Culture

As part of the Affordable Care Act, hospitals and medical centers are required to report their quality-of-care and risk-standardized outcomes for stroke and other common medical conditions. But reporting models for mortality that don't consider stroke severity may unfairly skew these results.

Now, A UCLA-led national study has found that when reporting on 30-day mortality rates for Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with acute stroke, using a model that adjusts for stroke severity completely alters performance outcomes and rankings for many hospitals.

CHICAGO – Adding stroke severity to a hospital 30-day mortality model based on claims data for Medicare beneficiaries with acute ischemic stroke was associated with improvement in predicting the risk of death at 30 days and changes in performance ranking regarding mortality for a considerable proportion of hospitals, according to a study in the July 18 issue of JAMA.

CHICAGO – Physicians tend to share patients with colleagues who have similar personal traits and practice styles, and there is substantial variation in physician network characteristics across geographic areas, according to a study in the July 18 issue of JAMA.

CHICAGO – Among patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), treatment with the widely-prescribed drug to treat MS, interferon beta, was not associated with less progression of disability, according to a study in the July 18 issue of JAMA.

Fewer people died or needed expensive long-term care when their physicians focused on the top risk factors for stroke and dementia, according to research reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA). dementia

The primary care doctors in the German study focused on high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and depression. The researchers found that during a five-year period, the need for long-term care was cut 10 percent in women and 9.6 percent in men.

BOSTON – A new way of mapping how physicians share patients provides opportunities for improving the quality of medical care and organizing the nature of care delivery, according to researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.

Researchers with the UBC Hospital MS Clinic and Brain Research Centre at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia have published important data in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) about the impact of a common drug therapy on the progression of multiple sclerosis for people with the relapsing‑remitting form of the disease.

Intuitively it simply makes sense: exposure to sexual content in movies at an early age probably influences adolescents' sexual behavior. And yet, even though a great deal of research has shown that adolescents who watch more risky behaviors in popular movies, like drinking or smoking, are more likely to drink and smoke themselves, surprisingly little research has examined whether movies influence adolescents' sexual behaviors.

Until now.

Santa Barbara, Calif. – As spatial planning is used increasingly to manage fisheries and other ocean resources, researchers are working to determine the best ways to use and refine the various spatial management tools. Among them are marine protected areas (MPAs), one of the most common methods, which limit or entirely curtail fishing in a given area.

PHILADELPHIA (July 17, 2012)— The combination of obesity and vitamin D deficiency may put people at even greater risk of insulin resistance than either factor alone, according to new research from the Drexel University School of Public Health recently published early online in the journal Diabetes Care. Insulin resistance is a major risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, a condition that affects 25.6 million adults and is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.

WASHINGTON — Changing the way that Medicare payments are adjusted to account for regional variations in the cost of providing care as recommended by a previous report from the Institute of Medicine would result in payment increases for some hospitals and practitioners and decreases for others, concludes the Phase II report from the IOM study.

Researchers from the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) at the University of Barcelona (UB) have coordinated a research into how the IDPN nitrile causes neurological syndromes similar to those of the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a severe neuromuscular degenerative disease. The study, led by Jordi Llorens, has been recently published in Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology journal.

A major argument in favor of microfinance is that the poor who live in areas without banking services will gain higher returns on investments and increase their assets when provided with credit.

But a notable new study from the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty presents some of the first real evidence of microfinance impacts and indicates that the true returns of expanding access to credit are much more complex. Some of the greatest benefits to alleviating poverty, the study suggests, may be in the impact the programs have on driving up wages.

Though 2011 saw a significant decline in major acts of violence against the Jewish population world-wide, anti-Semitic harassment and incitement, including verbal threats, insults, and abusive behavior, have escalated, according to this year's Antisemitism Worldwide General Analysis, a publication of Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. The yearly report is based on the Center's Moshe Kantor Database for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.

San Diego, CA, July 17, 2012 – Most research into youth violence has sought to understand the risk factors that increase the likelihood of violence. Now, a federal panel has called for a new research approach to identify the protective factors that would reduce the likelihood that violence will happen. Grounded in the tools and insights of public health, the approach calls for studies that can guide the development of prevention strategies to reduce or eliminate risk factors, and add or enhance protective factors.