The percentage of personal bankruptcies linked to medical bills or illness changed little, and the absolute number actually increased in Massachusetts after the implementation of its landmark 2006 law requiring people to buy health insurance, a Harvard study says.
Tech
In a study that included more than 120,000 adults who were treated for trauma, 16 percent of these patients died within 3 years of their injury, compared to an expected population mortality rate of about 6 percent, according to a study in the March 9 issue of JAMA. The researchers also found that trauma patients who were discharged to a skilled nursing facility had a significantly increased risk of death compared with patients discharged home without assistance.
The quality of chronic disease care under the GP pay for performance system is poorer for residents of care homes than those living in the community, according to a study published on bmj.com today.
The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) for general practice is a voluntary system of financial incentives, which has been in place since 2004. Part of the programme includes specific targets for GPs to demonstrate high quality care for patients with chronic diseases.
The coalition government's Health and Social Care Bill is a missed opportunity to deliver the improvements in children's health services in England that are urgently needed, warn experts in a paper published on bmj.com today.
Ingrid Wolfe and some of the country's leading experts in child health propose a fundamentally different way of delivering children's health care that is long overdue in the UK.
UK trained doctors and medical students from minority ethnic groups tend to underperform academically compared with their white counterparts, finds a study published on bmj.com today.
This attainment gap has persisted for many years and must be tackled to ensure a fair and just method of training and assessing current and future doctors, say the authors.
The researcher in question is Nadia Skorupa Parachin and the secret of her technique is enzymes that she extracted from garden soil. If ethanol can be successfully made from xylose then ethanol production could increase by over 20 per cent – to the benefit of cheaper environmentally friendly fuel.
Ethanol is manufactured by fermenting sugars from plant material. At present, xylose is not used, despite being the second most common type of sugar found in nature. Succeeding with xylose requires good, quick enzymes that can get the yeast to also ferment the less appetising xylose.
Closely contested major sporting events are followed by a significant increase in traffic fatalities for fans of the winning team, according to new research from North Carolina State University. It turns out there may be more on the line than many sports fans bargained for.
Getting someone's attention can be easy with a loud noise or a shout, but what if the situation calls for a little more tact? How can a robot use subtle cues to attract a human's notice and tell when it has captured it? In a preliminary study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that they can program a robot to understand when it gains a human's attention and when it falls short. The research is being presented today at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Boston, Mass. – Through a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have developed a first-of-its kind platform architecture to support a flexible health information technology (IT) environment and promote innovation.
INDIANAPOLIS – The March 2011 issue of the journal Heath Affairs highlights an evidence-based model of geriatric care management developed, implemented and tested by researchers and clinicians from Indiana University, the Regenstrief Institute and Wishard Health Services.
Wheat farmers in eastern Oregon and Washington who use no-till production systems can substantially stem soil erosion and enhance efforts to protect water quality, according to research by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
URBANA – The way you react to your two-year-old's temper tantrums or clinginess may lead to anxiety, withdrawal and behavior problems down the road, and the effect is more pronounced if the child is a boy who often displays such negative emotions as anger and social fearfulness, reports a new University of Illinois study.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are developing a technology that aims to help make solar cells more affordable and efficient by using a new manufacturing method that employs an ultrafast pulsing laser.
The innovation may help to overcome two major obstacles that hinder widespread adoption of solar cells: the need to reduce manufacturing costs and increase the efficiency of converting sunlight into an electric current, said Yung Shin, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of Purdue University's Center for Laser-Based Manufacturing.