The Minneapolis VA Health Care System will participate in two major research projects focusing on non-drug approaches to pain. The Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center has become a site for studying chronic pain and the effectiveness of alternatives to traditional pain medications. The Department of Veterans Affairs nationwide struggles with the burgeoning use of pain medications for vets. A June 2014 report showed a high rate of chronic pain — 44 percent — among members of the U.S. military after combat deployment, compared with 26 percent in the general public.
Healthcare providers improve both patient care and their bottom lines by reducing the time people spend in waiting rooms. There is, however, no cookie-cutter approach, no out-of-the-box app to shorten the number of minutes patients spend flicking through old magazines or watching the news on muted televisions. Rather, IT departments and clinicians determine the principle issue the organization needs to resolve, and then find the optimal solution. When Linda Ratner and her husband opened Impact Urgent Care, the two emergency room medical professionals soon realized they couldn't keep working 12- to 14-hour days and provide patients with quality care.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Tuesday the first case of Ebola in a critically ill patient diagnosed in a U.S. hospital. The patient — who has been isolated since his symptoms were recognized — is an unnamed man in intensive care at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas. Hospital workers noted his case because of his symptoms and recent travel history. It is not known whether he has infected others, although CDC officials are tracing his contacts. The man left Liberia Sept. 19 and arrived in the USA the next day but had no symptoms when leaving Africa or arriving here, said Thomas Frieden, the CDC director.
The federal government unveiled data Tuesday detailing 4.4 million payments made to doctors and teaching hospitals by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. The launch of the so-called Open Payments website, mandated under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, was far from glitch-free: Some users encountered long delays and sometimes error messages trying to access its seven data tables. Also, the site didn't provide consumers with an easy-to-use lookup tool, a single place to search for a doctor's name and see all results across data files. It will take a while to dig deeply into this new trove of data, which covers the period of August to December 2013 and includes general and research payments, as well as payments to companies' physician investors.
One year after ObamaCare's launch, the healthcare law's fate largely rests in the hands of the states. Governors and legislatures will have great power to decide the biggest unsettled issues with the law, including how to control costs, ensure quality care and reach the roughly 40 million people who remain uninsured. "The states are really where the rubber meets the road on many different levels," said Sabrina Corlette, a researcher who directs the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms. Most states have embraced the law, though dozens of others, generally with Republican governors or legislatures, have resisted it.
As a practicing ear, nose and throat specialist in Ahoskie, N.C., Dr. Raghuvir B. Gelot says that little has frustrated him more than the digital record system he installed a few years ago. The problem: His system, made by one company, cannot share patient records with the local medical center, which uses a program made by another company. The two companies are quick to deny responsibility, each blaming the other. Regardless of who is at fault, doctors and hospital executives across the country say they are distressed that the expensive electronic health record systems they installed in the hopes of reducing costs and improving the coordination of patient care — a major goal of the Affordable Care Act — simply do not share information with competing systems.