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Physician anger rises over Congress' failure to meet Doc Fix deadline HealthLeaders Media Share     For physicians, the third time has not been the charm this year for those looking to finally get some relief from a 21 percent cut in Medicare and TRICARE physician reimbursements. While the House voted recently 245-171 to approve a 19-month plan to stall the 21 percent reduction starting June 1, the Senate will not act until it returns from its Memorial Day recess. More
Nurse practitioners' growing role in your health care The Wall Street Journal Share
If you haven't had an appointment with a nurse practitioner yet, chances are you will within the next few years. Nurse practitioners, or NPs, rank as one of the fastest growing health-care professions, with about 140,000 qualified to practice in the U.S., up from 125,000 in 2008, according to the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. NPs, registered nurses with a master's degree, are trained to perform many of the same tasks as your family physician. They cost the health care system less, provide similar or sometimes better quality care and patients tend to be just as satisfied with their service, studies suggest. More Fixing the noisy hospital The Boston Globe Share
The clamor of modern medicine can make us worse. So how do you write a prescription for shhh? Close your eyes and think of a hospital. There’s the antiseptic smell, the cool, climate-controlled air, the bright lights glinting off linoleum. And then there are the sounds: squeaky-wheeled gurneys, banging doors, ringing phones, the banter of nurses and doctors, the studio audience on the TV above the next bed, the blurting from the overhead PA system as people are paged, and the beeps and buzzes and whirrs and whooshes of the ubiquitous monitors and machinery. Hospitals are loud. And while all that noise was once just seen as a perfectly tolerable byproduct of high-tech healing, a growing body of research suggests that the noise itself actually harms patients, interfering with the healing process, increasing the likelihood of medical errors, and raising the stress levels of everyone on the premises. More
Fighting the flab: The struggle to feed more children, more healthily The Economist Share
Albert and Derick, sixth-graders, happily scoffed their salads during a recent Harlem lunchtime. Ignoring the fork, Albert used his fingers to eat green pepper wedges. Derick didn’t much like his veggie burger — "too much ketchup," which he carefully wiped off with a napkin. He then swigged a tiny carton of low-fat milk. Chanel, though, turned up her nose at the healthy lunch, preferring instead to eat the lunch she brought to school in a bag, a packet of crisps and some biscuits. Feeding schoolchildren is big business; the federally funded National School Lunch Program provides free or reduced-cost lunches to 30 million children across America each day. But the recession means that a growing number of children are eligible for subsidised meals; and healthy food, alas, can cost more than the salt-, fat- and sugar-laden variety. More Toxic chemicals finding their way into the womb CNN Share
Five years ago Molly and Zachery Gray were in the midst of a dark, lonely spiral. It began with Molly's first miscarriage. "It was a really emotional process of being so joyful and so happy and ready to make that step into parenthood and that being pulled away from you," said Molly, 32. "The pregnancy is happening and all of a sudden it's gone. It's really hard." After a second miscarriage the Grays were on a desperate hunt for answers. After Molly got pregnant a third time, she heard about a small study to test the blood of pregnant women for chemicals. She signed up. The Grays wondered, as many do, if chemicals in the environment could be to blame. The science on this matter cannot yet give them an answer. A growing number of studies are finding hundreds of toxic chemicals in mothers' and, subsequently, their babies' bodies when they are born. More
Bringing doctors to the dying patient's bedside The New York Times Share
When D., a woman in her mid-30s, learned that she was dying from complications of AIDS, she fully expected that her life would end in much the same way it had been lived: homeless, alone and among strangers. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Jason K. Alexander, a medical student at the time, she might have been right. Two years earlier Dr. Alexander, along with four other classmates, had created a project that paired medical students with patients who were dying alone. "We wanted to reach out to patients who had been shunned, the people others didn’t want to deal with," Dr. Alexander recently recalled. More Medical error deaths spike when residents start MedPage Today Share
Deaths from medication mistakes appear to spike in July, when medical residencies begin, researchers say. Over nearly a 30-year period, fatal medication errors appear to jump 10 percent solely in that summer month in U.S. counties with teaching hospitals, David P. Phillips, PhD, of the University of California San Diego and Gwendolyn E.C. Barker, BA, of the University of California Los Angeles, reported online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. More
Avoidable mistakes rise despite hospital efforts San Francisco Chronicle Share
Drill bits, screws, sponges, clamps, needles, catheters, electrodes. These are some of the things accidentally left inside patients after surgery at California hospitals. These instances are referred to as "never" events, meaning they are never supposed to happen. But even though they are reported in a small percentage of surgeries, they occur with alarming regularity. More 9-1-1 program could ease emergency room problems USA TODAY Share
Hoping to ease crowded emergency rooms and trim ambulance runs, Louisville Metro Emergency Medical Services has launched a program that aims to screen low-priority calls and divert patients from hospitals into more appropriate health care. Under the program, which started April 19, a small number of the lowest priority calls — such as those for an earache or a stomachache — are being turned over to a nurse who is able to spend time with the patient on the phone to figure out appropriate treatment, which may not include a trip to an emergency room in an ambulance. More
Baltimore nursing school shut down by attorney general's office The Baltimore Sun Share
An unapproved nursing program agreed Thursday to return at least $177,000 to customers and not to offer educational programs without state authorization, the Maryland attorney general's office said. MalMilVentures LLC, which operated as Associated National Medical Academy, and its owners, Johnny Malone and John Miller, will also pay $110,000 in costs and penalties that could be cut to $35,000 if they obey the consent order. More Why don't consumers embrace evidence-based care? Health Affairs Blogger Share
Misconceptions and a lack of knowledge have caused many Americans with health insurance to be at odds with policy makers when it comes to embracing the tenets of evidence-based health care. These conclusions, documented by focus groups, interviews, and an online survey, are contained in a Web first article published recently in Health Affairs. More Hospitals fined more than $1 million for failure to report adverse events HealthLeaders Media Share
One-fourth of California's 450 acute care hospitals have been fined a total of more than $1 million so far — one hospital received five fines totaling more than $130,000 — for failing to promptly report adverse events. Since the state law requiring such fines took effect July 1, 2007, more than 100 acute care hospitals have been assessed at the rate of $100 for every day after five days that the adverse event went unreported and within 24 hours if the situation represents an emergent threat to the safety of a patient, visitor or personnel. More |
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