Despite major concerns over privacy and data security, people around the world are rapidly adopting the mobile internet as an easy and convenient method of carrying out everyday transactions including banking and shopping, a new global survey from KPMG has found. Compared with only 18 months ago, the global percentage of respondents who have used their mobile device for banking has more than doubled from 19% to 46%, while the percentage that have used it to buy goods and services has gone from 10% to 28%.
Mayo Clinic has been taking advantage of social media—including Facebook, Twitter and patient and employee blogs—for several years. On July 27, Mayo announced the launch of a Center for Social Media, which it says will expand social media tools beyond the traditional P.R. and marketing functions to use by staff, physicians and patients. We chatted by phone with Lee Aase, currently manager of syndications and social media at Mayo, who will be one of the center's leaders.
As Congress debated the healthcare bill, many critics lamented it would do little to transform a system in which doctors and hospitals bounce patients around in an uncoordinated, costly, sometimes tragic process.
But something unexpected has happened since President Obama signed the legislation in March. Spurred in part by the law, many independent providers across the country are racing to mold themselves into the kind of coordinated teams held up as models for improving care.
The widely reported liver trnasplant at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital to alleged killer Johnny Concepcion never took place, a hospital spokesman said. On Monday, the New York Post said Concepcion, 43, who allegedly stabbed his wife to death earlier this month, had gotten a liver transplant at the hospital after eating rat poison in a suicide attempt. The story quickly took off, making headlines such as msnbc.com's "Many outraged as accused murderer gets liver transplant" and CBS News' "Suspected Killer Gets Organ Transplant, Jumped to Top of Waiting List." Liver failure from poison can sometimes kill people much more quickly than a chronic condition such as cirrhosis. That's why a victim of poisoning may move ahead of other patients who've spent more time on the liver transplant waiting list. But Bryan Dotson, a spokesperson for the New York Presbyterian Hospital, said the New York Post report was wrong. The widely reported liver transplant at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital to alleged killer Johnny Concepcion never took place, a spokesperson told Reuters Health on Tuesday.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he still believes Pascack Valley Hospital should reopen, but a new legal appeal has been filed by two hospitals to kill the application for a full-service hospital in Westwood. "My position philosophically has not changed since the campaign," Christie told The Record editorial board earlier this month. "I think Pascack should be reopened." However, he added, "Governor Corzine and [former Health] Commissioner [Heather] Howard set up an exquisite set of handcuffs to try to prevent that from happening before they left office." Plans for reopening the facility as a 128-bed community hospital, in a joint venture involving Hackensack University Medical Center and LHP Hospital Group Inc. of Plano, Texas, are mired in court proceedings.
House lawmakers moving legislation to lure physicians to medically underserved areas are hoping the politics of tort reform don’t sink their proposal — again. The bill, passed Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee, would offer free malpractice coverage to doctors volunteering at community health centers (CHCs) — private facilities receiving federal funds to treat patients where care is lacking. The proposal represents an expansion of the Federal Tort Claims Act, which currently covers malpractice costs for CHC employees, but not volunteers. Therein lies the issue.