While the top Canadian athletes compete at the Beijing Olympics, a small but important contingent of Canadian doctors are responsible for keeping the team and the staff in tip-top shape. The Canadian Olympic Committee's core medical team consists of 10 physicians as well as a host of other health professionals, including massage therapists and sport psychologists. Along with other Canadian physicians accompanying individual sports teams, they are responsible for the care of the 600-odd Canadian athletes and support staff for the duration of the Olympics.
For years patients have been told that early cancer detection saves lives, but a panel of leading medical experts recently offered exactly the opposite advice. They urged doctors to stop screening older men for prostate cancer, and concluded that for men 75 and older screening for prostate cancer does more harm than good.
When physicians receive a Medicare audit request and realize that their documentation isn't so good or even non-existent, many are tempted to recreate or alter medical record documentation. But this is probably the worst thing you can do in this situation, according to physician law blogger Todd A. Rodriguez. Poor or even non-existent medical record documentation is not necessarily an indicator of fraud or abuse, and in many cases it is simply an indication of the need for documentation and coding education or better record keeping protocols, he says.
When it comes to choosing a doctor, most Americans rank bedside manner and communications skills at the top of the list of qualities important to them, according to a survey commissioned by the American Board of Medical Specialties. Ninety-five percent of respondents ranked communications skills and bedside manner as important, and when asked to select the "most important" physician attribute, 34% named bedside manner and communication skills.
New Orleans residents and officials are locked in a debate over which would be better for those involved: building a new veterans hospital where the vacant Lindy Boggs Medical Center now stands, or tearing down a neighborhood so the hospital can be close to the downtown medical schools and the city's nascent bioscience corridor.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has planned for two years to erect a new hospital on the edge of downtown New Orleans, where it could share services with Louisiana State University's new teaching hospital and help anchor a biosciences district that city leaders envision as an economic driver for the region. But building the hospital downtown would mean displacing a neighborhood filled with historic houses.
A new Bi-State Nursing Workforce Innovation Center, designed to help improve nursing environments in the Kansas City area, has been announced by a group of partners and donors. The center will be at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Nursing, and is designed to retain good nurses frustrated by low staffing numbers, high patient loads, and heavy paperwork burdens. In 2007, Kansas City area hospitals reported a 9.4% vacancy rate in their registered nursing positions and a 13% annual turnover rate.