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Innovative financing models can impact health in low-income urban communities

"Having just returned to New York from Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, I'm reminded how lucky we are in this city to have reliable water and sanitation services," David Winder, chief executive of WaterAid USA, writes this post in Huffington Post's "Impact" blog.

17 Aug 2012

A view from the field: How Medicare is playing in congressional, Senate races

From Texas to Connecticut, members of Congress and their challengers are pressing their views on the federal health program for seniors.

17 Aug 2012

Retail medical clinic visits increase four-fold from 2007-2009

Fast-growing retail medical clinics are attracting more older patients and delivering more preventive care, particularly flu shots and other vaccinations, according to a new study from the RAND Corporation.

17 Aug 2012

Congressional leaders plan to make the most of this election-year Medicare debate

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, urged his fellow Republicans to "play offense" on the issue while their Democratic counterparts plan to keep the heat on.

17 Aug 2012

Hospital records link C.diff to 2 times more deaths than federal estimates indicate

A USA TODAY investigation shows that C. diff is far more prevalent than federal reports suggest. The bacteria is linked in hospital records to more than 30,000 deaths a year in the United States -- about twice federal estimates and rivaling the 32,000 killed in traffic accidents. It strikes about a half-million Americans a year.

17 Aug 2012

Affordable Care Act: an interview with Val J. Halamandaris, President of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC)

The intent of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to provide all Americans with medical insurance. Thirty-five million additional people will be covered, in part by government premiums and in part by making it easier for them to buy their own insurance.

17 Aug 2012

White Coat Ceremony welcomes Stritch medical students into profession of medicine

The largest class of first-year medical students at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM) will receive their first white medical coats in a ceremony that emphasizes the privilege of being able to care for patients and responsibility that comes with wearing the coat.

17 Aug 2012

In face of global economic recession, developing world needs low-tech health innovations

"The developing world needs support for low-tech health innovations that do not compromise on effectiveness," journalist Priya Shetty writes in this SciDev.Net opinion piece, adding that, against the backdrop of global economic recession and shrinking research and development (R&D) budgets in many developing countries, "a new movement of 'frugal science' is taking hold, in which researchers are hunting for the most cost-effective health technologies for developing countries."

17 Aug 2012

Viewpoints: Public seeks better campaigns but politicians use 'schoolyard rules;' GOP's Medicare 'flip-flops'

Political ads often stretch facts to the breaking point, but the people who create them usually feel constrained to back up their claims by citing sources - at least enough to keep neutral fact-checkers from exposing their work as fiction. Not so in this year's presidential campaign. There's no nice way to say this: President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are both condoning deliberate falsehoods.

17 Aug 2012

Parkland Hospital struggles with 1,300 unfilled positions; Largest Boston hospitals pay chiefs up to $3 million

Vacant jobs at Parkland Memorial Hospital have reached "crisis mode" -- almost 16 percent, or more than 1,300 unfilled positions -- a top official said Wednesday. Parkland's board of managers was presented a grim picture of an understaffed facility and a lagging effort to keep track of how many jobs were available. The situation was further crippled by the hospital's inability to process tens of thousands of job applications.

17 Aug 2012

Roundup: States limit Medicaid mental health prescriptions; Mass. to vote on assisted suicide; Insurer earnings drop in Mass.

Medicaid is the largest funder of mental health services in the United States. In 2008, in all 50 states, Medicaid spent a total of $4.5 billion on behavioral health drugs, about a fifth of the $22.5 billion spent by the program on all pharmaceuticals combined. Roughly a third of the participants in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program experience a mental health episode annually, according to a 2010 report by the Mental Health Services Administration.

17 Aug 2012

U-M, IGC launch new joint venture for personalized medicine

As a key step toward providing patients with treatments based on their own DNA profiles, the University of Michigan and the International Genomics Consortium (IGC) have launched a new joint venture that will help usher in an age of personalized medicine.

17 Aug 2012

Third universal definition of myocardial infarction to be presented at ESC Congress 2012

A new definition of heart attack will be presented at the ESC Congress 2012. The third universal definition of myocardial infarction (MI) clarifies the controversial area of procedural related MI and will be the gold standard for diagnosis and clinical trial endpoints.

