For most people, Google Glass still seems like little more than a gimmick. But in health care, doctors are already finding uses for the technology that could one day save your life. Five years down the line, don't be surprised if surgeons are wearing Google Glass in the operating room. In fact, some surgeons--in San Francisco, naturally--are early adopters of the technology already. At Rock Health's recent Health Innovation Summit, Dr. Pierre Theodore, a cardiothoracic surgeon at UCSF Medical Center, described his experience wearing Google Glass while performing surgery, using the glasses to compare the patient's CAT scan images with what he was seeing in front of him.
Forty men who put their sperm on ice because cancer or other illnesses threatened to leave them infertile are suing a Chicago hospital after a freezer malfunction robbed many of them of the chance to have biological children, their lawyer said Wednesday. "It's heartbreaking," said Matt Jenkins, the lawyer representing the men, who are identified only as John Doe in the suit filed Tuesday. "These men faced death and pulled through the other side and thought they had a safety net to have children," he said. "To have that taken away and be told that you can't have biological children — it's been devastating to these people."
Dr. Greggory Phillips was a familiar figure when he appeared before the Texas Medical Board in 2011 on charges that he'd wrongly prescribed the painkillers that killed Jennifer Chaney. The family practitioner already had faced an array of sanctions for mismanaging medications — and for abusing drugs himself. Over a decade, board members had fined him thousands of dollars, restricted his prescription powers, and placed his medical license on probation with special monitoring of his practice. They also let him keep practicing medicine. In 2008, a woman in Phillips' care had died from a toxic mix of pain and psychiatric medications he had prescribed. Eleven months later, Chaney died.
The long-awaited reopening of a hospital in South Los Angeles will cost $32 million more than anticipated due to "unforeseen site conditions" and may not be able to accept patients until early 2015, according to Los Angeles County officials. The new spending, expected to be approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors, brings the total price tag of the project to $284.4 million, nearly $50 million more than originally budgeted for the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. None of the five board members responded to requests for comment.
In a surprise ruling cheered by nurses, doctors and others who have fought to keep a Brooklyn hospital open, but which may have muddled its fate even further, a judge on Tuesday ordered the hospital to be returned to its previous owners, nullifying a 2011 transfer to the State University of New York. In the eight-page decision, the judge, Carolyn E. Demarest of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, castigated SUNY for trying to shut down Long Island College Hospital in Cobble Hill, which she said was transferred to the state university system with the understanding that it would continue to serve the community as a hospital.
(Reuters) - If uninsured young Americans shun the new health plans offered under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, it will be because the insurance costs too much and not because they don't expect to need much medical care, according to a study released on Wednesday. What uninsured young adults do when state exchanges created under "Obamacare" open on October 1 will be one of the most important factors in determining the success of the president's signature domestic policy achievement. If too few young people, who tend to be relatively healthy, sign up for coverage, then premiums might not cover the medical costs of sicker people who do enroll.