Medical Care

Under the bright lights of a hospital room, the sisters sat next to a frightened little girl who barely acknowledged them. She kept her head down, eyes fixed to the floor. Arefa was 6. Much of her face and hands had been singed, and a cloth hid a head wound that had not healed since a fire raged through her family's tent. She'd flown in the day before from Kabul without her parents. Jami Valentine and Staci Freeman watched as the doctor pulled back the sticky cloth. The stench intensified; the wound was severely infected.

America's future doctors are increasingly interested in become primary-care physicians -- good news for America's future patients. Friday was “Match Day,” the day when fourth-year medical students find out where they'll be doing their internships and residencies. The process resembles sorority rush week: Students and teaching hospitals first try to impress each other, then they rank each other in order of preference. A computer sorts through all those preferences and spits out the matches, which were made public at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

If it is done right, the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) may well promise uninsured Americans a lot more than cheap, reliable medical care. It can also open the door to the democratic empowerment of millions of poor people, who are often alienated from much of the nation's civic life, by strengthening the organizations that give them a voice. This year more than 30 million uninsured Americans are to begin signing up for Obamacare, but the vast majority of those eligible for either the expanded Medicaid program, or for subsidized private health insurance through state health exchanges, have no idea how to enroll.

The 87-year-old woman who died last week after a staff member at a Bakersfield senior living facility refused to perform CPR did not want life-prolonging intervention, her family said Tuesday. In a statement to the Associated Press, the family of Lorraine Bayless said they do not plan to sue the facility, Glenwood Gardens. A staff member who identified herself as a nurse refused to give Bayless CPR as directed by a Bakersfield fire dispatcher, saying it was against the facility's policy for staff to do so, according to a 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department.

The Weinstein Co. and producer Anant Singh ("The First Grader") announced Friday that the company has acquired the North American, Australian and New Zealand distribution rights to "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom," based on the legendary South African President Nelson Mandela's 1996 autobiography. Singh  began communication with Mandela about making a film about his life while the anti-apartheid activist was still serving a life sentence in prison on charges of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government.

SACRAMENTO -- The federal receiver in charge of state prison healthcare has offered judges his own take on why crowding continues to be an issue. In a federal brief filed Friday, J. Clark Kelso presented charts showing that prisons receiving the lowest scores in medical care from his office have average populations that are 55% above their designed capacity. Conversely, those with the best medical care scores averaged populations that were 34% over capacity. "These numbers make it clear that overcrowding is still having a direct impact upon the ability to deliver quality healthcare," Kelso wrote.

WASHINGTON - Nearly 100 medical procedures, tests and therapies are overused and often unnecessary, a coalition of leading medical societies says in a new report aimed at improving healthcare and controlling runaway costs. The medical interventions - including early caesarean deliveries, CT scans for head injuries in children and annual Pap tests for middle-aged women - may be necessary in some cases, the physician groups said. But often they are not beneficial and may even cause harm.

Some survivors of the 2009 Fort Hood massacre say the government has neglected them. On Tuesday, the same night President Barack Obama gave his State-of-the-Union speech, ABC's "Nightline" was to broadcast interviews with disgruntled survivors, including a Fort Hood civilian police officer who accuses the government of betrayal. "Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," former Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was shot three times, told ABC News. "In fact, they've been neglected.

For Americans with a terminal diagnosis, death increasingly comes in the places and ways they say they want it - at home and in the comfort of hospice care. But for a growing number of dying patients, that is preceded by a tumultuous month in which they endure procedures that are often as invasive and painful as they are futile. New research finds that the proportion of Medicare patients dying in hospice care nearly doubled from 22% in 2000 to 42% in 2009, an apparent bow to patients' overwhelming preference for more peaceful passings free of heroic measures.

SACRAMENTO - Jeffrey Beard's expert testimony was cited 39 times in the federal court order that capped California's prison population in 2009. He said the state's prisons were severely overcrowded, unsafe and unable to deliver adequate care to inmates. At the time, he was Pennsylvania's prisons chief. Now, he's Gov. Jerry Brown's new corrections secretary, and his first order of business is to persuade the same judges to lift the cap, as well as to end the court's longtime hold on prison mental health care.