Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center has received a $6.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund a center to study a rare genetic disease. It will be called the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "Our goal is to translate research findings into patient therapies," said Nancy Ratner, director of the Neurofibromatosis Center at Cincinnati Children's.
In this article from TIME, the magazine uses numbers to measure American health. The findings are something that should concern all Americans, according to the article.
Service workers unhappy with contract offers from hospital management walked picket lines and rallied outside Regina Medical Center in Hastings, MN. About 230 union members of Service Employees International Union Healthcare Minnesota started their two-day strike after failing to resolve differences with hospital management over pension contributions and health insurance costs.
TennCare officials say relief from a 20-year-old lawsuit is critical for eligible enrollees to maintain their medical benefits at a time when Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is looking to make deep budget cuts. Bredesen, who earlier this year requested 3% cuts, is asking each department for reductions of as much as 15% to take care of a shortfall of potentially $800 million this year. TennCare director Darin Gordon says the state has asked the courts for relief from a class action lawsuit that prohibits them from annually re-evaluating about 180,000 people on TennCare who may not be eligible for coverage.
Newly disclosed court documents portray a leading Harvard child psychiatrist as courting drug company money by promising that his work at Massachusetts General Hospital would help promote the use of antipsychotic drugs for youngsters diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The doctor is one of the central figures in the growing legal and political backlash against potential conflicts of interest in medicine. Massachusetts General Hospital said it would thoroughly investigate the allegations against him.
This video op-ed piece in the New York Times asks: Why does the medical establishment find it so hard to apologize for mistakes in care? The video uses testimonials from actual patients and physicians to try to answer the question.
In an effort to nudge more physicians to use technology that transmits prescription orders from a computer to the pharmacy, the federal government will begin offering bonuses in January to Medicare physicians who write electronic prescriptions. Patients say e-prescribing systems are much more convenient, and proponents say it offers the hope of sharply reducing dangerous and costly medication errors. But overall, just 2% of eligible prescriptions written in the United States are transmitted electronically, according to the eHealth Initiative.
Parents who take their kids to the emergency room for non-urgent care are doing so because they have concerns and questions about the care and attention they receive at primary care physicians' offices, according to a study. Often, primary care physicians actually refer patients to a hospital emergency department, the researchers found.
Hartford Hospital and the financially-troubled University of Connecticut Health Center are proposing a merger. Many of the details are still being worked out, but a statement envisions one entity situated on two campuses. The facility in Farmington will be owned by UConn and run by Hartford Healthcare; the one in Hartford will continue to be owned and operated by Hartford Healthcare.
Under a new proposal, as many as 300,000 healthcare employees now represented by three separate local unions across California will be rolled into one enormous union. At the same time, the Service Employees International Union wrapped up hearings into allegations that leaders of one of those locals misused dues to create a secret war chest to fight the merger. Both sides say the outcome will affect patients because many concessions the unions fight for affect quality of care.
