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Research Roundup: Health costs at life's end; Assessing hospital quality; Surgeons' burnout; Per capita Medicaid spending

Annals of Internal Medicine: Determinants Of Medical Expenditures In The Last 6 Months Of Life - Identifying factors about patients in the final six months of life that affect the level of care needed "may reveal opportunities for patient-centered interventions to predict and to reduce medical costs," write the authors, while noting that the study had "a large proportion of unexplained variation."

25 Feb 2011

State News: Ga. Senate oks insurance mandates bill; Va. Assembly says abortion clinics should be regulated as hospitals

State agencies, county prosecutors, insurance companies, and health care employers and associations are mandatory reporters — they're required to report potentially dangerous and unprofessional doctors to medical regulators, who can bar the doctors from practicing and keep patients out of harm's way. But the mandatory reporters sound few alarms, and when they do, regulators rarely take action, the Tribune found.

25 Feb 2011

Hospitals and health system innovations designed to increase efficiency, improve outcomes

News outlets report on how certain health care models are performing in these difficult economic times.

25 Feb 2011

New York's Medicaid advisory panel approves plan to cut health spending

The panel's compromise includes an annual spending cap and across-the-board Medicaid provider cuts. Meanwhile, other states also struggle with the rising cost of Medicaid and its impact on the budget.

25 Feb 2011

U.S.-Chile collaborate to study new long-acting local anesthetic derived from algae

A U.S.-Chile collaboration is bringing surgical patients closer to having a long-acting local anesthetic. In a randomized, double-blind trial, patients given neosaxitoxin, a new local anesthetic derived from algae, had significantly less postoperative pain and recovered about two days sooner than those given the commonly used local anesthetic bupivacaine.

25 Feb 2011

New policy research brief examines patients at risk of losing care under health center spending cuts

A new policy research brief released today by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services examines the characteristics of patients whose access to health center services is at risk because of a potential $1.3 billion in direct spending cuts for community health centers.

25 Feb 2011

Enrollment commences in NORDIC implantable cardioverter defibrillator clinical trial

BIOTRONIK SE & Co. KG announced today the start of the NORDIC ICD clinical trial. The first implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) patients were enrolled by its coordinating clinical investigator, Prof. Dr. Dietmar Bänsch at the University Hospital of Rostock and the investigator Dr. Stefan Kuster at the DRK Hospital of Mölln/Ratzeburg.

25 Feb 2011

First Edition: February 25, 2011

Today's headlines include reports about developments in New York's Medicaid program and other state-level news.

25 Feb 2011

Tenet fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increases 28.9% to $281 million

Tenet Healthcare Corporation today reported adjusted EBITDA of $281 million for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2010, an increase of $63 million, or 28.9 percent, compared to $218 million for the fourth quarter of 2009. Net income attributable to common shareholders for the fourth quarter of 2010 was $74 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, compared to $21 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of 2009.

25 Feb 2011

Symposium examines Bruesewitz vs. Wyeth Supreme Court case

A March 29 symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences, "Vaccines Under the Gun: Politics, Science, Media and the Law," will feature a presentation by Daniel J. Thomasch, JD, national lead trial counsel for Wyeth, who was involved in the case decided by the Supreme Court yesterday in which the justices rejected a lawsuit claiming injury from a Wyeth vaccine.

25 Feb 2011

Dizziness, nausea and achiness are symptoms of heart attack in females

Dizziness, nausea and achiness – no, these are not symptoms of the flu but signs of a heart attack in females. While heart attacks affect both men and women, the symptoms of a heart attack are surprisingly different between the genders. Virginia Health Information (VHI) this week released its Cardiac Care Report which provides consumers information comparing heart healthcare in Virginia. This year's report reveals women undergoing open heart surgery continued a five year trend of higher than expected readmission rates.

25 Feb 2011

HIMSS survey: Nurse informaticists play a major role in implementation of healthcare IT

With the increased adoption of healthcare information technology, nursing informatics - a hybrid career combining nursing and healthcare IT skills - is growing in importance and impact, suggests the 2011 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Nursing Informatics Workforce Survey.

