Plastic surgery has boomed in Venezuela, ironically, while President Hugo Chávez has attempted to remake the nation as a socialist nation. With the economy awash in money thanks to record oil prices, plastic surgeons report that business has doubled in the past five years. And they expect little slowdown next year, thanks to a culture that puts an emphasis on physical attributes.
David Watson, MD, has served the people of tiny Yoakum, TX, for more than 50 years. This month, Watson received the Country Doctor of the Year award, which honors a primary care physician who best exemplifies the spirit of rural practitioners. The award is given out by Staff Care, the largest physician staffing service in the country, which hopes to attract more young doctors to family practice.
Middlesex (CT) Hospital's new $31 million emergency department, which opened in March, has settled into a groove. The waiting room is usually empty and people are seeing doctors in a third of the time, even though the patient caseload has risen 4% since March—in what has been one of the busiest emergency centers in the state. Memories of a crowded waiting room and patients on gurneys in the hallway are fading. The largest renovation project in the history of the hospital increased the number of emergency beds from 26 to 44 and added new technology that has streamlined patient care.
Obesity surgery can reverse diabetes in teens, just as it does in adults, according to a small study. All but one of the 11 extremely obese teens studied saw their diabetes disappear within a year after weight-loss surgery, the researchers reported. The 11th patient still had diabetes, but needed much less insulin and stopped taking diabetes pills. Previous studies have shown the diabetes benefits of obesity surgery for adults.
As technology moves forward, people expect the electronic devices of everyday life to work together, from cell phones that can call or text-message other phones, to computers that interconnect with a slew of gadgets. But in the medical world, where the stakes are higher, such flexible interconnection is rare. Each device operates in its own silo. Now the push for greater connectedness in hospital electronics is gaining momentum. The goal is devices that can not only plug into one another, but can also "understand" each other and automatically identify potential life-threatening problems sooner than they would have been caught by busy nurses and doctors.
Hospitals in about a dozen states are testing whether some simple steps, such as arm-strengthening exercises, could reduce the risk of one of breast cancer's troubling legacies—the painful and sometimes severe arm swelling called lymphedema. Lymphedema has long been a neglected side effect of cancer surgery and radiation: Many women say they never were warned, even though spotting this problem early improves outcomes.
Even before taking office or introducing concrete policy proposals, the Obama administration is moving to build public support around the broad notion that the U.S. health system needs an overhaul. To Washington veterans, the approach may seem backward, or even naive, but Obama is betting that the energetic, technology-savvy supporters who fueled his candidacy will act as a potent counterbalance to the traditionally powerful special interests that have defeated similar reform efforts.
A Kansas senator has proposed a bill that would allow tax breaks for doctors, nurses and dentists who accept Medicaid patients. The law would be used as an incentive for them to see more Medicaid recipients. Legislators say the move would make up some of the gap between how much the taxpayer-funded program reimburses for healthcare and the actual costs of that care.
State legislators remain hesitant about a potential $475 million construction project that bring a new hospital building to the University of Connecticut's Farmington campus and would be a joint effort with Hartford Hospital to replace the financially troubled John Dempsey Hospital. The project, which has been under consideration by UConn for several years, would involve construction of a state-of-the-art hospital with about 250 beds.
Partners HealthCare made a quiet deal with Blue Cross in 2000 to increase insurance costs across Massachusetts. The deal, which until now had not been made public, marked the beginning of a period of rapid escalation in insurance prices. Individual insurance premiums have risen 8.9% a year since 2000, more than twice the annual rise in the late 1990s.
