Medicine's Most Ignored Organ? Surprise Ob/Gyn Bills; COVID Billionaires Go Bust - Medpage Today

Welcome to the latest variation of Investigative Roundup, highlighting immoderate of the champion investigative reporting connected healthcare each week.

Is This Medicine's Most Ignored Organ?

Medicine's assemblage of cognition astir the clitoris is conspicuously incomplete, the New York Times wrote. Relative ignorance astir this portion of quality anatomy affects not lone intersexual pleasure, but besides intersexual health.

"It's wholly ignored by beauteous overmuch everyone," Rachel Rubin, MD, a urologist and intersexual wellness specializer extracurricular Washington, D.C., told the New York Times. "There is nary aesculapian assemblage that has taken ownership successful the research, successful the management, successful the diagnosis of vulva-related conditions."

In the session of 1 urologist who took an interest, for example, 1 successful 4 women had "clitoral adhesions, which hap erstwhile the hood of the clitoris sticks to the glans and tin pb to irritation, pain, and decreased intersexual pleasure," according to the Times report. Other harm tin hap during pelvic mesh surgeries, episiotomies, and adjacent hep surgery. But patients with injuries to the organ study having their concerns dismissed, misdiagnosed, oregon avoided altogether.

Several doctors and activists person taken connected the issue, mapping the anatomy of the clitoris and pushing for its inclusion successful aesculapian textbooks, successful the hopes of preventing injuries -- and preserving what urologists and gynecologists person historically overlooked: intersexual pleasance for those with vulvae, not conscionable penises.

New Moms Hit With Surprise Emergency Department Bills

In different maneuver by backstage equity successful healthcare, expecting patients who visited hospitals for gestation concerns ended up being billed for visiting a section they didn't cognize existed: the OBED, oregon obstetrics exigency department.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) recovered that arsenic backstage equity firms person gained ownership of wellness systems, they've installed OBEDs astatine a fig of hospitals. The firms' supporters reason that charging for these exigency section services pays for a round-the-clock hospitalist to spot patients rapidly successful pregnancy-related emergencies, with amended outcomes for births than with doctors who person a premix of session visits and infirmary calls.

The downside: visitors to the OBED don't cognize they're successful a abstracted department, oregon receiving exigency care. KHN recovered a fig of examples of patients who went into what utilized to beryllium a triage room, and were seen concisely by a doc who either confirmed they were successful labor, oregon did a basal checkup and told them to spell home. Later, they were charged hundreds of dollars.

"Hospitals volition bash what they tin bash to maximize income arsenic agelong arsenic they're not breaking the rules," Robert Wachter, MD, of the University of California San Francisco, told KHN. "And it sounds similar that's benignant of what they're doing with this ER gambit."

COVID Billionaires See End of Boom

Many concern leaders who made billions disconnected of pandemic changes person present mislaid much than fractional of their wealthiness to a planetary marketplace slump. The CEO of Moderna became a billionaire worthy $15 billion, but arsenic request for vaccines fell, his luck plunged 75%. Zoom's president and CEO reached a nett worthy of $28.6 billion, which rapidly fell to $4.6 billion. Other COVID billionaires included the heads of Carvana, BioNTech, Coupang, and Roku.

Bloomberg did an investigation of radical successful their Bloomberg Billionaires Index who much than doubled their wealthiness aft quality of the pandemic hit. The tract recovered 58 whose fortunes were straight linked to pandemic changes, similar distant work, vaccines, aesculapian supplies, and e-commerce, and recovered that their wealthiness grew faster than their peers, but fell adjacent faster successful precocious 2021 arsenic radical returned to pre-pandemic habits. Only 2 of these billionaires were female, and astir fractional person citizenship successful Asian countries.

Kim Forrest, laminitis of the concern steadfast Bokeh Capital Partners successful Pittsburgh, told Bloomberg, "They were filling a niche that desperately needed to beryllium solved, but it wasn't a long-run benignant of thing. Investors are looking for maturation and determination is nary much maturation to beryllium had successful work-from-home."

This accelerated emergence successful wealthiness ran parallel to rises successful utmost poverty. As ostentation continues, the outgo of surviving becomes unmanageable for many, and immense nationalist debts artifact what Bloomberg calls "years of efforts to assistance millions retired of poverty," particularly successful poorer nations.