With an increased emphasis on grading hospitals and a push to withhold payments from hospitals who don't meet certain standards, two Johns Hopkins researchers argue that more attention needs to be paid to the quality of the measurement tools used to praise and punish.
Culture
In an examination of trends of malpractice claims, there has been a greater decline in the rate of paid claims for inpatient settings than outpatient settings, and in 2009, the number of malpractice claims for events resulting in paid malpractice claims in outpatient and inpatient settings were similar, according to a study in the June 15 issue of JAMA.
In an analysis of data from several studies, watching television for 2-3 hours per day or more was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular disease and all-cause death, according to a study in the June 15 issue of JAMA.
Patients in the early stages of chronic kidney disease who had elevated levels of the endocrine hormone fibroblast growth factor 23 (that regulates phosphorus metabolism) had an associated increased risk of end-stage renal disease and death, according to a study in the June 15 issue of JAMA.
Boston, MA – Watching television is the most common daily activity apart from work and sleep in many parts of the world, but it is time for people to change their viewing habits. According to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, prolonged TV viewing was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
The study appears in the June 15, 2011, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
NEW YORK (June 15, 2011) -- Ever since the Institute of Medicine issued its landmark report "To Err Is Human" in 1999, significant attention has been paid to improving patient safety in hospitals nationwide.
However, a high number of adverse events, including major injury and even death, occur in private physician offices and outpatient clinics as well. In a new study -- the first of its kind -- researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College found that the number and magnitude of events resulting from medical errors is surprisingly similar inside and outside hospital walls.
Over the next few years, even popular daily deal sites will have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared with current levels and it will be harder for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals because there is very little difference between companies and it will be difficult for any one site to stand out from the others, according to Utpal Dholakia, associate professor of management at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business.
Despite living in the countryside, where open space is plentiful and there is often significant agricultural production, California's more than half a million rural elders are far more likely to be overweight or obese, physically inactive and food insecure than their suburban counterparts, according to a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
All three conditions are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and repeated falls — conditions also more prevalent among rural elders.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- An Oregon-pioneered program aimed at improving health care for those with advanced illness is now receiving national attention. AARP recently released a report about the Physicians Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or POLST, program. The program was created to honor the treatment wishes of patients with advanced progressive illness or frailty.
NEW YORK – Mental health screening has been demonstrated to successfully connect African-American middle school students from a predominantly low-income area with school-based mental health services, according to results of a new study led by the TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University. The study was published in a recent online early edition of the Community Mental Health Journal.
MONTREAL, June 14, 2011 – Patients posting their opinions about doctors on online ratings websites are much less likely to discuss physicians with low perceived quality and are more prone than offline populations to exaggerate their opinions, according to a paper being presented at a healthcare conference sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
Every year, Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden takes a barometer reading of media use in Sweden. Media Barometer data were first collected in 1979. These are some of the findings of the 2010 survey.
Non-invasive tests for liver fibrosis, such as liver stiffness measurement or the FibroTest, can predict survival of patients with chronic hepatitis C, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago.
This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by the Mississippians of the Cahokia Mounds, who lived in southeastern Illinois from 700 until 1400 A.D. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in May.
Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a particular form of leukemia or cancer of the bone marrow, which can be treated with targeted imatinib. However, in some cases this medicine has no effect. Researchers at the VIB Vesalius Research Centre, K.U. Leuven, under the direction of Peter Carmeliet, have investigated the role of placental growth factor (PlGF) in mice with CML. Blocking this growth factor increases the life expectancy of these mice, even in those resistant to imatinib.
Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML)