Coverage of health policy in Texas -- Medicaid and HHSC rules, hospital and insurance regulation, public health, and the agencies that oversee care.
A home health aide, hospice worker or personal-care attendant whom state investigators conclude has abused, neglected or exploited a client would have to be suspended by their employer until every appeal is exhausted, under a rewrite of the licensing rules for Texas home care agencies that the Health and Human Services Commission published Sept. 18.
Texas health officials want a handbook they can rewrite at any time, without notice or public comment, to carry the force of law over the agencies that care for Texans who are both deaf and blind.
A coalition of North Texas hospitals has handed out more than 22,000 bottles of over-the-counter iron to pregnant women, and the region's blood transfusion rate has fallen.
The council that sits atop Texas' health and human services agencies meets Sept. 17 to hear what a coming federal food-stamp penalty could cost the state.
The Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists meets Sept. 17 on a rejected license application and an enforcement case that went to a state hearings judge.
The board that certifies every respiratory therapist in Texas meets Sept. 17 to take up two sets of changes to its own rulebook.
Texas would bar a behavior analyst from letting artificial intelligence help write a child’s therapy plan unless the family signed off first — and would forbid the analyst from ever letting the software make the call alone.
The state board created to cut what Texas pays for prescription drugs meets Sept. 16 with roughly $119 million of its $150 million carrying no planned use and the law that created it set to expire next September.
Texas has withdrawn the increase it sought in its largest Medicaid hospital payment program and cut the rate it pays, telling federal officials on Sept. 9 and 10 that it would hold the program to $9,148,763,142 rather than the $9,254,513,046 it had written into its application — a difference of about $105.7 million that will not reach Texas hospitals this year.
Texas has received federal approval to give households in 16 counties more time to request replacement food benefits lost during Tropical Storm Edouard, Gov. Greg Abbott announced in a Sept. 11 news release.
A Texan who wants to know which Medicaid health plan the state has fined, and for what, can go to the page the Health and Human Services Commission built for exactly that purpose.
The Texas House Subcommittee on Maternal Health, Menopause, and Access to Evidence-Based Medicine will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 in Capitol Extension room E2.030 for its first hearing, taking invited testimony only on two interim charges: whether iron and other essential supplements should reach more pregnant Texans, and whether the Healthy Texas Women program is working.
The Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee has published the state’s first set of nutritional guidelines, offering Texans six plain-language recommendations for building healthier meals.
The Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners will meet Sept. 11 to consider picking one of its own licensees for the state council that actually writes the rules governing social work — a seat that sits empty on the council's posted roster.