17 Aug 2012

ACP physician to receive 2012 Ruth-Marie E. Fincher, MD, Service Award from CDIM

Philip Masters, MD, FACP, is the recipient of the 2012 Ruth-Marie E. Fincher, MD, Service Award from the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM), a national organization of leaders in internal medicine education for undergraduates.

17 Aug 2012

CDC recommends hepatitis C screening for all patients born from 1945-1965

Without other risk factors, all Americans born between 1945 and 1965 should have a one-time screening for the hepatitis C virus (HCV) according to new recommendations being published early online today in Annals of Internal Medicine, the flagship journal of the American College of Physicians. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recommends that all persons identified with HCV should receive a brief alcohol screening and intervention and be referred to appropriate care and treatment services for HCV and related conditions.

17 Aug 2012

Research examines racial and ethnic differences in strokes

Blacks who survived a stroke caused by bleeding in the brain had higher blood pressure than whites a year later, according to a study published today in the journal Stroke. The finding might help explain why blacks have a greater risk of suffering a second stroke than whites.

17 Aug 2012

'Yoga for Healthy Lower Backs' likely to be cost effective for both NHS and wider society

Specialised group yoga classes could provide a cost-effective way of treating patients with chronic or recurrent low back pain, according to the UK's largest ever study of the benefits of yoga.

17 Aug 2012

Springer publishes Principles of Research Methodology: A Guide for Clinical Investigators

How do you teach medical research? How do you design a good study or develop a workable hypothesis? How do you shape research to improve patient care? These and many more questions are addressed in an authoritative textbook detailing the clinical research process, written by researchers and clinicians at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and other institutions.

17 Aug 2012

Longer looks: A jack-of-all-trades surgeon takes care of Nantucket; Psychiatrist's controversial effort to use brain scans to diagnose mental problems

Dr. Tim Lepore, 67, is a jack-of-all-trades general surgeon, tending to the 10,000 full-time residents of the Massachusetts island of Nantucket and to the many thousand more rich and famous summer-dwellers. Dr. Lepore has dealt with everything from poison ivy and tick-borne illnesses to narcolepsy and toe tourniquet syndrome (when a mother's hair wraps around a baby's toe, cutting off circulation). He counsels alcoholics, and allows patients to barter for health care. He once accepted oatmeal cookies from an immigrant worker who had no money for treatment.

17 Aug 2012

First Edition: August 16, 2012

In this Kaiser Health News video, Insuring Your Health columnist Michelle Andrews answers a reader question about what you can do when insurance only covers a portion of an ambulance bill.

16 Aug 2012

Healthcare News

Innovative financing models can impact health in low-income urban communities

A view from the field: How Medicare is playing in congressional, Senate races

Retail medical clinic visits increase four-fold from 2007-2009

Congressional leaders plan to make the most of this election-year Medicare debate

Hospital records link C.diff to 2 times more deaths than federal estimates indicate

Affordable Care Act: an interview with Val J. Halamandaris, President of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC)

White Coat Ceremony welcomes Stritch medical students into profession of medicine

In face of global economic recession, developing world needs low-tech health innovations

Viewpoints: Public seeks better campaigns but politicians use 'schoolyard rules;' GOP's Medicare 'flip-flops'

Parkland Hospital struggles with 1,300 unfilled positions; Largest Boston hospitals pay chiefs up to $3 million

Roundup: States limit Medicaid mental health prescriptions; Mass. to vote on assisted suicide; Insurer earnings drop in Mass.

U-M, IGC launch new joint venture for personalized medicine

Third universal definition of myocardial infarction to be presented at ESC Congress 2012

ACP physician to receive 2012 Ruth-Marie E. Fincher, MD, Service Award from CDIM

CDC recommends hepatitis C screening for all patients born from 1945-1965

Research examines racial and ethnic differences in strokes

'Yoga for Healthy Lower Backs' likely to be cost effective for both NHS and wider society

Springer publishes Principles of Research Methodology: A Guide for Clinical Investigators

Longer looks: A jack-of-all-trades surgeon takes care of Nantucket; Psychiatrist's controversial effort to use brain scans to diagnose mental problems

First Edition: August 16, 2012

How Pulp Fixin Is Turning Paper into High-Performance Sustainable Labware

A new method to measure intracellular water in biological systems

Obesity, GLP-1s, and metabolic care

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