Health Care and Medicine

For the third straight year, the North Liberty-based Iowa Donor Network has been designated a “tier 1 organ procurement organization” -- placing it among just 15 of 56 such organizations nationally to achieve the top designation.

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids recommends that men and women undergo a colonoscopy beginning at the age of 45, a new screening guideline.

“As a part of her top-down, bottom-up audit of victim assistance, Attorney General Bird is carefully evaluating whether this is an appropriate use of public funds,” Bird Press Secretary Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement. “Until that review is complete, payment of these pending claims will be delayed.”

Iowa is in a shrinking minority of states that do not offer coverage under Medicaid to new mothers for 12 months after they give birth, and lawmakers are not likely to extend the coverage this year.

Major medical groups in the United States -- including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics — say gender-affirming care is safe and encourage it as a treatment for gender dysphoria, which is when people feel like they are a different gender than their birth gender.

In March 2022, a Johnson County jury awarded more than $97.4 million to the family of a boy who sustained serious brain damage during his birth at an Iowa City hospital. The award, believed to be the largest medical malpractice judgment in Iowa history, was later reduced to $75.6 million.

Video visits are an increasingly common way for residents of small-town nursing homes to receive mental health care.

Following Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signing of a new law banning gender-affirming care, families with transgender children are searching for answers.

The state agency that oversees Iowa’s nursing homes has again failed to impose the legally mandated fines against a repeat-offender care facility.

Best practice for K-12 schools is to offer one psychologist per 500 students, but Iowa is far lacking — at one per 1,900 students, with its outlook “worsening,” according to the National Association of School Psychologists.

UI agreed to implement training and pay over $16,000 to resolve claims that X-rays submitted to Medicare didn’t meet requirements of having an attending physician review them.

Moody’s Investors Service again has downgraded Mercy Iowa City Hospital’s credit rating following “severe cash flow deterioration, from historically weak levels, which has resulted in material and rapid cash burn.”