Loyal as 49-year-old Sharon Evanchuck of Saddle Brook was to her family doctor of 25 years, the security and personal touch that an old-fashioned solo practice can offer was becoming outweighed by the reality of modern medical times. Evanchuck did some research and switched to a large medical group – Bergen Medical Associates in Paramus and Emerson – and picked a doctor a friend and recommended. "I loved her. And the practice is one-stop shopping," she said. "They have cardiologists, they have gastroenterologists. I have to schedule a colonoscopy and now, all I have to do is walk down the hall. Plus there's no wait time."
The chief medical officer at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center was placed on probation for several months in 2010 and 2011 by the Virginia Board of Medicine following instances in which he began procedures on the wrong side of a patient's body, according to board documents. Dr. Paul W. Braunstein Jr.'s medical license has been in good standing since March 2011, and he said he hasn't had any wrong-site errors since two in 2005. During the four months of probation in 2010 and 2011, the board required that another physician monitor 20 surgeries that he performed. "Is it something I'm proud of?" Braunstein said. "No, but it is something I grew from."
Kelby Krabbenhoft said he wanted Sanford clinics to pop up like Dairy Queens across the countryside. He was referring to China, though now it looks like it will be happening first in Ghana. Sanford Health gave its commitment to Ghana an exponential booster shot last week by declaring it would open 300 clinics in the West African nation during the next six years. The plan results from an agreement Krabbenhoft, president and CEO at Sanford, announced with Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, minister of health in Ghana.
As more urological surgeries are performed outside hospitals, deaths from preventable complications among men and women getting inpatient surgery have risen, according to a new study. It's likely that older, sicker and poorer people make up more of the population having inpatient surgery, not that the surgeries are getting more dangerous, researchers say. "Our present findings provide evidence of a major shift in the type of patients being admitted for urological surgery," lead author Dr. Jesse Sammon told Reuters Health. "Historically, a much larger proportion of relatively healthy urology patients were admitted for low-risk procedures."
Members of corporate boards feel they should be much more actively involved in ensuring the organizations they oversee are adequately addressing cybersecurity. That doesn't mean members of the board of directors want to personally configure firewalls or procure intrusion detection systems -- just that they should make sure someone is doing so. The question is how to do that. IT security audit organization ISACA and theInstitute of Internal Auditors (IIA) are trying to provide answers on the proper role of board members with their report, "Cybersecurity: What the Board of Directors Needs to Ask," available at no charge through the IIA bookstore.
A fee supply of nicotine replacement medication and a handful of automated phone calls made smokers who wanted to quit much more likely to succeed, according to results of a clinical trial published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. The researchers who designed the trial said they were looking for a simple and inexpensive way to aid smokers who were already motivated to kick the habit. They estimated that once their 90-day program was set up, it could be maintained at a cost of less than $1,000 per quitter.