To improve patient safety, hospitals should randomly test physicians for drug and alcohol use in much the same way other major industries in the United States do to protect their customers. The recommendation comes from two Johns Hopkins physicians and patient safety experts in a commentary published online April 29 in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Culture
Over 20 million people in Europe suffer from osteoarthritis which can lead to extensive damage to the knee and hip cartilage. Stem cells offer a promising way forward but a key challenge has been to design a 'smart material' that is biologically effective for cartilage tissue regeneration. Now researchers have identified a blend of naturally occurring fibres such as cellulose and silk that makes progress towards affordable and effective cell-based therapy for cartilage repair a step closer.
An international team lead by the University of Granada has found that female sparrows will invest more energy into laying eggs according to the male's ability to fill the nest with feathers which serve to insulate the chicks from the cold and keep them alive.
San Diego, CA, May 7, 2013 – More than 25 percent of American adults chow down on fast food two or more times each week. Known for menu items containing high amounts of fat, sugar, and salt, fast-food restaurants have contributed to America's poor diets and increased risk of diet-related chronic diseases, like heart disease and diabetes.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — An entomologist at the University of California, Riverside discovered a new wasp species in Russia and named it after the university, commonly abbreviated as UCR.
Serguei V. Triapitsyn, principal museum scientist at the Entomology Research Museum< on campus, had been sorting wasps from the Russian Far East, when he discovered several tiny female fairyflies, or mymarid wasps, 1.1 to 1.2 millimeters in body length.
PASADENA, Calif., May 6, 2013 – Multiple sclerosis is more common in black women than in white women, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the journal Neurology. The findings run contrary to the widely accepted belief that blacks are less susceptible to MS, according to the researchers.
Boston, Mass. –A quality improvement platform developed at Boston Children's Hospital could help health care provider groups continuously improve their medical practice, curbing costs and improving patient outcomes. Successful outcomes associated with the platform, called Standardized Clinical Assessment and Management Plans (SCAMPs) and supported by a consortium of Massachusetts payers, are featured in the May issue of Health Affairs.
New York, NY, May 6, 2013—Combining Medicare's hospital, physician, and prescription drug coverage with commonly purchased private supplemental coverage into one health plan could produce national savings of $180 billion over a decade while improving care for beneficiaries, according to a new study by researchers at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Commonwealth Fund published today in the May edition of Health Affairs.
A slowdown in the growth of U.S. health care costs could mean that Americans could save as much as $770 billion on Medicare spending over the next decade, Harvard economists say.
In a May 6 paper published in Health Affairs, David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, and co-author Nikhil Sahni, a senior researcher in Harvard's Economics Department, point to several factors, including a decline in the development of new drugs and technologies and increased efficiency in the health care system, to explain the recent slowdown.
A study by Tracy A. Balboni, M.D., M.P.H., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues suggests that spiritual care and end-of-life (EoL) discussions by the medical team may be associated with reduced aggressive treatment.
The study included 343 patients with advanced cancer. EoL care in the final week included hospice, aggressive EoL measures (care in an intensive care unit, resuscitation or ventilation), and ICU death.
Completing a quality-of-life questionnaire at a healthcare provider's office could help patients live longer and live better, according to a new scientific statement published in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.
In the statement, the association urges healthcare providers to assess their patients' cardiovascular health by using standardized patient surveys. These surveys directly measure the impact of heart disease on patients, including their symptoms, quality of life, and ability to function physically and mentally.
Millions of seniors are turning down free money.
The Low Income Subsidy for Medicare Part D is a rare beast in economics, because it provides prescription drug coverage essentially free for low-income adults. Because it is a dominant option for those who are eligible, there is no rational reason not to choose it. And yet, a new study shows that many eligible seniors do not take advantage of the program, despite outreach efforts by the Social Security Administration.
The increasing proportion of the population that received treatment for a specific medical condition – called "treated disease prevalence" -- along with higher spending per treated case accounted for most of the rise in health care spending in the U.S. between 1987 and 2009, according to a recent analysis.
NEW YORK, NY (May 6, 2013) – A team of New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute scientists report today the generation of patient-specific bone substitutes from skin cells for repair of large bone defects. The study, led by Darja Marolt, PhD, a NYSCF-Helmsley Investigator and Giuseppe Maria de Peppo, PhD, a NYSCF Research Fellow, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, represents a major advance in personalized reconstructive treatments for patients with bone defects resulting from disease or trauma.
Where you are and what you're doing increasingly play key roles in how you search the Internet. In fact, your search may just conduct itself.
This concept, called "contextual search," is improving so gradually the changes often go unnoticed, and we may soon forget what the world was like without it, according to Brian Proffitt, a technology expert and adjunct instructor of management in the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.