Katherine Hobson
Where does emergency medicine fit into the new era of medical homes, accountable care organizations and bundled payments?
In a new editorial in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, several emergency physicians warn of the challenges of incorporating what ER docs do into new models that move away from the current fee-for-service payment to […]
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MEwens
For patients with immediate medical needs, a growing number of walk-in clinics and freestanding emergency rooms offer an alternative to hours-long waits in the hospital emergency department, todays Informed Patient column reports.
Many urgent-care clinics are independently owned by physician groups and in-store retail clinics are run by chains like Walgreen and CVS. But […]
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MEwens
When the Health Blog last visited the subject of music-assisted cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the hit song under consideration was Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees. The American Heart Association says the beat of the popular disco tune helps rescuers achieve the desired chest compression rate of about 100 per minute when trying to revive […]
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MEwens
New Recommendation Coming: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will recommend against screening healthy men for prostate cancer using the PSA blood test, giving the test a rating indicating its harms outweigh its benefits, the WSJ reports, citing a person familiar with the draft document. Prostate-cancer screening for men without symptoms has long […]
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Amy Dockser Marcus
Chronic-Disease Burden: The United Nations today opens a two-day meeting at which it will discuss how to better prevent and treat the noncommunicable diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer that one report estimates could cost the global economy $30 trillion between now and 2030, the WSJ reports. More than 80% […]
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MEwens
More Americans are taking prescription drugs. And that, it seems, has contributed to an increase in accidental poisonings of kids at home, according to a new study.
The research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, looked at data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers and found that emergency-department use for all pharmaceutical […]
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MEwens
Hospital emergency departments are turning to a number of strategies to reduce wait times, amid growing concern about patients who leave without being seen, todays Informed Patient column reports.
Leaving without treatment can lead to lost revenue for hospitals and health risks for patients. Long wait times are the main factor cited by patients […]
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MEwens
It would seem logical that giving people access to primary health-care services would help cut down on visits to the emergency room.
But a new study suggests that when it comes to mental-health services for kids, that may not be the case. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center looked at patient records for kids […]
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MEwens
Hepatitis Tie-Up: Roche will promote Merck’s newly approved hepatitis C drug Victrelis alongside two of its own therapies used against the virus as part of a non-exclusive U.S. marketing agreement that could expand to other countries, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The market for hepatitis C drugs is expected to heat up further if […]
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Katherine Hobson
Given the growing cost of malpractice suits from missed or delayed diagnoses in the emergency department, hospitals and their liability insurers are mining resolved claims for lessons on how to reduce such errors, todays Informed Patient column reports.
In one of the more ambitious efforts, Crico/RMF, which insures Harvard-affiliated hospitals, last year convened […]
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