A national study released today ranks nearly every county in Texas — and in the rest of the country — by mortality and morbidity rates, and the health factors that contribute to them.
Department of State Health Services
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Health care
TribBlog: Growing Number of Physicians Use e-Records
The number of Texas physicians who use electronic medical records has been on the rise for the last four years, according to a Texas Medical Association study.
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Economy
TribBlog: HHSC Making The Cut
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has released its best bets for how to meet the 5 percent budget reduction requested by Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders.
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Health care
This Might Hurt: A Dose of Politics
Immunization advocates want to expand our vaccination database, but the well-educated, middle-class parents who oppose them are organized and driven — and could force lawmakers to take sides in the tussle between personal freedom and public health.
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Health care
This Might Hurt
Advocates for vaccination records say a complete registry of shots would help the state navigate major health crises. Opponents say it would jeopardize patient privacy. Lawmakers like the potential cost savings, but they still aren’t sure where they stand.
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Health care
Paperless Medicine: Training the eWorkforce
If doctors in Texas are going to start using electronic medical records, somebody has to teach them how to do it. The state’s universities are gearing up to teach the teachers.
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Health care
Paperless Medicine?
Three challenges stand between Texas and the era of electronic medical records: convincing doctors to use them, figuing out how to safely share and protect them and finding a way to pay for them.
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Health care
Barack and a Hard Place
Two very different Texans in the U.S. House of Representatives — Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, and John Carter, R-Round Rock — respond to the president’s State of the Union address.
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Health care
Abuse of Power: One Family’s Fight
With each day that passes, David Nicholson fears that the man who killed his profoundly disabled brother will join the ranks of state school workers who are never convicted for their heinous acts.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Abuse of Power
State employees who commit heinous acts against Texas’ most profoundly disabled citizens rarely get charged with crimes, let alone go to jail. A Texas Tribune review of a decade’s worth of abuse and neglect firings at state institutions found that just 16 percent of the most violent or negligent employees were ever charged with crimes.