Susan G. Komen for the Cure will grant more than $1.1 million to 23 Northern California groups for programs in breast cancer detection, education and supportive services. The grant money is part of the $2.2 million raised last May during the annual Komen Sacramento Race for the Cure, which drew more than 20,000 participants. The groups include: Boat People S.O.S., Breaking Barriers, CommuniCare Health Centers, Health Education Council, and the Northern California PET Imaging Center.
Two and a half years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hosted his obesity prevention summit, California's main physician and managed care groups unveiled their recommendations: Eat sensibly and exercise. Those suggestions, in a nutshell, are outlined in three tool kits for children and adults released by the California Medical Association Foundation, which represents doctors, and the California Association of Health Plans.
More than 14,000 Dominican public hospital doctors went on strike for the third time in March to demand wage hikes and better working conditions. Doctors hope their three-day strike will persuade the government to double their salaries to $1,700 a month and improve deteriorating conditions at public hospitals hit hard by the nation's 2003 economic crisis. More than 16,000 doctors work in Dominican public hospitals, and most of the population relies on them for medical care. Treatment is now continuing only in emergency cases.
Health programs serving Florida's poor, elderly and critically ill face a staggering $803 million in cuts under a Senate plan aimed at helping to close a $3 billion state budget shortfall. As many as 24,000 low-income seniors and disabled Floridians would lose coverage under the proposed elimination of the state's costly Meds AD insurance program. Another 16,000 seriously ill adults, including many recent transplant patients, also would lose state assistance from the Medically Needy program under proposed reductions that left Senate budget-writers shaking their heads.
Florida Hospital and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research announced a new research partnership focused on diabetes and cardiovascular disease called the Florida Hospital-Burnham Clinical Research Institute. Groundbreaking on the seven-story, $45 million building--which also will house the Florida Hospital Diabetes Institute and an array of physicians offices and other medical services--should take place this summer, with an opening as early as August 2009, hospital officials said.
The first e-mail arrived at 12:36 p.m. The next one followed two minutes later. Then came the flood: More than 50 e-mails came in the first hour, and more than 300 over two days filled inboxes of executives at a health insurance company and media outlets. That's how a father--and hundreds of friends and relatives--used the power of the Internet to keep his health insurer paying for his recently disabled daughter to stay in Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital rather than be sent home for outpatient care.
Consumers and businesses remain wary of high-deductible and "consumer-driven" healthcare plans, which have been available since 2001 and marketed as a way for businesses to reduce their own healthcare expenses, according to a regional survey. Cowden Associates' annual employee benefits survey reports that enrollment in such plans, and the availability of the plans, increased over last year. Now, 8.8% of survey participants offered employees high-deductible plans, up from 2.5% in the 2007 survey.
In this New York Times article written by BARRON H. LERNER, MD, Lerner asks "why do doctors and patients often approach the diagnosis of disease so differently?" He says part of the answer lies in the concept of triage--the notion, originated in wartime, of caring for the sickest and most salvageable patients first. He adds that a similar strategy has evolved in emergency rooms, where physicians are trained to "rule in" or "rule out" severe conditions.
By April, federal rules will required that written Medicaid prescriptions have at least one feature to prevent unauthorized copying, erasure or modification, or counterfeiting. While medical, pharmacist, and other health-related organizations say most physicians are prepared to meet the April 1 deadline for writing many Medicaid prescriptions on tamper-resistant pads, the groups continue to reach out to doctors who may be unaware of, or confused about, the law.
When a physician assistant missed a diagnosis that led to complications with a sinus infection, two supervising doctors were named in the malpractice suit. Their practice agreement claimed one of the physicians would see every patient treated by the assistant, and their failure to do so played a part in the $3 million verdict. Failure to diagnose accounts for about 40% of all medical malpractice lawsuits, and in this case, the jury found that the PA's failure led to the patient's impairment and the financial burdens of extensive medical and rehabilitation costs.
