Category: Must Hospital Cafeteria Food Be Healthful?

MEwens
California children’s hospitals aren’t dishing up particularly healthful fare, a new study shows.
Researchers from UCLA and the Rand Corp. report in the journal Academic Pediatrics that of the 16  food venues serving 14 hospitals studied in July 2010, 81% offered unhealthful “impulse items” — think freezers stocked with ice-cream treats — near the […]

MEwens
Trial Disappointment: A trial conducted in Africa of a microbicide gel containing the anti-HIV drug tenofovir has ended because the gel didn’t protect women from contracting the virus, the New York Times reports. Part of the study — which also looked at whether two different pills protected against the virus — is continuing […]

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, today’s 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 […]

MEwens
Hospitals that use a computerized medical-information tool to help doctors make decisions at the point of care have better patient outcomes than those who don’t, according to a new study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
Researchers at Harvard University examined data for Medicare beneficiaries at 1,017 hospitals between 2004 and 2006 as […]

MEwens
Hospitals are scrambling to improve customer service in advance of a change tying Medicare payments to higher scores on patient-satisfaction surveys, today’s Informed Patient column reports.
But improving patient satisfaction means engaging hospital staff in the effort — and changing hospital cultures that haven’t traditionally focused on the patient as a customer. Hospitals are […]

MEwens
Consumers are usually unable to get accurate information about how much medical treatment will cost them before they receive it, a new government study has found.
Investigators from the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency which works for Congress, tried to get upfront estimates from a variety of hospitals in Denver for the price […]

MEwens
A new online tool to prepare patients for surgery and other invasive procedures aims to reduce the stress and anxiety that accompanies many medical decisions.
Boston-based Health Dialog today launched HD Care Compass, a web and mobile site with patient guides on what to expect before, during and after seven major procedures, including cardiac […]

MEwens
If you’re a Medicare patient admitted to the hospital, the odds are about one in six that you’ll end up back in the hospital within a month. And there was very little progress made in reducing that rate between 2004-09.
That’s the not-so-good news from a new report by the folks at the Dartmouth […]

MEwens
Mood Lift?: A study shows that for women, drinking two to three cups of coffee per day is associated with a 15% lower risk of developing depression during a ten-year period, the WSJ reports. Other forms of caffeine were also tied to a lower risk of depression. However, this type of study can’t […]

MEwens
The problem of antibiotic resistance tends to reach public consciousness in a scattershot manner — when ground turkey is recalled because it’s tainted with salmonella that can’t be treated by common drugs, for example. But it’s hard to get a comprehensive picture of the extent to which certain infections have become impervious to […]