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Cedars-Sinai launches applied research center to improve value of patient care

Cedars-Sinai has launched an applied research center to improve the value of patient care inside the medical center and beyond its walls by strengthening patient-doctor bonds and bringing greater efficiency to the delivery of clinical services.

25 Jul 2014

GAO official: Report intended to identify trouble spots in health law fraud controls

It's too early to draw conclusions about fraud in the Obamacare marketplaces, a congressional investigator said at a hearing focused on a report finding 11 out of 12 fake applicants were able to obtain subsidized health insurance. Republicans jumped on the report as proof that the health care law invites fraud, but the Government Accountability Office official said the sample is too small and investigators "can't draw any conclusions" until their work is complete.

25 Jul 2014

Study: Dementia carers may require more support with medication management

Family carers of people with dementia may need more support with medication management, according to a recent study.

25 Jul 2014

Patients who see same GP at every visit less likely to require emergency care

Attendances at emergency departments can be reduced by enabling patients to see the same GP every time they visit their doctor's surgery. This is just one of several recommendations made in a report published today, led by researchers at the University of Bristol.

25 Jul 2014

Medical students' perceptions of health policy education improving: Study

Students graduating from U.S. medical schools in 2012 feel they've received a better education in health policy issues than graduates surveyed in 2008, according to a multi-center study led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and published online this month in Academic Medicine.

25 Jul 2014

Longer looks: the economics of infertility; placebos as treatment raises ethical dilemmas

About a decade ago, Medicaid programs were struggling to keep up with skyrocketing prescription drug costs. Between 1997 and 2002, drug spending in the program for low-income Americans grew by about 20 percent annually. ... Medicaid directors began looking for ways to tamp down on those costs. One of the most popular policies was something called "prior authorization" for a new wave of more expensive, anti-psychotic drugs ,... These policies, in a sense, worked: they helped rein in how much Medicaid spent filling prescriptions. But in another sense, they may not have worked at all: a growing body of research has begun questioning whether restricting drug spending may have just shifted costs elsewhere - particularly, into the prison system (Sarah Kliff, 7/22).

25 Jul 2014

Direct medical costs projected to increase to $49 billion annually by 2020

The American College of Chest Physicians announced today the Online First publication of 'Total and State-Specific Medical and Absenteeism Costs of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Among Adults Aged ≥18 Years in the United States for 2010 and Projections Through 2020' in the journal CHEST.

25 Jul 2014

UTHealth's Bhavani Iyer awarded grant to help Harris County residents with vision problems

Bhavani Iyer, O.D., a low vision specialist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School, has been awarded a grant to help Harris County residents whose vision problems cannot be corrected with eyeglasses, medication or surgery.

25 Jul 2014

Highlights: Texas abortion rates falls dramatically; start-up problems for Virginia's psychiatric reforms

A four-month-old psychiatric-bed registry that is supposed to provide up-to-the-minute information for Virginians who need emergency mental health treatment is being updated as seldom as once a day, state officials told a panel of lawmakers this week (Shin, 7/22).

25 Jul 2014

Incisionless TAVR surgery cuts length of hospital stay by 30%

New research from Penn Medicine shows that incisionless transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) surgery cuts length of hospital stay by 30 percent and has no impact on post-operative vascular complication rates when compared with conventional transfemoral TAVR, which requires an incision in the groin.

25 Jul 2014