Our personal handwashing rules: use hot water and soap, do it after potentially touching something yucky and sing "Happy Birthday" to be sure you're scrubbing long enough. Physicians, though, need to know a lot more. And a small study of third-year medical students in Germany finds that they aren't entirely clear on when handwashing is indicated. The study, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, covered 85 third-year students at Hannover Medical School, most of whom said they'd had at least some clinical experience. Researchers asked the students whether handwashing was indicated in seven situations. Among the students, 21% correctly identified all the true and false indications, while 67% correctly identified the five conditions under which handwashing is appropriate. (That means a third missed at least one.)
The healthcare workforce was a focus this year of the U.S. Department of Labor's annual report about workplace injuries and illness. "We remain concerned that more workers are injured in the healthcare and social assistance industry sector than in any other, including construction and manufacturing, and this group of workers had one of the highest rates of injuries and illness at 5.2 cases for every 100 workers," Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said. That 5.2 rate for 2010 compared to the rate for all private industry of 3.5 cases for every 100 workers. That glaring disparity caught the eye of former Alcoa CEO and UPMC board member Paul O'Neill, who used it during a talk show on WQED two weeks ago to criticize the healthcare industry generally and UPMC specifically.
The decision that Medicare will pay for screening and counseling services to help obese patients lose weight has opened an old debate about who can best help people slim down. Top national weight-loss experts salute the ruling as good news, but they are concerned that many doctors and their staffs are ill prepared and haven't the time to help obese patients. "This is an incredibly positive move by the government in recognizing obesity as a contributor to many of our health problems," said Donna Ryan, an obesity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA. "But the devil is in the details, and many physicians have no training in weight-loss counseling — zero."
Most U.S. health insurers last year would have satisfied the much-disputed spending rules under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, according to a new report by a congressional watchdog agency. The rules require insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealth to spend most of customers' premium payments on medical care, not administrative costs or profit, or risk paying patients a rebate. Since the requirement went into effect in January, a number of states have sought waivers to get leeway in how fast the rules go into effect, which they say would keep insurers from abandoning the individual insurance market.
When U.S. hospitals cut expenses as the economy slid into recession, they looked first to basic supplies like light bulbs and bandages. Next on the list: artificial hips and knees. Implantable devices make up a sizable chunk of typical hospital budgets, and administrators are devising new ways to limit that cost as they brace for cuts to government reimbursement and treat more patients who can't pay for care. That means methodically working through each category of device, from heart valve replacements and stents to spinal products, to see where they can negotiate lower prices. It also means creating databases of shared information on pricing between hospitals.
The Wisconsin Hospital Association report last week that projected a shortage of almost 2,200 physicians by 2030 drew attention to an escalating problem: The United States is training too few primary care doctors. The hospital association estimates that primary care physicians - doctors who specialize in family and internal medicine and pediatrics - will account for about 80% of the projected shortage. It works out to an estimated 1,767 primary care physicians - or enough doctors to provide care for more than 3 million people. The state now has about 6,000 primary care physicians, some part time. Projections on the supply of physicians have often proved inaccurate. But no one questions that the country faces a growing shortage of primary care physicians.