Primary Care News and Research

Latest Primary Care News and Research

Single test is not enough for making accurate diagnosis of disc herniation

While lower back pain ranks as a common cause of disability in the United States, determining what causes a person's back pain is often challenging. A new Cochrane review on diagnosing back pain finds that no single diagnostic test is good at discriminating between patients who have a herniated disc and patients who do not, according to lead author Danielle van der Windt.

18 Feb 2010

New database answers question: How healthy is your county?

A new database compares the health of the more than 3,000 counties in the U.S.

18 Feb 2010

Utah tries to improve state health insurance exhange; Mich. plans for doctor shortage

The Salt Lake Tribune: "State health reform got a boost Tuesday with House passage of a fix-it bill to improve the Utah Health Exchange, an online tool for purchasing health insurance. Pitched as a free-market approach to lowering costs for small businesses, the exchange has had limited success. Only 400 people are receiving health insurance in its experimental first stage. And some of its 66 plans are up to 130 percent more expensive than what some companies were already paying. That's because insurers are calculating premiums differently 'inside' and 'outside' the exchange, said House Speaker Dave Clark" (Stewart, 2/16).

17 Feb 2010

ACP urges Congress and Obama to enact comprehensive health care reform

"The unfortunate truth is that by many measures, the State of America's health care is in decline," Joseph W. Stubbs, MD, FACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), reported today at ACP's annual State of the Nation's Health Care briefing. "We have too many uninsured, too few primary care physicians, and the cost of health care is rising faster than we can afford."

17 Feb 2010

Cipher Pharmaceuticals announces fourth-quarter and fiscal year 2009 results

Cipher Pharmaceuticals Inc. today announced its financial and operational results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2009.

17 Feb 2010

Disparities in breast cancer treatment: African-American women diagnosed in later stages of disease

Cancer, the peer-reviewed international journal of the American Cancer Society, has published a study conducted by HealthCore, Inc. in its Jan. 1 edition, demonstrating disparities in breast cancer treatment between commercially insured African-American and white women.

17 Feb 2010

ECR Pharmaceuticals to promote Urocit-K 15mEq tablets to primary care physicians

Hi-Tech Pharmacal Co., Inc. announced today that its branded marketing subsidiary, ECR Pharmaceuticals will promote Urocit®-K 15mEq, potassium citrate extended release tablets to primary care physicians beginning in April, 2010. Hi-Tech has a license agreement with Mission Pharmacal Company, which will promote the product to Urologists.

17 Feb 2010

Even with new medical schools opening, shortages mar workforce

Nearly two dozen medical schools have recently opened or may open across America, "the most at any time since the 1960s and '70s," The New York Times reports. These new institutions "are seeking to address an imbalance in American medicine that has been growing for a quarter century. Many bright students were fleeing to offshore medical schools, or giving up hope entirely, when they could not get into domestic schools. Meanwhile, American hospitals were using foreign-trained and foreign-born physicians to fill medical residencies. During the 1980s and '90s only one new medical school was established."

17 Feb 2010

Obama administration announces $1 billion in new health IT grants

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis Friday announced the release of $1 billion in stimulus funds to expand the use of electronic records and to train health care workers.

16 Feb 2010

Altarum Institute awarded $19.6M ARRA funds to serve as lead agent in establishing M-CEITA

Ann Arbor-based Altarum Institute has been awarded a grant of $19,619,990 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to serve as the lead agent in establishing Michigan’s health information technology regional extension center, the Michigan Center for Effective IT Adoption (M-CEITA, www.mceita.org). The grant will be administered through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and managed and sponsored by Altarum. It is expected to create over 100 new jobs in Michigan.

16 Feb 2010

GE Healthcare launches Vscan ultrasound, pocket-sized visualization tool for point-of-care imaging

GE Healthcare today announced the availability of Vscan, a new, pocket-sized visualization tool developed to provide physicians with imaging capabilities at the point-of-care. Roughly the size of a smart phone, Vscan houses powerful, ultra-smart ultrasound technology that provides clinicians with an immediate, non-invasive method to help secure visual information about what is happening inside the body. Vscan is portable and can easily be taken from room to room to be used in many clinical, hospital or primary care settings.

15 Feb 2010

Research roundup: Bundled payments, PTSD incidence, cost of treating immigrants

This paper examines the spending for health care of adult naturalized citizens and immigrant noncitizens (including some undocumented immigrants) compared to U.S. natives, as documented in data from the 1999-2006 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys (MEPS): "inflation and age-adjusted health care expenditures among noncitizen immigrants were consistently … lower than those of naturalized citizens and U.S. natives during 1999-2006."

