Christine Porter is hooked on the MyFitnessPal app. In October, after deciding to lose 50 pounds, Porter started typing in everything she eats, drinks and any exercise she gets. "This is my main page here," says Porter. "It's telling me I have about 1,200 calories remaining for the day. When I want to record something I just click the 'add to diary' button. I'm on it all day either through my phone or through the computer." She says she's lost 42 pounds in nine months. Health apps like MyFitnessPal are turning smartphones and tablets into exercise aids, blood pressure monitors and even devices that transmit an electrocardiogram. But the explosion of apps is way ahead of tests to determine which ones work.
I emailed a handful of North Texas hospital executives to get their take on a federal advisory panel's recommendation that Congress cut payments to hospitals for services that can be provided less expensively in doctors' offices. It turned out to be a lively debate. Joel Allison, president & CEO of Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System said patients get the best value when they're treated in the most appropriate venue. "Depending on a patient's condition, a hospital which by design has greater capabilities may be more appropriate than a physician's office for certain services," Allison said in reply to my email. "To ensure that hospitals can continue to provide appropriate care to patients in the right setting, they need to be adequately reimbursed."
A nonprofit group helping to spread the word about President Barack Obama's health care overhaul launched a campaign Tuesday that will target states with high numbers of uninsured Americans and tackle their skepticism with straightforward messages. The "Get Covered America" campaign will include door-to-door visits by volunteers, brochures handed out at farmers markets and churches and, possibly, partnerships with sports leagues and celebrities, said Anne Filipic, a former White House official who recently became president of Enroll America, the group sponsoring the campaign. The group's research shows 78 percent of uninsured adults don't know about opportunities that will be available to them in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act, Filipic said Tuesday during a phone call with reporters.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon who's been named one of the world?s most influential thinker, is known for mapping simple solutions for some of health care?s most intractable problems. Until now, he?s been leading research projects in scattered places. Now his work has a centralized home?in Ariadne Labs. Now Gawande is expanding his focus from surgery to two other big healthcare moments: childbirth and death."We think in the course of a person?s life, that you will turn to the health system for a few high risk, high failure moments, and also some of the highest cost moments in that system. Childbirth. Surgery. The average American has 7 operations in their lifetime, all the way to the end of life."
Federal regulators are dropping plans to tightly control a procedure that is becoming increasingly popular for treating people stricken by life-threatening infections of the digestive system. The Food and Drug Administration says the agency will exercise enforcement discretion and no longer require doctors to get the agency's approval before using "fecal microbiota for transplantation." The procedure is being used to treat people suffering from infection with the bacterium Clostridium difficile, or C. diff. These infections cause inflammation of the colon and severe, sometimes life-threatening diarrhea. They can be extremely difficult to treat and are becoming more common. About 14,000 Americans die from C. diff every year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The newest patient for a former Philadelphia surgeon is the City of Rome. Last week, Ignazio Marino won 64 percent of the votes in the Italian capital's mayoral race. He resectioned Rome's ties to incumbent Mayor Gianni Alemanno, promising to suture the Eternal City with a more transparent government. Marino, 58, worked extensively in Philadelphia before his foray into politics. From 2002 to 2006, he did nearly 200 organ transplants at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. In his last year, he headed the transplant division.