Blake Farmer
Blake Farmer is Nashville Public Radio's senior health care reporter. In a partnership with Kaiser Health News and NPR, Blake covers health in Tennessee and the health care industry in the Nashville area for local and national audiences.
Blake has worked at WPLN throughout his career, most recently serving as news director and primary editor for the newsroom. Previously, his reporting focused on education and the military. He's also enjoyed producing stories about midnight frog gigging and churches holding gun raffles.
Growing up in East Nashville, Blake attended Lipscomb Academy. He went to college in Texas at Abilene Christian University where he cut his teeth in radio at KACU-FM. Before joining WPLN full time in 2007, Blake also wrote for the Nashville City Paper and filed international stories for World Christian Broadcasting.
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Black patients and their families are less likely to sign up for end-of-life comfort care. To reach them, investors are starting hospice agencies run by people who look like the patients they serve.
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A reporter's experience with COVID in his young family after a gathering of relatives could help you navigate the Christmas holidays.
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With few options for health care in their rural community, a Tennessee couple's experience with one outrageous bill could have led to a deadly delay when they needed help the most.
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Hospitals and doctors are facing more demands for ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment, despite no proof it works. In some Republican-dominated states, lawmakers and attorney generals are weighing in.
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In areas overwhelmed by COVID cases, hospitals must rely on traveling nurses to operate ICUs. Hospitals pay a premium for that temporary help, while also struggling to keep their staff nurses happy.
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ECMO, the highest level of mechanical life support, functions as a temporary heart and lungs for some of COVID-19's sickest patients. But the waitlist is too long for many patients who need it.
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As Community Health Systems has downsized, what remain are like zombie hospitals – little more than legal entities still taking patients to court even though the new owners don't sue.
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Vermont and Massachusetts lead the nation, with more than 70% of adults having had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Southern states such as Tennessee lag far behind.
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Congregations are figuring out how to safely meet in person now that the COVID-19 vaccine is more widely available. But vaccination remains divisive even as it allows them to come together again.
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Some immigrant groups are closing the ethnic gap on COVID-19 shots. For many Kurdish Americans, their fears about vaccination are entangled with their experiences in refugee camps after fleeing Iraq.