If you have health insurance, chances are good that you also have a refrigerator magnet advertising your carrier’s 24-hour nurseline. You might have even used the telephone service to figure out if a pain or illness required a trip to the emergency room or doctor’s office.

Convenient-care clinics continue to pop up around the country, and health-care organizations in the midstate are taking notice.

Communicating by e-mail — commonplace in the business world — has yet to catch on with most doctors in the midstate.

Physicians are finding that customer service is about more than just being a phone call away.

Patients in Central Pennsylvania are taking a more active role in their health-care decisions, and many are choosing alternative therapies to complement or replace traditional medicine, according to area therapists, physicians and patients.

Before having gall bladder surgery, Doug Legore looked up his surgeon online.

The rising costs of prescription drugs, hospital stays and doctor visits are further complicating an already difficult health-care insurance environment.

Home health agencies have become significant players in the delivery of medical care over the past 20 years. It’s a development that proponents believe is saving the health-care system money.

The delivery of health care is changing.

When you get sick, your first stop might not be a hospital or a doctor’s office.

Wellness works. That’s what an increasing number of businesses have seen or are expecting to see as they wage war against health-care cost inflation and the toll it’s taking on the bottom line.

A trip to the emergency room is often an exercise in patience. The wait can stretch for hours if you’re there with a minor ailment such as an earache or sore throat.

It used to be that when you got sick or needed special treatment, you traveled to a large hospital or visited your doctor’s office. Suburban sprawl has changed that, experts say.

A patient recently showed up at Dr. Curtis Hershey’s office with concerns that he might have gout. The patient diagnosed himself after going on the Web site WebMD and checking his symptoms.

Two Dauphin County medical institutions got a major boost in their efforts to fight diabetes-related eye disease.