(Left to right) NYU medical students Brian Chao, Michael Lui, Hye Min Choi, and Varun Vijay take the team approach to learning about the anatomy of cells, and how disease can disrupt them. Analyzing big data sets is now a routine part of their studies, too. Cindy Carpien for NPR hide caption
Mentally ill prisoners too impaired to stand trial are supposed to be transferred to state mental hospitals for treatment within two or three months. But more than 300 in California are languishing in county jails because hospitals don't have the beds. Christian Schmidt/Corbis hide caption
University Medical Center New Orleans on Aug. 1, when the $1 billion facility welcomed its first patients. Brett Duke/The Times-Picayune/Landov hide caption
A Yale University study analyzed the experience of 60 million Americans covered by traditional Medicare between 1999 and 2013, and found "jaw-dropping improvements in almost every area," the lead author says. Ann Cutting/Getty Images hide caption
A particularly nasty family of gut bacteria with the nickname CRE is resistant even to carbapenems, a family of last-resort antibiotics. CDC hide caption
Dorothea Handron suffered an infection after a surgeon unknowingly pierced her bowel during a hernia operation. She became so ill that doctors placed her in a medically induced coma for six weeks. Jim R. Bounds/AP Images for Kaiser Health News hide caption
Failures in ordinary care are causing widespread harm that's sometimes serious, inspectors say. iStockphoto hide caption