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Health premiums climb

Buffalo (N.Y.) News: "Two of the region's three dominant health insurers intend to raise premiums on average by double digits for next year, and the third wants a double-digit increase for plans not structured as health maintenance organizations. The premium for one insurance plan could rise almost 36 percent. The insurers cite rising costs of medical care and federal health care reforms." The increases must be approved by the state (Epstein, 10/10).

12 Oct 2010

Hospital staff go on 4 hour strike over pay issues

Hospital staff across Western Australia will strike today for better pay. The Industrial Relations Commission failed to assure the government that it would stop workers from carrying out industrial action. On Friday, the union rejected an offer to increase their weekly pay by $27.

11 Oct 2010

ZeroNines launches ZenVault Medical Personal Health Record portal

ZeroNines® Technology, Inc. announced the launch of ZenVault™ Medical, a Personal Health Record portal (PHR) that gives consumers instant, secure, private access to their medical records online. ZenVault Medical was specifically designed to address the public's concerns over data security, privacy, convenience, and expense associated with the national push to convert from traditional paper to digital medical records.

11 Oct 2010

Atomic Tattoos launches 'Tats for Tatas' breast cancer awareness fundraising campaign

Atomic Tattoos has announced the launch of their "Tats for Tatas" fundraising campaign that will take place throughout October, benefiting the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation in Florida and Southeast Regional Breast Cancer Fund in Wisconsin. In the company's concerted efforts to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Awareness, Atomic Tattoos is offering several specials throughout the month if customers donate $5 to breast cancer awareness.

11 Oct 2010

Obesity treatments falter, but researchers announce gene links

The Wall Street Journal: "An international research consortium says it has identified 18 new gene sites linked to obesity and 13 others associated with how fat is distributed in the body, advances that shed new light on the complex biology underlying one of the world's most pressing public-health problems. The findings are based on studies involving nearly 250,000 people, making the effort the largest so far to unravel the genetic basis of common human traits, researchers said.

11 Oct 2010

Texas Community Care announces debut of new office location in El Paso

Texas Community Care, a subsidiary of Arcadian Health, has just announced the debut of a new office location in El Paso, TX at the Sunland Park Mall located at 750 Sunland Park Drive, Space J2. The office location will give representatives the opportunity to have an even stronger presence in the community.

11 Oct 2010

Health care interests push to make ACOS pay off for them

Kaiser Health News staff writers Phil Galewitz and Jenny Gold write about increasing interest in the accountable care organizations that may come out of the new health overhaul.

11 Oct 2010

Pelosi issues statement on HHS announcement of $727 million in grants

Speaker Pelosi issued the following statement today after Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced $727 million in grants to community health centers across the nation, including more than $4 million to San Francisco's South of Market Health Center and $91.5 million for California, as part of the Affordable Care Act.

11 Oct 2010

NCQA recertifies Lilly's online Health Education Answers program

Lilly's Health Education Answers program, an interactive online health and wellness tool, has received Health Information Product Recertification from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

11 Oct 2010

Florida Governor issues Proclamation recognizing outstanding work of Healthcare Quality Professionals

Florida Governor Charlie Crist issued a Proclamation recognizing the outstanding work Healthcare Quality Professionals do for the people of Florida. This proclamation mirrors the sentiments of National Healthcare Quality Week, October 17-23rd, which celebrates the work of Healthcare Quality Professionals in improving patient outcomes and healthcare delivery systems.

11 Oct 2010

Prescription Solutions' MS DTM program wins URAC Best Practices Platinum Award

Prescription Solutions, a leading pharmacy benefits management (PBM) organization and a UnitedHealth Group company, received a platinum award in the URAC Best Practices in Health Care Consumer Empowerment and Protection Awards. Prescription Solutions was recognized for its Multiple Sclerosis Disease Therapy Management (MS DTM) program, which empowers patients through education and support to successfully attain skills in self-managing their symptoms and medication therapy for their chronic condition.

11 Oct 2010

The insurance straw man

In this Kaiser Health News column, James C. Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center criticizes Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for some of her tough tactics with insurance companies.

11 Oct 2010

PlastiPure, ReliaBrand partner to produce EA-Free plastic consumer products

PlastiPure, a safer-plastics technology company, has announced a partnership with ReliaBrand to license infant feeding, sports bottle, food packaging, and medical products free of harmful chemicals that cause estrogenic activity (EA). Chemicals with EA have been strongly linked to adverse health effects such as birth defects, reproductive cancers, and behavioral and learning disorders. The widely known chemicals BPA and phthalates are only a few of thousands of chemicals suspected to have EA.

11 Oct 2010

The age wave could bust government budgets, rating agency says

The ratings agency Standard & Poor's has joined the chorus of concern about how the looming age wave will affect governments that must pay for escalating entitlement programs, The Wall Street Journal reports.

11 Oct 2010

More than 2 hours of screen viewing associated with psychological difficulties in children

Children who spend longer than two hours in front of a computer or television screen are more likely to suffer psychological difficulties, regardless of how physically active they are.

11 Oct 2010

First Edition: October 11, 2010

Today's early morning highlights include articles on new options for open season, concerns among retirees about the provisions of the federal health law and the latest campaign arguments over that new overhaul.

11 Oct 2010

ESMO and Thomson Reuters launch unique portal for oncologists

A unique portal, offering oncologists access to the latest information in the field of cancer research, will be launched in 2011 by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in association with Thomson Reuters. The announcement was made today at the 35th ESMO Congress taking place from 8 to 12 October, in Milan, Italy.

11 Oct 2010

CCHIT certifies Health Care Systems' eMR Version 4

Health Care Systems, Inc. (HCS) announced today that HCS eMR, Version 4, is 2011/2012 compliant and was certified as an EHR Module on 9/30/2010 by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®), an ONC-ATCB, in accordance with the applicable HOSPITAL certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The 2011/2012 criteria support the Stage 1 meaningful use measures required to qualify eligible providers and hospitals for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

11 Oct 2010

Financing HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment could cost $400B-$700B over 20 years

A new report published by the Results for Development Institute in the Lancet "has offered governments and donors a glimpse into the future of HIV epidemics - and what it will cost to prevent and treat them. Researchers warn of hard choices ahead and a need for some countries to take more responsibility for their national programmes," IRIN/PlusNews reports. Study authors present their "cheapest" and "ideal" scenarios for HIV/AIDS funding in the future, according to IRIN/PlusNews.

11 Oct 2010

Health insurance: Coverage expands for children, young adults; not necessarily for retirees

Glenn Franco, a retired community-college instructor in Michigan, tried to get his 24-year-old daughter on his health plan—and was turned away. Many large employers are telling retirees the same thing.

11 Oct 2010