Of all the tales of restraints gone wrong I heard while reporting this story on Texas special education students, this one is the worst:
Health care
In-depth reporting on public health, healthcare policy, hospitals, and wellness issues shaping communities across Texas, from The Texas Tribune.
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Health care
Student Restraints Day 2: How Texas school districts compare
Texas school districts vary widely in how often they physically restrain students with disabilities – despite a shared state policy on when to use them. Use this interactive graphic to see how school districts compared during the 2007-08 school year, the most recent statewide data available.
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Demographics
Poll: What Texans are worried about
The economy clearly leads Texans’ list of concerns about the country in the inaugural University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
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Health care
Disabled students restrained, injured in public schools
Texas educators routinely pin down students with disabilities to control them, according to state data. Disability rights advocates say the restraints point to a crisis in special education, and that teachers are resorting to physical violence because they aren’t properly trained.
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Health care
Rat Race
A bill lawmakers passed to prevent doctors and attorneys from so-called “ambulance chasing” faces a constitutional challenge from — who else? — a chiropractor and a lawyer.
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Health care
Best-Laid Plans
It’s hard to believe the governor saw this coming. When Rick Perry decided to replace the a board on the eve of a hearing about the evidence that sent a Texas man to the executioner, he couldn’t have been thinking the story would grow legs and stomp all around his bid for reelection.
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Demographics
Keeping Count
Texas should create a committee to promote participation in the 2010 U.S. Census, state Rep. Mike Villarreal told Gov. Rick Perry in a letter Tuesday.
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Health care
Is there a doctor on the line?
Emergency medical technicians and entry-level nurses could be cut out of the telemedicine equation under a proposal the Texas Medical Board is considering. The change would prohibit anyone but doctors, physicians’ assistants and advanced practice nurses from presenting patients for care via long-distance videoconferencing – a move rural hospitals and prison doctors adamantly oppose.
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Health care
Changing the Odds
Signing anti-tax pledges — as both of the leading Republican candidates for governor have now done — warms the hearts of gambling promoters. Not because Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison suddenly become proponents of casino gambling, but because gambling often gets stuck in a threesome with program cuts and tax increases and that setup is what made it legal to bet on bingo, horses, dogs, and the lottery in Texas.
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Economy
States struggling to fund Medicaid
States are struggling mightily to fund Medicaid services in one the deepest recessions in recent history, according to a 50-state health care study released by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. States, many of them strapped by budget shortfalls, overwhelmingly reported being saved by the federal stimulus package, and said without it, they would have been forced to make serious cuts in Medicaid eligibility.