Since 2007, a Los Angeles-base physicians' group has been trying to encourage black men to get checkups by doing exams at barbershops. More than 1,200 men have been screened for diabetes and high blood pressure since the Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program's inception.
A New York City doctor whose low-cost healthcare plan angered state officials has agreed to increase his fees. The New York Insurance Department told John Muney, MD, to end the $79-a-month medical service at his AMG Medical Group clinics. Department spokesman Andy Mais said Muney was violating state law by basically operating as an insurance operator without a license. The monthly fee buys unlimited office visits, including certain tests and in-office surgeries.
State regulators voted to accept a bid by a Massachusetts Catholic hospital chain and a secular health organization to provide health insurance to thousands of low-income residents. The Connector Authority board voted unanimously in favor of the joint venture proposed by Centene Corp., a St. Louis-based health organization, and Caritas Christi Health Care Network. The vote followed several closed-door sessions in which officials from Centene and Caritas assured regulators that women will have "ready access" to family planning and reproductive services, an issue that sparked concerns from abortion foes and reproductive rights activists.
Research continues to show that the clinical decision support systems intended to protect patients from medication errors prove in some ways to be more of a hindrance than a help to doctors, says this article published by the American Medical Association. The latest example is a study of the electronic prescribing records of nearly 2,900 community physicians and other prescribers: Nearly 230,000 times these doctors were warned about potential drug interactions, and 90% of the time they decided to proceed as if the alert had never appeared.
An Arkansas state court has ruled that Baptist Health, Arkansas' largest hospital system, acted improperly by inappropriately restricting hospital admitting privileges and interfering with the continuity of patient care. The ruling in Baptist v. Murphy permanently prohibits an economic credentialing policy adopted by Baptist Health in 2003, which would have allowed the hospital system to interfere in the patient-physician relationship by denying hospital-admitting privileges to medical staff members based on financial concerns.
A widely-known Massachusetts anesthesiologist, whose research has influenced how doctors treat surgery patients for pain, has been accused of fabricating results in at least 21 published papers, and in some cases even inventing patients. Colleagues say the case is one the largest ever of alleged medical research fraud. Scott Reuben, MD, works at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, and has published dozens of articles on an important and emerging area of anesthesiology involving the use of more than one type of drug to relieve post-surgical pain and foster faster recovery.