TEXAS HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION

After two years of mild flu seasons, Texas hospitals are seeing high rates of respiratory illnesses among children. A shortage of pediatric beds has forced some families to seek treatment out of state.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had said hospitals in states with abortion bans must perform emergency abortions in some instances.

The money reimburses hospitals for the services they provide to Medicaid patients in Texas.

A staffing crisis and the surge from the omicron variant have pushed the number of Texas ICU beds to a new record low. The shortage affects not just patients with the coronavirus, but every Texan seeking serious medical care.

Stuck between Biden's and Abbott’s competing vaccine rules for employees, public hospitals consider their next move even as most private systems already require vaccination for employees.

Stressed health workers are now confronting volatile visitors and patients. “The verbal abuse, the name-calling, racial slurs … we’ve had broken bones, broken noses,” said one hospital official in Dallas.

So far the state has paid to hire more than 8,000 contract health care workers as hospitalizations from COVID-19 in Texas approach the record set last winter.

More children are being treated in Texas hospitals for COVID-19 than ever before, and an unseasonable outbreak of respiratory syncytial virus is adding to the stress on children’s hospitals.