Physicians should recieve full, refundable tax credits to help them buy and use health information technology, according to the American Medical Association's House of Delegates. Of the physicians who responded to an AMA survey, 79 percent backed the idea of a tax credit to defray EMR costs.
According to a study conducted at the Columbia University Medical Center, CT scans could be responsible for as much as 2 percent of all cancers in the United States in the next 20 to 30 years due the radiation exposure. The news was released amidst the Radiological Society of North America's annual meeting, and the RSNA responded by saying that while there is risk with CT, the potential benefits far outweigh them.
An Internet-based program called Telehealth can monitors patients with such chronic illnesses as congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or diabetes. The program warns when certain individually determined thresholds are passed, such as blood pressure or blood sugar, and makes the daily information available to the patient's doctor and nurses.
Rural hospitals throughout Illinois be connected to a high-speed fiber-optic network aimed at improving healthcare by linking staff to the expertise and resources of much larger hospitals in the Chicago area.
A judge's instructions to a jury in a federal corruption case were too broad and allowed two former hospital executives to be convicted of conduct that was not illegal, according to an argument in appeals court. Robert Urciuoli, former president and chief executive of Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, RI, was convicted last year, along with the former vice president, of paying a state senator to advance the hospital's agenda at the Statehouse.
A new survey shows that when it comes to dealing with colleagues' mistakes or incompetence, physicians oftentimes abandon the high standards they espouse. According to the study, 45 percent of those surveyed they did not always report an incompetent or impaired colleague to the appropriate authorities, even though 96 percent said doctors should turn in such people.