Breaking news on primarycare
Cut Looms For Medicare Payments To Doctors published
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
Marketwatch/The Seattle Times reports on the looming 21 percent cut to physicians' Medicare payments. "The cut was to take effect March 1 until Congress delayed it by 30 days. The Senate then voted last Wednesday to postpone the cut an additional six months as part of a larger bill that extends unemployment benefits. The measure now moves to the House...
Massachusetts Hospital Costs Not Connected To Quality Of Care, Report Finds published
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
A new report from Massachusetts finds that the price of hospital care there is not necessarily related to quality. "When it comes to getting high quality medical care in Massachusetts, the bigger hospitals aren't always better. But they tend to be a lot more expensive, according to a new report by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley's office," The Boston Herald reports...
Study Finds Efforts To Steer Patients To Lower-Cost Physicians May Be Based On Misleading Rankings published
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
Increasingly common insurance plans that encourage patients to receive care from physicians who keep medical costs lower are based on unreliable estimates of doctor performance and may not achieve the intended savings, according to a new RAND Corporation study...
Adrenal Fatigue? See A Doctor published
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:00:00 PDT
Taking vitamins or supplements to treat "adrenal fatigue" may do more harm than good, says Todd Nippoldt, M.D., a Mayo Clinic expert in hormone disorders affecting the adrenal glands...
Protecting Patients Via Health-Care Worker Vaccination published
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PDT
Healthcare personnel influenza immunization rates have remained low, despite recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other leading healthcare organizations that all healthcare personnel receive annual flu vaccines. Experts say these levels are perilous. Increasing vaccination rates substantially improves patient safety, lowering flu deaths by 40 percent...
Other Health Professions Need Support As Well - Pharmaceutical Society Of Australia published
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:00:00 PDT
The Government's announcement of a substantial boost in GP training places, specialist training places and pre-vocational general practice placements for medical graduates is a welcome development, but other health professions need similar support, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia says...
National, State Efforts Seek To Reduce Medical Errors published
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 PDT
The Wall Street Journal: "Errors made by doctors, nurses and other medical caregivers cause 44,000 to 98,000 deaths a year. Hospital infections, many considered preventable, take another 100,000 lives. ...
Today's Opinions And Editorials published
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
The Health Care Letdown The New York Times What's more, the core of the Senate's legislation closely resembles the very bill the Republicans offered in 1993 as an alternative to the Clinton plan. This makes clear that bipartisan reform was achievable, and indicts Congress for its failure to realize that goal with broad public support (William Pewen, 3/15)...
Expert Panel Convened By The American College Of Physicians Analyzes The Relationship Between P4P Incentive Programs And Medical Professionalism published
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PDT
An expert panel convened by the American College of Physicians (ACP) says that properly designed pay-for-performance (P4P) programs can strengthen the relationship between physicians and patients and increase the likelihood that physicians will deliver the best possible care. The panel's analysis appears in the March 16 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine...
College Of GPs Welcomes Investment In The Future Of General Practice, Australia published
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:00:00 PDT
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) welcomes the government's commitment to increasing the number of general practice training places. The Hon Nicola Roxon MP, Minister for Health and Ageing, has today announced that the number of prevocational training places will be increased from 400 to 975 by 2013-2014...
News From Annals Of Internal Medicine, March 16, 2010 published
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:00:00 PDT
1. Excess Risk for Death Following Hip Fracture Persists Over Time, Especially for Men While almost all studies report an increased risk for death in the first three to six months following hip fracture, it is unclear whether this risk continues over the longer-term...
Stimulus Funds Spur Indiana Doctors, Hospitals To Switch To Electronic Records More Quickly published
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:00:00 PDT
The offer of federal stimulus funds is spurring Indiana health care providers to convert to electronic medical records, The (Fort Wayne, Ind.) Journal Gazette reports. "Parkview Health and Lutheran Health Network have shortened timelines on scheduled conversions to electronic medical records because of the expected federal rebate...