25 Feb 2011

Evolutionary changes may have influenced metabolism and increased risk of diabetes

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego say an evolutionary gene mutation that occurred in human millions of years ago and our subsequent inability to produce a specific kind of sugar molecule appears to make people more vulnerable to developing type 2 diabetes, especially if they're overweight.

25 Feb 2011

New data indicates 44% of hospital respondents expect to achieve Stage 1 of meaningful use

New data from HIMSS Analytics indicates that 44 percent of hospital respondents fall within the "Likely" or "Most Likely" categories for meeting Stage 1 of meaningful use.

25 Feb 2011

Researchers capture complexities of breast cancer tumours to improve treatment, diagnostics

Breast cancer can develop very differently in different women. Researchers in Norway are improving breast cancer diagnostics and treatment by identifying the various tumour types. The objective is to find out as much as possible about the various tumour types so that each patient can receive precisely the right treatment at the right time.

25 Feb 2011

Nearly 60,000 newly acquired infections per year in Germany's intensive care units

Infections are among the most frequent complications of a stay in hospital and raise the complication and mortality rates. Calculations based on data from the Hospital Infection Surveillance System (Krankenhaus-Infektions-Surveillance-System, KISS) showed an incidence of almost 60 000 newly acquired infections per year in intensive care units in Germany.

25 Feb 2011

fMRI reveals complexity of consciousness

Using a sophisticated imaging test to probe for higher-level cognitive functioning in severely brain-injured patients provides a window into consciousness -- but the view it presents is one that is blurred in fascinating ways, say researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in the Feb. 25 online edition of the journal Brain.

25 Feb 2011

Patients presented to ED with adverse drug events are more costly to health care system

Patients who suffer an adverse medical event arising from the use or misuse of medications are more costly to the health care system than other emergency department patients, say physicians and research scientists at Vancouver General Hospital and UBC.

25 Feb 2011

PACAP hormone levels linked to post-traumatic stress disorder

High blood levels of a hormone produced in response to stress are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder in women but not men, a study from researchers at Emory University and the University of Vermont has found.

25 Feb 2011

Study: AEG-1 expression predicts erlotinib treatment response in patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancer

Spanish researchers have identified a gene whose expression level strongly predicts how well certain lung cancer patients will respond to treatment with the drug erlotinib.

25 Feb 2011

Hospital News and Research

Research Roundup: Health costs at life's end; Assessing hospital quality; Surgeons' burnout; Per capita Medicaid spending

State News: Ga. Senate oks insurance mandates bill; Va. Assembly says abortion clinics should be regulated as hospitals

Hospitals and health system innovations designed to increase efficiency, improve outcomes

New York's Medicaid advisory panel approves plan to cut health spending

U.S.-Chile collaborate to study new long-acting local anesthetic derived from algae

New policy research brief examines patients at risk of losing care under health center spending cuts

Enrollment commences in NORDIC implantable cardioverter defibrillator clinical trial

First Edition: February 25, 2011

Tenet fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increases 28.9% to $281 million

Symposium examines Bruesewitz vs. Wyeth Supreme Court case

Dizziness, nausea and achiness are symptoms of heart attack in females

HIMSS survey: Nurse informaticists play a major role in implementation of healthcare IT

Evolutionary changes may have influenced metabolism and increased risk of diabetes

New data indicates 44% of hospital respondents expect to achieve Stage 1 of meaningful use

Researchers capture complexities of breast cancer tumours to improve treatment, diagnostics

Nearly 60,000 newly acquired infections per year in Germany's intensive care units

fMRI reveals complexity of consciousness

Patients presented to ED with adverse drug events are more costly to health care system

PACAP hormone levels linked to post-traumatic stress disorder

Study: AEG-1 expression predicts erlotinib treatment response in patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancer

Sensing a Healthier Future

Achieving and maintaining ISO/IEC 27001 and BS 10012 certifications

Expanding research and clinical options for children with cancer

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