It's more common for people in rural areas to die earlier than urban residents from things like heart disease, cancer and stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But hospitals have closed throughout rural America in the last decade, leaving some of the 46 million people who live in these areas fewer options to get the care they need when they need it.
In research recently published in Nature Medicine, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Jianxi Gao, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, and his team measured the resilience and adaptability of our health care system to disruptions caused by COVID-19. Resilience is a system's ability to absorb and recover from disruptions. Adaptability is a system's ability to learn from previous disturbances where there are recurrent disruptions. ...
"We found that our health care systems in the United States exhibit substantial adaptability, but only a moderate level of resilience," said Gao. "Our findings can inform the design of resilient and sustainable health care systems to prepare for future disruptions, whether they are caused by pandemics, climate change, conflicts, or anything else."
A Tennessee jury has awarded a former research scientist at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee $687,000 in back pay and damages after she was fired in 2021 for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
Following a three-day jury trial in Chattanooga last week, a federal jury decided BlueCross failed to provide reasonable accommodation for Tanja Benton, who did most of her work from home and claimed a religious exemption to the company's vaccine mandate.