Today's Opinions And Editorials published
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:00:00 PDT
More Than Onerous The New York Times After a year of national debate, a handful of House Democrats who oppose abortion may be the ones to decide whether health care reform goes forward or not. ... We are puzzled and dismayed that these legislators are willing to waste that opportunity because they say the onerous anti-abortion provisions in the Senate's bill are still not onerous enough (3/14)...
New Biomedical Engineering Tools To Control Blood Loss published
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:00:00 PDT
Carnegie Mellon University's Matt Oberdier is developing a new hydrosurgery system to help physicians better manage excessive bleeding during surgery. Oberdier, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, said his system will be designed to help surgeons readily clear excess blood and control bleeding during critical stages involving brain operations...
Experts: Americans Get Too Many Tests, Too Much Treatment published
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PDT
The Associated Press: "Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggest that too many Americans -- maybe even President Barack Obama -- are being overtreated...
Increased Focus On Role Of Nurses In Health Care published
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PDT
CNN reports that specialist nurses last year were paid higher average salaries than primary care doctors...
During Patient Hand-Offs In Hospital, Communication Often Fumbled published
Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PDT
As shifts change in a hospital, outgoing physicians must "hand off" important information to their replacements in a brief meeting. But a new study of this hand-off process finds that the most important information is not fully conveyed in a majority of cases, even as physicians rate their communication as successful...
HIV/AIDS Researcher Honored With BMJ's Junior Doctor Of The Year Award published
Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 PDT
BMJ Group, publisher of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), has recognized University of British Columbia Clinical Associate Prof. Evan Wood with its first annual Junior Doctor of the Year honour...
100 Percent Of Primary Care Doctors In Denmark Use Electronic Medical Records published
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 PDT
All primary care doctors in Denmark use electronic medical records and 98 percent have the ability to electronically manage patient care-including ordering prescriptions, drafting notes about patient visits, and sending appointment reminders...
Study Questions Frequency Of Heart Angiograms published
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:00:00 PDT
A recent study raises questions about the frequency of doctors' use of elective heart angiograms, which showed no disease in almost 40 percent of patients. BusinessWeek reports: "Doctors may be sending patients too quickly for elective angiograms to detect heart disease, exposing them to radiation and driving up U.S. health-care costs, a study suggests...
State Overhaul Fears, Rising Costs, Medical School Expansions published
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:00:00 PDT
The New York Times: "The General Assembly became the first state legislature to approve a measure that bucks any effort by President Obama and Congress to carry out a national health care overhaul in individual states." Numerous Democrats joined the Republican majority to support the measure 80-17 in the House of Delegates (3/10)...
Financial Pressures Must Not Reduce Effectiveness Of Scottish General Practice, Warns GP Leader, Scotland published
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:00:00 PDT
The leader of Scotland's GPs warned that the reduction in health spending will create pressure on the Scottish Government to introduce more effective health policies that deliver services that the public need...
Senate Poised To Pass COBRA Subsidy Extension, Medicare 'Doc Fix' published
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
The Senate is set to vote Wednesday on a jobs bill that would extend the COBRA subsidy program and Medicaid funding for states and prevent a Medicare reimbursement cut for doctors. The Associated Press: The bill "extends health insurance subsidies for the unemployed through December. It would add $132 billion to the budget deficit over the next year and a half. ...
Non-Profit Operations Plugging Health Care Gap In Chicago published
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
Medill Reports presents a story on community health centers in Chicago that try to fill access-to-care gaps for people too sick to get health care coverage or too poor to afford other care. "Community health centers ... are private, non-profit operations that fill a gap between for-profit health systems and free public health clinics...
Comparative Research Lags Far Behind Approval-Driven Evaluations published
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 PDT
A new study has found that few drug evaluations compare treatments in ways that help doctors make better decisions, Reuters reports...
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