Healthcare News

RSS

UMF sponsors second annual Hygiene Specialist Excellence award

Environmental Services Managers are encouraged to nominate the housekeeper of their choice for the second annual Hygiene Specialist Excellence award, which is sponsored by UMF Corporation, developer of the PerfectCLEAN Infection Prevention System.

19 Sep 2011

Nutracheck launches UK's first weight loss App

The UK's first weight loss App that scans barcodes on food products has been launched by Nutracheck.co.uk.

19 Sep 2011

ESC urges European heads of state to prevent chronic non-communicable diseases

The European Society of Cardiology, through the European Chronic Disease Alliance (ECDA), has urged European heads of state "to show leadership" and long-term commitment to the prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases at today's "high level meeting" of the UN General Assembly in New York.

19 Sep 2011

Impact of Great Recession on low-income older workers

An expert panel speaking on Capitol Hill today demonstrated that the Great Recession has had a disproportionately negative impact on low-income older workers, although programs such as the federal Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) have managed to provide some valuable benefits to this disadvantaged demographic group.

19 Sep 2011

VA sponsors National Veterans Summer Sports Clinic

Today, more than 100 recently injured Veterans are gathered in San Diego for the National Veterans Summer Sports Clinic, a special rehabilitation-related sporting event, sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

19 Sep 2011

HFSA scientific meeting to discuss long-term management care for LVAD patients

The 15th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) will feature a discussion by Laura Coyle, ACNP, on strategies for caring for LVAD patients in an outpatient setting entitled "Long-Term Management: Caring for Patients to Keep Them at Home."

19 Sep 2011

CP, Children's Wish raise $90,000 through Heritage train public ticket sales

Canadian Pacific (CP) and The Children's Wish Foundation of Canada have wrapped up another successful summer raising $90,000 through Heritage train public ticket sales to create wishes for children with life threatening illnesses.

19 Sep 2011

Safety tips to prevent unintentional pediatric medication poisonings

A study discussing the dramatic increase in the number of children being poisoned by unintentionally ingesting medications was published online today in the Journal of Pediatrics.

19 Sep 2011

UAW says new pact with GM preserves health benefits

The United Automobile Workers and General Motors said late Friday that they had reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract. ... The union declined to give details but said the agreement included improved profit-sharing and "significant improvements to health care benefits".

19 Sep 2011

ACC cardiologist to address the United Nations Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases

Cardiologist William Zoghbi, M.D., will address the United Nations Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases next week to argue that abating heart disease should be a target of the United Nations' eight Millennium Development Goals.

19 Sep 2011

Red Cross urges Canadians to contribute for matching program

The Red Cross is reminding Canadians to take advantage of the final day of the Government of Canada matching program to double their donation towards relief efforts in the Horn of Africa.

19 Sep 2011

Obama deficit plan to have cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and a tax hike for millionaires

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials. With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama's effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats' support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

19 Sep 2011

Increase in hospital births helps lower neonatal mortality rate in China, study says

A campaign that began in 2000 encouraging women in China to give birth in hospitals instead of at home helped cut the nation's neonatal mortality rate by 62 percent between 1996 and 2008, according to a study by researchers from Peking University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, BBC News reports.

17 Sep 2011

Roundup: San Diego launches new HIV testing effort; Study finds economy hurt by Mass. health law; Texas schools turning to safe sex curriculum

The Centers for Disease Control says 20 percent of Americans with HIV don't know they're infected, and those people are responsible for about half of all new infections. A new effort in San Diego is trying to reduce those numbers by making HIV testing more widespread.

17 Sep 2011

Emergency mosquito control operations in flood affected Pennsylvania counties

The Department of Environmental Protection announced today it will begin conducting emergency mosquito control operations in 18 counties affected by flooding.

17 Sep 2011

New York Times examines international response to Somali famine

"Twenty years after the central government collapsed," Somalia is facing drought, food insecurity and conflict larger in scale than when famine conditions hit the nation in the 1990s, "[a]nd given the world's limited interest in a major intervention, that is not likely to change anytime soon," the New York Times reports in a news analysis on the situation.

17 Sep 2011

MedPAC prepares 'doc fix' proposal with full cost offset

The plan takes the commission into an area it generally tries to avoid: how to pay for such a major change to the Medicare system. Its suggestion is to pay for the SGR fix by reducing payments to specialists and imposing cuts on other parts of the health care sector.

17 Sep 2011

VA extends retroactive traumatic injury benefits to Servicemembers

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is extending retroactive traumatic injury benefits to Servicemembers who suffered qualifying injuries during the period Oct. 7, 2001 to Nov. 30, 2005, regardless of the geographic location where the injuries occurred.

17 Sep 2011

Research roundup: Personalized info helps consumer decision-making; Racial disparities in knee replacement

Comparison Friction: Experimental Evidence From Medicare Drug Plans – Defining comparison friction as "the wedge between the availability of comparative information and consumers' use of it," the authors determined that providing prescription drug pricing information, even though it was free and accessible in other ways, increased the amount of "plan-switching" in the group to 28 percent compared to 17 percent in another that did not get the individual information.

17 Sep 2011