Health Care and Medicine

Knowledge is power for family members, for communities, for health care providers, and for the men and women — sons and daughters, moms and dads, brothers and sisters — battling drug addiction and the mental health challenges involved.

Federal legal protections added in the 1980s to shield vaccine manufacturers from most lawsuits would be waived any time a vaccine is administered in Iowa under legislation that was advanced Wednesday by Republican state lawmakers.

A U.S. District Court judge on Monday dismissed MercyOne’s appeal of a liquidation plan for the bankrupt Mercy Iowa City hospital it managed for years -- a plan MercyOne opposed, in part, because it left the Des Moines-based health care system exposed to potential lawsuits.

Congressional leaders are moving to overturn the federal government’s new nursing home staffing mandates as part of a larger effort to cut Medicaid and other forms of government spending.

“I thank my mother for finding the physician,” he said. “Of course, I was involved with that whole process of finding a surgeon, going and meeting them, and asking them about the operation and the alternatives and getting second opinions. And the decision was left up to me, ultimately, of whether or not to get surgery.”

It's the first death in an outbreak that began late last month and the first from measles in the U.S. since 2015.

The legislation would work to address the shortage of physicians -- especially in rural areas of the state -- by consolidating and boosting funding in doctors’ loan repayment programs and increasing the number of medical residencies in Iowa

With Iowa maintaining the second-highest rate and fastest-growing rate of new cancers nationally, advancements in treatment has its count of cancer survivors up in the state to 171,535 in 2025 — up from 168,610 in 2024.

In the year since taking over Iowa City’s bankrupt Mercy Hospital and transitioning the 78-year-old facility into its new downtown campus, University of Iowa Health Care has not completed a comprehensive review of staff badge access, “increasing the risk of unauthorized entry,” according to an internal audit made public this week.

A statewide surge in influenza cases has hit hard in Eastern Iowa, with 11 Linn County schools and two Johnson County schools reporting that at least 10 percent of their students were out sick in one week, according to the most recent weekly data released by the state Health and Human Services department. But local healthcare experts say we could already be on the other side of the spike.

Collection agents for the state of Iowa have sent letters seeking millions of dollars from the estates of at least two people with disabilities who died after spending most of their lives in a state institution.

Iowa has the fastest-growing rate of new cancers and ranks second-highest in cancer rates compared with other states. That has caught the attention of some Iowa lawmakers, who are aiming to address the problem with proposed legislation.