Health Care and Medicine

In 2023, the total number of Iowans who died by suicide dropped from 581 to 496 — a success that researchers are trying to determine how to replicate. However, the portion of those suicide victims who were teenagers increased from 3.1 percent to 5.2 percent, or around 18 teen suicides in 2022, to 26 in 2023, according to data from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.

“I was trying not to cry. Her dad was trying not to freak out,” mom Ashley Huebner said. “I’m like, I can’t let her see that I’m upset. So they took the bed out of the room, I walked with her down the hall, and the next thing I know the doors were there. And then they took her.”

Disability rights advocates hope Iowa will honor them by preventing the kind of neglect that has plagued similar cemeteries at other shuttered facilities around the country.

In Iowa, and across the country, ambulance services have been struggling to attract and retain staff. Data from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services shows that the number of certified EMTs in the state has decreased every year since 2018. But ambulance service professionals have been working to reverse that trend, and changes made to state law in 2021 may have been the first step in the right direction.

Just months ahead of opening its new $525.6 million hospital in North Liberty, University of Iowa Health Care is ramping up hiring for the 469,000-square-foot campus — promoting “innovative opportunities” across a range of disciplines in the new state-of-the-art facility.

Melissa Bates, 2024 Iowa Innovator of the Year, is set to launch a new respiratory device to ‘revolutionize’ lung health monitoring.

There has been a 38 percent decrease in abortions performed in the state since the implementation of Iowa’s six-week abortion ban, according to a report published Thursday.

Open house Saturday at ER that will begin seeing patients Dec. 2

The Iowa Supreme Court has reversed a $97.4 million verdict against an OBGYN clinic in Coralville — undoing what was believed to be the largest medical malpractice judgment for a birth trauma in state history — and ordered a new trial.

Surgeons are utilizing cutting edge technology, pain management methods and postoperative recovery plans to get patients back on their feet quicker with outpatient surgery.

Volpara Risk Pathways is described as a state-of-the-art assessment tool that identifies women who may be at elevated risk for breast cancer, and Mercy Cedar Rapids is the first hospital in the area to offer it.

For people with diabetes, blindness can be a real threat. Because serious eye disease can be present with few symptoms or even none at all, people with diabetes should have a thorough eye exam at least once a year.