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Six states — Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas —  have taken steps to limit inappropriate prescriptions for the medicine and preserve supplies for patients who take it for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
When patients need long-term treatment with intravenous antibiotics, hospitals usually let them manage their treatment at home — but not if they have a history of injection drug use. A Boston program wants to change that.
A parental consent requirement for minors who seek abortions is still on the books in left-leaning Massachusetts, as well as about two dozen other states. But a proposed Massachusetts law seeks to repeal that consent requirement and shore up the right to abortion in case the Supreme Court strikes down the federal right to the procedure.
Public health officials are adopting a law enforcement tool, the mass spectrometer, to instantly identify potentially deadly levels of opioids in local drug supplies.
The calming techniques that officers learn during training to intervene in a mental health crisis don't seem to work as well when a suspect is high on meth. Meth calls can be much more dangerous, police say.
Some physicians say connecting the consequences of climate change — heat waves, more pollen and longer allergy seasons — to health helps them better care for patients.
A new report by the inspector general for HHS shows prescriptions to treat opioid addiction are way up in recent years, while prescriptions for the painkillers have fallen.
Overdose deaths involving fentanyl are soaring, says a new study from the CDC.
WBUR and other media organizations sued Purdue Pharma to force the release of previously redacted information in a case brought by the Massachusetts attorney general.
After a 34-year-old woman suffered a stroke in Kansas, doctors there arranged for her to be transferred to a Boston hospital, via an Angel MedFlight Learjet. The woman and her father believed the cost of the medical flight would be covered by her private insurance. Then they got the bill.
The U.S. surgeon general has called on "bystanders" to be equipped with the opioid reversal drug to save lives. But when a nurse answered that call, her application for life insurance was denied. Why?
A woman had twins in a hospital south of Boston, and for doctors aiming to reduce cesarean sections, the second baby's tricky arrival tested the limits of teamwork.
A project that started in a Boston Veterans Affairs facility will soon go nationwide. It puts naloxone, also known as Narcan, into emergency supplies cabinets throughout the VA system.
Medicaid drug spending doubled in five years in Massachusetts. The state wanted to exclude expensive drugs that weren't proven to work better than existing alternatives from its Medicaid plan, but the federal government blocked the effort.
An approach known as Community Reinforcement and Family Training, or CRAFT, coaches families to deal with a loved one's substance abuse with compassion.
The Trump administration says its plan to overhaul the way Medicare pays doctors will save physicians time and paperwork. But critics worry the changes will hurt patients' care and doctors' income.
Patients revived from an opioid overdose who get methadone or Suboxone treatment for addiction afterward are much more likely to be alive a year later, says a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Opioid addiction is often portrayed as a white problem, but overdose rates are now rising faster among Latinos and blacks. Cultural and linguistic barriers may put Latinos at greater risk.
Opioid overdoses and related deaths are still climbing, U.S. statistics show. Teasing out which overdoses are intentional can be hard, but is important for treatment, doctors say.
Doctors prescribed powerful opioids for a patient after back surgery but gave her little guidance on how to take them safely. Then, she says, they misdiagnosed her withdrawal symptoms. Some experts say this situation is akin to a hospital-acquired condition.
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