Updated: Aug. 17, 2019 at 4:37 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
In 2017, Virginia passed a law allowing some localities to launch needle exchange programs, an attempt to prevent the spread of infectious diseases like hepatitis C and HIV.
Updated: Aug. 14, 2019 at 12:21 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Virginia’s psychiatric hospitals are dangerously full.
Updated: Aug. 8, 2019 at 11:51 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Earlier this week the “30-50 feral hogs” meme swarmed the internet, an unexpected by-product of the nationwide gun debate.
Updated: Jul. 3, 2019 at 3:26 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Virginia’s population might grow over the next decade, but it could be slower than it’s been in the past, according to population projections by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Updated: Jul. 2, 2019 at 6:10 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Virginia’s Medicaid agency on Monday outlined its strategy to meet Gov. Ralph Northam’s announced goal to end the racial disparity in maternal mortality by 2025.
Updated: Jun. 27, 2019 at 11:29 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The one million immigrants in Virginia make up 12.5 percent of the state population.
Updated: Jun. 25, 2019 at 10:32 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
From 2009 to 2013, the most recent year data was available, 66 percent of pregnancy-related deaths for black women were due to natural causes, compared to 45 percent for white women.
Updated: Jun. 21, 2019 at 12:40 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
President Donald Trump’s administration is currently considering changing how the federal poverty line is calculated, which could mean thousands in Virginia might lose access to medical and food assistance programs.
Updated: Jun. 17, 2019 at 10:35 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
While the number of gun-related homicides has crept down in the past three years the number of gun-related suicides has been slowly rising since 1999.
Updated: Jun. 4, 2019 at 7:19 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Social workers are trying to protect kids, but separating them from their parents is traumatizing, even if it’s for their own safety.
Updated: Jun. 3, 2019 at 8:13 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
About 70,000 children are in the care of their grandparents in Virginia.
Updated: May. 28, 2019 at 8:55 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
With 48 beds, the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents has been forced to adjust to the reality that more children and teens are being admitted for treatment involuntarily through temporary detention orders.
Updated: Apr. 16, 2019 at 12:22 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The bill states that a person is guilty of felony homicide if they manufactured, sell, gift or distribute drugs that cause a fatal overdose.
Updated: Apr. 8, 2019 at 10:07 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
So far, Virginia has been spared from the blossoming measles outbreaks that have spread to 15 states
Updated: Mar. 14, 2019 at 10:24 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
In 2017, Virginia clinicians provided $747 million worth of wasteful services to patients, according to the Virginia Center for Health Innovation.
Updated: Mar. 11, 2019 at 11:11 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The pilot program pays for long-acting reversible contraception, a category that includes intrauterine devices and implants, for women who make 250 percent or less of the federal poverty level.
Updated: Mar. 7, 2019 at 12:56 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
In the 2018 fiscal year, there were nearly 12,000 substantiated cases of abuse, neglect or exploitation of elderly or disabled adults.
Updated: Mar. 5, 2019 at 10:27 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
A bill is on the governor's desk that reduces the sales tax on personal hygiene products.
Updated: Feb. 27, 2019 at 1:48 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
On Tuesday, eight of the state’s 10 psychiatric facilities were operating at 95 percent capacity or above, according to data from the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
Updated: Feb. 18, 2019 at 12:08 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Every year, the refrain from Virginia lawmakers about health insurance is the same: It’s too expensive and prices in the individual market especially are out of control.
Updated: Feb. 18, 2019 at 10:34 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Like a school of fish in a sea of predators, many of the hundreds of bills filed during every General Assembly session fail to advance to even a floor vote, never mind the governor’s desk.
Updated: Feb. 11, 2019 at 1:03 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Both boards have decided to issue guidance documents because they typically become effective faster, whereas changing regulations can take 18 to 24 months.
Updated: Feb. 4, 2019 at 7:36 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Every week, Virginia Mercury will bring you a sampling of the legislation left on the cutting room floor, either failing to report or done in by other genteel euphemisms of the legislature: “gently laid on the table” or “passed by indefinitely.”
Updated: Feb. 1, 2019 at 8:00 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
A bill would prohibit a health plan from denying coverage that they’d otherwise provide because a person’s sex assigned at birth or gender identity is different from "the one to which such health services are ordinarily or exclusively available."
Updated: Jan. 24, 2019 at 9:53 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The legislation received support from not only Altria, the Richmond-based tobacco giant, but also from a lineup of medical groups, including the Medical Society of Virginia, the Virginia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Virginia Nurses Association.
Updated: Jan. 18, 2019 at 4:28 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The subcommittee’s four Republicans voted against the bill, outnumbering the two Democrats.
Updated: Jan. 17, 2019 at 10:53 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Some Republican senators suggested that, while they aren’t in favor of a tax, their plastic bag politics may be changing.
Updated: Jan. 12, 2019 at 8:09 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The shortfall is mostly rooted in the state’s overly optimistic estimate of how much money it would save by putting its most expensive members into a new health plan, called Commonwealth Coordinated Care Plus.
Updated: Jan. 8, 2019 at 12:55 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The certificate is a regulation meant to control the number of medical facilities and services available in designated regions.
Updated: Dec. 17, 2018 at 4:38 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Needle exchanges have only been legal in Virginia for about 18 months, and in another year and a half the law legalizing them is due to expire.
Updated: Dec. 13, 2018 at 5:14 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The new rules would redefine which “waters of the U.S.” are protected under the Clean Water Act
Updated: Dec. 5, 2018 at 5:35 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The committee, known as the Deeds Commission, made several recommendations aimed at the flood of patients arriving at state psychiatric hospitals under temporary detention orders.
Updated: Dec. 3, 2018 at 11:46 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Traci Jones doesn’t know exactly how many temporary-detention orders she’s received.
Updated: Nov. 30, 2018 at 11:22 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
For the first time in a decade, the number of children without health insurance rose nationally in 2017, a new report shows.
Updated: Nov. 27, 2018 at 8:53 AM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The Department of Medical Assistance Services submitted its waiver — which allows states to make changes to their Medicaid programs — to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Updated: Nov. 12, 2018 at 5:01 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The connection between health and housing — it’s tough to be healthy if you do not have a safe place to sleep — has been well known for years.
Updated: Nov. 8, 2018 at 2:24 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Chesterfield County Sheriff Karl Leonard sees firsthand the devastation that the ongoing opioid epidemic wreaks in his county, as more and more people enter his jail with an addiction and a hepatitis C infection.
Updated: Nov. 5, 2018 at 1:20 PM EST
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Chesterfield County Sheriff Karl Leonard sees firsthand the devastation that the ongoing opioid epidemic wreaks in his county, as more and more people enter his jail with an addiction and a hepatitis C infection.
Updated: Nov. 1, 2018 at 11:40 AM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
The exchange, also known as a comprehensive harm reduction program, has only been open twice a week since mid-October.
Updated: Oct. 24, 2018 at 2:57 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Doctors’ incentive is quantity — like the number of scans or blood tests they order — rather than the quality of the care they provide the patient.
Updated: Oct. 17, 2018 at 3:23 PM EDT
|By Katie O'Connor | Virginia Mercury
Under threats from lawmakers, who promised they would solve surprise balance billing themselves if hospitals and health plans couldn’t agree, a working group representing different sides of the debate has met all summer to find a mutually agreeable fix.