15 Feb 2010

Obama administration to announce $975 million in health IT grants

The Obama administration is awarding $975 million in grants to help states and health care providers adopt health information technology. The grant money being announced Friday comes from the economic stimulus legislation passed by Congress last year and is part of the administration's push to get doctors, hospitals and others to move from paper to computerized record-keeping.

15 Feb 2010

Study analyzes physicians and Medicare insurance claims to investigate volume-offset behavior

Do physicians provide more services to Medicare patients to make up for lower Medicare fees? With almost 42 million people enrolled in Medicare in the United States in 2008, it's a question that could have a very costly answer.

12 Feb 2010

MHQP: Massachusetts primary care physicians achieve measurable improvements in health care quality

Massachusetts primary care physicians continue to achieve measurable improvements in important aspects of health care quality as reported by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP). Today, the organization released its sixth annual Quality Insights: Clinical Quality in Primary Care report, comparing the performance of more than 150 medical groups across the state.

11 Feb 2010

UCLA and Health Net to develop health literacy training intervention for adolescents

With the average teen spending approximately nine hours a week on social networking sites, the UCLA School of Public Health has partnered with Health Net of California to develop a health literacy training intervention using social media to encourage adolescents ages 13 to 17 to utilize their health care more effectively.

11 Feb 2010

Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center receives Amerigroup Foundation grant

The Amerigroup Foundation has awarded a grant of $15,000 to the Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center. Given in recognition of the center's commitment to helping create and maintain healthy, safe communities, the grant will support the Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center's continued efforts to improve the lives of the people it serves on a daily basis.

11 Feb 2010

Study: There are still barriers to veterans getting full course of PTSD treatment

Although the Department of Veteran Affairs is rolling out treatments nationwide as fast as possible to adequately provide for newly diagnosed PTSD patients, there are still significant barriers to veterans getting a full course of PTSD treatment. The study is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

11 Feb 2010

Allscripts clinical and practice management IT solutions to be implemented at NuHealth

Allscripts announced today that NuHealth will implement Allscripts clinical and practice management IT solutions across its network of hospitals and employed physicians, enhancing the quality of care, improving patient communications, and better managing the cost of care delivery. The agreement, valued in excess of $5 million, is the central component of NuHealth's connected healthcare strategy, enabling health information exchange and collaboration among all the members of a patient's care team, inside and outside the health system.

10 Feb 2010

Study shows more women die of heart disease each year than men

Cardiovascular disease (commonly referred to as heart disease) is the leading cause of death for women worldwide. Almost every minute, a woman in the U.S. dies from heart disease. Despite the prevalence of heart disease in women, a 2005 American Heart Association study showed that 92% of primary care physicians and 83% of cardiologists were not aware of the fact that more women than men die of heart disease each year.

10 Feb 2010

Primary Care News and Research

Latest Primary Care News and Research

Single test is not enough for making accurate diagnosis of disc herniation

New database answers question: How healthy is your county?

Utah tries to improve state health insurance exhange; Mich. plans for doctor shortage

ACP urges Congress and Obama to enact comprehensive health care reform

Cipher Pharmaceuticals announces fourth-quarter and fiscal year 2009 results

Disparities in breast cancer treatment: African-American women diagnosed in later stages of disease

ECR Pharmaceuticals to promote Urocit-K 15mEq tablets to primary care physicians

Even with new medical schools opening, shortages mar workforce

Obama administration announces $1 billion in new health IT grants

Altarum Institute awarded $19.6M ARRA funds to serve as lead agent in establishing M-CEITA

GE Healthcare launches Vscan ultrasound, pocket-sized visualization tool for point-of-care imaging

Research roundup: Bundled payments, PTSD incidence, cost of treating immigrants

Obama administration to announce $975 million in health IT grants

Study analyzes physicians and Medicare insurance claims to investigate volume-offset behavior

MHQP: Massachusetts primary care physicians achieve measurable improvements in health care quality

UCLA and Health Net to develop health literacy training intervention for adolescents

Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center receives Amerigroup Foundation grant

Study: There are still barriers to veterans getting full course of PTSD treatment

Allscripts clinical and practice management IT solutions to be implemented at NuHealth

Study shows more women die of heart disease each year than men

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Synthetic Psychedelics: A Growing Public Health Concern

How the Vutara VXL simplifies single-molecule imaging

Primary Care News and Research

Latest Primary Care News and Research

Real-time Raman monitoring for pharmaceutical hot melt extrusion

Synthetic Psychedelics: A Growing Public Health Concern

How the Vutara VXL simplifies single-molecule imaging

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