In a speech at the White House, President Obama urged Congress to "finish its work" on healthcare and indicated support for a strategy that includes the budget maneuver known as reconciliation, which would protect the final product from a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Obama told an audience of medical professionals that Congress "owes the American people a final vote on healthcare reform." But completing the job would require weeks of complicated parliamentary tactics that Republicans have pledged to challenge, the Washington Post reports.
Washington Hospital Center fired eight more employees after they failed to show up for work during last month's snowstorms in Washington, DC. The hospital announced that it has also rehired three of the 16 workers it had terminated. Hospital President Harrison J. Rider III announced in a letter to staff members that after a review of employees who did not make it in during the record-breaking snowstorms that hit the region between Feb. 5 and Feb. 11, it was concluded that 15 nurses and six members of the support staff should be terminated.
New guidelines for prostate cancer screening emphasize that physicians should better educate men about both the risks and benefits of using the PSA test for screening. They also call for cutbacks in the use of digital rectal exams to find tumors and recommend the end of mass prostate-screening programs at health fairs and other sites. The revised guidelines issued by the American Cancer Society come on the heels of several studies suggesting that large numbers of tumors identified by PSA screening are inconsequential and that biopsies and treatment produce more harm than those tumors would.
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has added more information to its Web site to help consumers gauge doctors' performance and compare treatment costs of certain diseases. BlueCross said immunizations and heart conditions were added as quality measures to its physician quality and cost tool. The goal is to help prevent diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella and to better manage coronary artery disease, The Tennessean reports.
Nyquil launched a Facebook app launched in December 2009, prompting more than 100,000 fans to join "Nyquil Nation," a community of people who claim they've found sleep even though they have a cold. The premise is simple—upload a photo of yourself sleeping when you've got a cold, get 5 friends to vote for it (by signing up themselves), and you get a free T-Shirt.
As Democrats prepared an effort to move healthcare legislation to final passage, President Obama proposed incorporating a handful of GOP ideas into health reform efforts. Obama's gesture to include GOP-backed provisions on cutting health costs and preventing fraud appeared to strengthen the resolve of congressional Democrats, the Washington Post reports. Obama also expressed interest in a move by GOP lawmakers to increase payments to doctors who treat Medicaid patients, provided Congress address the issue "in a fiscally responsible manner."