Access to the prescription writing habits of physicians is becoming a new battleground. For example, every state in New England has a prescription transparency issue in dispute. A new law was to take effect in Maine on Jan. 1 making the prescription writing habits of physicians confidential under state law.
Sponges are the most common foreign objects left behind in surgeries, according to several medical-device companies. Now, spiking costs are forcing providers to tighten surgical procedures aimed at making sure sponges are not left inside patients because retrieving a sponge in a redo surgery can cost $50,000 or more.
When Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston opens its new cardiovascular wing in May, all 136 rooms will include a family sleeping area. Brigham is one of a growing number of U.S. hospitals experimenting with open access or nearly open access for families of adult ICU patients.
Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, according to a study. The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race and ethnicity in both urban and rural hospitals.
The small clinic at Kaival Hospital in India matches infertile couples with local women, cares for the women during pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward. These surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly 40 babies. Now more than 50 women in this city are pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond.
New York has one of the most far-reaching mental health statutes in the country. It gives great latitude to doctors, social workers and relatives to force mentally ill people into treatment, and it provides money for clinical services. Just how far states can go to get mentally ill people into treatment is a key issue in Virginia, which is struggling with changing its mental health system after a mentally ill gunman shot and killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in April before killing himself.