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September will mark the end of HHS mini-med waiver program

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it will stop accepting applications for waivers from the health law's minimum coverage requirements.

20 Jun 2011

Small health facilities, solo practices face health IT challenges

As part of the federal government's push to get hospitals and clinics to adopt electronic medical records, it's subsidizing IT training classes across the country. ...

20 Jun 2011

The complexities of Medicare's doctor pay dynamics

The Medicare physician payment formula is often attacked as a budget gimmick that holds down federal spending on paper, even though everyone knows the cuts it imposes will never come into effect.

20 Jun 2011

Medicare, Medicaid increasingly become hot topics in debt-ceiling talks

The future of these entitlement programs will be in play this week as negotiations continue, with both parties beginning to make concessions and hint that a deal could emerge.

20 Jun 2011

Genetic Technologies introduces BREVAGen genetic test for assessing non-familial breast cancer risk

Genetic Technologies Limited, through its North American division, Phenogen Sciences Inc., has launched the new BREVAGen genetic test for assessing non-familial breast cancer risk.

20 Jun 2011

Hospitals hope to make primary care docs salaried employees

In one of the first concrete steps to remake the way medical care is delivered, hospitals are competing to hire primary-care physicians, trying to lure them from their private practices to work as salaried employees alongside specialists (Sun, 6/19).

20 Jun 2011

First Edition: June 20, 2011

Today's headlines include reports about new trends in the health care marketplace, including efforts to help seniors live at home longer and why some consumers may face bigger bills for out-of-network care.

20 Jun 2011

Patients who receive poorly co-ordinated care more likely to report medication, treatment errors

Patients who received poorly co-ordinated care or were unable to afford basic medical costs were much more likely to report medication, treatment or care errors, according to an international study published in the July issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

20 Jun 2011

News media and childhood obesity

Where you get your news could play a significant role in determining what you perceive as the best strategy for addressing childhood obesity. According to a study led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whether you believe the keys to combating childhood obesity are personal factors such as individual behavior changes or system-level factors such as marketing and the environment may depend on your primary news source.

20 Jun 2011

Novel biomarker-development pipeline approach for human diseases

Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have demonstrated in mice that the performance of a novel biomarker-development pipeline using targeted mass spectrometry is robust enough to support the use of an analogous approach in humans.

20 Jun 2011

HHS announces deadline for health law waivers

The Obama administration said Friday that it was shutting down a program that had provided exemptions from the new health care law for many employers and labor unions offering bare-bones insurance coverage to workers.

20 Jun 2011

Health care politics: Anti-abortion group attacks Romney; Axelrod claims Huntsman supported Obama plan; Bachmann vows repeal

"President Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist is dismissive of the Republicans who want his boss' job, saying they are eager to criticize the Democratic incumbent without offering substantive ways to help the country. ... Axelrod said that when he was in China in the fall of 2009, he had a chance to talk with [former Utah Gov. John] Huntsman. "He was very effusive about what the president was doing. He was encouraging on health care".

20 Jun 2011

Scientists pinpoint how Michigan program reduced rates of deadly central line bloodstream infections

A team of social scientists and medical and nursing researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom has pinpointed how a programme, which ran in more than 100 hospital intensive care units in Michigan, dramatically reduced the rates of potentially deadly central line bloodstream infections to become one of the world's most successful patient safety programmes.

18 Jun 2011

Health insurance does not protect Arizonans from experiencing medical debt

Health insurance is not protecting Arizonans from having problems paying medical bills, and having bill problems is keeping families from getting needed medical care and prescription medicines, a new study has found.

18 Jun 2011

Additional funding announced for PEPFAR programs in Africa

In a post on State's "DipNote" blog, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby describes accompanying Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on her trip to Africa.

18 Jun 2011

Global Health Council Conference panel discusses country ownership

"The Global Health Initiative [GHI] will focus more heavily on countries' own goals for development, explained Amie Batson, deputy assistant administrator for Global Health at USAID at a panel at the Global Health Council Conference on Thursday," GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog reports.

18 Jun 2011

Report outlines lessons from AIDS advocates

A new report from the consulting firm HCM Strategists and the nonprofit group FasterCures "analyzes the factors that helped patient advocates drive research into and drug development for HIV/AIDS, and tries to figure out whether there are lessons to be learned for other disease advocates," the Wall Street Journal's "Health Blog" writes.

18 Jun 2011

UNICEF calls on governments to improve status of children on Day of the African Child

"African governments need to provide 'more protective environments' to keep children safe and free from harm and exploitation," UNICEF said in a statement marking the 2011 Day of the African Child on Thursday, the U.N. News Centre reports.

18 Jun 2011

HPV vaccine shows success in young Australian women, study says

"A vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, triggered by the human papillomavirus (HPV), has helped reduce the number of teenage girls developing abnormalities in their cervix by as much as 50 percent in a study in Australia," according to a report published Friday in the Lancet, Reuters reports.

18 Jun 2011

Important to fund the GAFSP now

In a Guardian opinion piece, Lael Brainard, under-secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury, writes about the importance of funding the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) and investing in small farmers in the developing world.

18 Jun 2011