. The Peach State, though, has been ranked 50th, ahead of only Oklahoma, in a comparison of states and Washington, D.C., on health care for seniors. It follows a Georgia ranking of…
Georgia officials say they’re still working toward a July 1 launch of the waiver plan to add more people to the state’s Medicaid program, despite a harsh initial assessment by the Biden administration. The conflict with the feds involves the eligibility requirements that Georgia proposed and that the Trump administration approved. President Joe Biden, who…
This article first appeared in STAT, which gave Georgia Health News permission to republish it. Photos are by Bethany Mollenkof for STAT. By Olivia Goldhill In every corner of Latasha Taylor’s home are plants she knows nothing about. After years spent shirking her mother’s calls to join her in the yard at sunrise, Taylor now…
One sign of the severity of Georgia’s nurse shortage can be seen in the bonuses offered to experienced RNs to join a hospital workforce. Some health systems in the state are paying bonuses of more than $10,000 to attract nurses. And Piedmont Healthcare, which is rapidly becoming Georgia’s biggest health system, said it has offered bonuses…
Blacks and Latinos in Georgia have significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than whites, a newly released Kaiser Health News analysis shows. Thirty percent of whites in Georgia have had at least one shot, yet they trail another group — Asians, who are at 44 percent. The data were provided to KHN by the CDC in…
By Rebecca Grapevine Last year, as Georgia endured the strain of COVID-19, a blue-ribbon commission quietly held regular meetings about how to improve mental health services in the state. The panel issued its report in January, just as the state Legislature convened in Atlanta for its annual session. The experts had spent over a year…
On any given day, Mercy Care’s facility in Atlanta gets more walk-in traffic from patients seeking dental care than the health center can handle. Getting a behavioral health appointment can take months, and if patients need vision care, they are referred to Mercy Care’s Chamblee facility. The Atlanta safety-net provider is getting an injection of…
A big change in drug treatment for cancer is arriving in Georgia. It’s not a new medication. What’s coming is something known as “white bagging,’’ an insurer tactic involving expensive infusion or injection drugs. And at Crisp Regional Health Services in Cordele, Jennifer Taylor, an oncology nurse practitioner, is concerned about the ultimate effect on patient…