The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released final guidelines on the design, testing and use of radio-frequency (RF) wireless medical devices. Although it doesn't promulgate legally enforceable responsibilities, the document is intended to guide both device manufacturers and healthcare providers toward the safe and secure use of wireless medical devices. Covered are devices "that are implanted, worn on the body or other external wireless medical devices intended for use in hospitals, homes, clinics, clinical laboratories, and blood establishments." The FDA document has no relation to the impending guidance from the agency about how it will regulate apps that turn smartphones and tablets into medical devices.
When staffers at the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Del., want to simplify appointment scheduling, make surgery smoother for kids or even work on doctors' bedside manner, they turn to a special group of experts, a "virtual advisory council" made up of parents on a private social network. Hospitals are turning to Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media to recruit patients and their families as advisers. They are asking parents for input, via questionnaires and surveys, on improvements in care, new services and even new facility names. At the University of Michigan Health System, these "e-advisors" answer about 35 online surveys a year, and a teen council responds to questions via its own Facebook page. [Registration required]
As California prepares to roll out its effort to market the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, criminals have increasingly been working schemes to take advantage of consumers who may not be fully informed about the complex health reform law commonly known as Obamacare that will require them to buy insurance if they don't have it. The scams include high-pressure e-mails, phone calls from people masquerading as representatives of the federal government, and visits from seemingly official enrollers trying to persuade people to buy a policy, sign up for a bogus medical card or give out their personal information.
Texas Children's Hospital filed suit against the state Health and Human Services Commission earlier this month in an attempt to halt looming changes to Medicaid reimbursement — estimated to cost the city's sixth-largest hospital $30 million. Medicaid's Disproportionate Share Hospital program bolsters income for hospitals that provide significant amounts of care to low-income individuals, the Houston Chronicle reports. A change in interpretation of the formula by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid is what jeopardizes funding for Texas Children's and other children's hospitals in Texas and across the country, according to a statement from the hospital.
(Reuters Health) - Telemedicine consults can help rural emergency room doctors provide better care to seriously ill or injured young patients, new research confirms. Rural hospitals and doctors' offices are increasingly using telemedicine - essentially, videoconferencing with another doctor from a remote location - to gain access to specialty care, Dr. James Marcin of the University of California Davis Children's Hospital in Sacramento, the senior author of the new study, told Reuters Health. "It's a great way to leverage technology to improve the quality of care that we provide," he said.
WASHINGTON — Estimates from 19 states operating health insurance exchanges to help the uninsured find coverage show that at least 8.5 million will use the exchanges to buy insurance, a USA TODAY survey shows. That would far outstrip the federal government's estimate of 7 million new customers for all 50 states under the 2010 health care law. USA TODAY contacted the 50 states, and 19 had estimates for how many of their uninsured residents they expect will buy through the exchanges. About 48 million Americans were uninsured in 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.