Healthcare News and Research

Latest Healthcare News and Research

Patients treated with high-risk endoscopic procedure less likely to be admitted in hospital

Patients who seek treatment from physicians who more frequently perform a high-risk endoscopic procedure are less likely to be admitted to the hospital or require a repeat procedure. Unfortunately, 90 percent of physicians performing these procedures do very few of them.

19 Nov 2013

Annual rates of CPR training vary widely across the U.S.

Annual rates of CPR training in the United States are low and vary widely across the country, but the communities most in need of training are the least likely to be trained, according to a new study from the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

19 Nov 2013

New report examines impact of federal and state policy decisions on community health centers

A new report by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services examines the impact of federal and state policy decisions on community health centers and their ability to continue providing primary care to the nation's poorest residents.

19 Nov 2013

Researchers discover association between RDW levels and depression in heart disease patients

Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute have discovered a link between elevated red cell distribution width levels and depression in patients being treated for heart disease.

19 Nov 2013

What's the Healthcare.gov goal? 80 percent enrollment success rate

Obama administration officials are quietly hoping 80 percent of users will be able to enroll in health insurance plans on the federal health law's healthcare.gov website once it is fixed, The Washington Post reports. In the meantime, other website snags come to light -- a lack of Spanish-language materials and early alarm at some problems at rolling out the site.

19 Nov 2013

TOPCAT trial results of spironolactone presented at AHA Scientific Sessions

A late-breaking clinical trial, known as the Treatment of Preserved Cardiac Function Heart Failure with an Aldosterone Antagonist trial, to be presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, November 18, 2013, demonstrates that spironolactone did not reduce the primary outcome of cardiovascular death, heart failure hospitalization, nor surviving a cardiac arrest in patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (pump function). However, spironolactone did reduce the major burden faced by these patients-the risk of repeated hospitalizations for heart failure.

19 Nov 2013

White House struggles to save health law

The Associated Press reports the president needs breakthroughs on three fronts: the cancellations and technology messes and the crisis in confidence among his own supporters. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports the White House is probing how the rollout flopped despite what they had believed was sufficient planning.

19 Nov 2013

Viewpoints: Obamacare has resisted death throes before; website success stories from 3 governors; health law taking a toll on choice of doctors in Medicare Advantage

The first time Obamacare seemed finished, doomed, doornail-dead, the voters of Massachusetts played the would-be executioner. In January 2010, they sent a pickup-driving Republican to the Senate to fill Ted Kennedy's seat, apparently depriving the health care bill of its crucial 60th vote and sending Democrats scrambling for a Plan B. ... the deeper force at work, the reason that these near-death experiences keep happening, isn't a website or a broken presidential promise. It's a problem inherent to contemporary liberalism, which is that liberals' proudest achievement, the modern welfare state, tends to resist, corrupt and baffle their efforts at comprehensive reform (Ross Douthat, 11/16).

19 Nov 2013

Pelosi downplays Democratic defections on health law

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., minimized reports of unrest within her caucus after 39 Democrats voted for a bill allowing insurers to sell plans for one more year that don't meet the health law's requirements.

19 Nov 2013

BIDMC pilot study shows promise for age-related cognitive disorders

It's well known that the brains of meditators change, but it's not entirely clear what those changes mean or how the changes might benefit the meditator. A new pilot study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that the brain changes associated with meditation and stress reduction may play an important role in slowing the progression of age-related cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

18 Nov 2013

NEC Display Solutions gets FDA clearance for MultiSync MD210C2 medical-grade monitor

NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, announced today the Food and Drug Administration 510(k) cleared 21-inch MultiSync MD210C2 medical-grade monitor, built for the displaying and viewing of digital images for diagnosis by trained physicians.

18 Nov 2013

FDA accepts Merck's NOXAFIL IV solution NDA for priority review

Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced that its New Drug Application for an investigational intravenous solution formulation of the company's antifungal agent, NOXAFIL (posaconazole), has been accepted for priority review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

18 Nov 2013

First Edition: November 18, 2013

Today's headlines include reports about the political implications of the healthcare.gov difficulties as well continued coverage of reaction to President Barack Obama's policy cancellation fix.

18 Nov 2013

Smart Use receives Primary Supplier status award for provision of NHS inventory management solutions

Smart Use Solutions, the leading provider of inventory management software to the healthcare sector today announced it has been awarded Primary Supplier status for the provision of NHS inventory management solutions.

18 Nov 2013

Medical image exchange: an interview with Willie Tillery, CEO of Accelarad

Accelarad’s team first recognized the need for the virtualization of radiology more than 10 years ago. Over the past six years, the industry has readily adopted cloud-based medical image exchanges, as evidenced by the thousands of physicians who share nearly half a billion images via Accelarad each year.

18 Nov 2013

Researchers take close look at medicine's highest volume activity

Laboratory testing is health care's single highest volume activity, with over 5 billion tests performed each year in the U.S.

18 Nov 2013

Childhood cancer survivors face heart problems decades after treatment

Cancer treatment takes a toll on the hearts of child survivors, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2013.

18 Nov 2013

Oxford scientists use nanoparticles to study mechanisms underlying 'mystery' cases of infertility

A way of using nanoparticles to investigate the mechanisms underlying 'mystery' cases of infertility has been developed by scientists at Oxford University.

18 Nov 2013

Close to 100 novel human gene regions that code for proteins may be linked to cancer

By using a new analysis method, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Sweden have found close to one hundred novel human gene regions that code for proteins. A number of these regions are so-called pseudogenes, which may be linked to cancer.

18 Nov 2013

Heart disease: The leading cause of deaths related to pregnancy in California

Heart disease is the leading cause of women's pregnancy-related deaths in California - but nearly one-third could be prevented, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2013.

18 Nov 2013