In my first year of training as a doctor, I knew something was wrong with me. I had trouble sleeping. I had difficulty feeling joy. I was prone to crying at inopportune times. Even worse, I had trouble connecting with patients. I felt as if I couldn't please anyone, and I felt susceptible to feelings of despair and panic. I'm a physician, and, if I do say so myself, a very well-trained one. Yet it took an "intern support group" and the social worker who ran it, close friends and my fiancée (now my wife) to convince me that I might need help. Even if I couldn't acknowledge it, they could see I was suffering from depression.
Regular use of proton pump inhibitors appears to be linked to chronic kidney disease, but additional studies are needed to determine whether the drugs actually cause kidney damage, and, if so, how, researchers said.
Outsourced hospitalists tend to make as much or more money than those that hospitals employ directly, typically in excess of $200,000 a year. But the catch is that their compensation is often tied more directly to the number of patients they see in a day — which the hospitalists at Sacred Heart worried could be as many as 18 or 20, versus the 15 that they and many other hospitalists contend should be the maximum. (Mark Hamm, executive vice president of EmCare, a physician services firm based in Dallas that has no connection to Sacred Heart, said the hospitalists employed by many staffing companies typically see 15 to 18 patients a day, though he said that was true of those who were directly employed by hospitals as well.)
Eager to maximize coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration has allowed large numbers of people to sign up for insurance after the deadlines in the last two years, destabilizing insurance markets and driving up premiums, health insurance companies say. The administration has created more than 30 "special enrollment" categories and sent emails to millions of Americans last year urging them to see if they might be able to sign up after the annual open enrollment deadline. But, insurers and state officials said, the federal government did little to verify whether late arrivals were eligible.
Vice President Biden is moving forward with his "moon shot" to cure cancer with a staff-level meeting on Friday with more than a dozen top cancer researchers. Members of Biden's office will sit down Friday with 15 members of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), some of the most prestigious medical experts in the world. Those experts plan to "highlight the considerable progress in cancer research" and its role in promising research areas like precision medicine and immunotherapy, according to a release from the group. Biden, who lost his oldest son to brain cancer in May, has made curing cancer a personal fight over the last year.
Connecticut hospitals have taken the first step toward a legal battle with the state over a tax they assert is unconstitutional and has cost them tens of millions of dollars in recent years. The Connecticut Hospital Association and 24 hospitals, including Danbury, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich, have filed documents with the state departments of revenue and social services claiming the hospital tax violates state and federal laws, as well as the state and federal constitutions. The filings request that the two agencies issue declaratory rulings that the tax is invalid and unenforceable.