Efforts to make hospitals safer for patients are falling short, researchers report in the first large study in a decade to analyze harm from medical care and to track it over time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/health/research/25patient.html?_r=2
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Francis Diaz continues his review of the new proposed Device Tax, Part 2: Medical Device Tax and Its Exemptions
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The American Academy of Family Physicians’ Future of Family Medicine Project last month identified group appointments as a trend to watch. (see Washington Post Article from 3.9.10: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030802945_pf.html)
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A clinical trial is currently underway to investigate a new vaccine called CDX-110, which is used to treat brain cancer. This vaccine prompts the immune system to attack foreign invaders in the body, in this case the cancerous cells. The vaccine causes white blood cells, known as T-cells to attach the tumor. T-cells assist the immune system, and they attack malignant cells due to their different genetic makeup than normal cells in the body. Unlike chemotherapy, which is very harmful to all living cells in the body, CDX-110 creates an immune system stimulant that is precise—attacking only foreign cells.
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Last month I had the opportunity to attend the Institute for Health Care Improvement’s National Quality Forum in Orlando. I listened to world-renowned economist, Uwe Reinhardt, discuss the highly reticulated social, cultural, political, and economic inequities that help determine global and individual health. His talk followed that of Marshall Ganz, who drew on his experience both as a grassroots community organizer and as a public policy expert, to explain how clinicians might collectivize our individual quality improvement initiatives into a social movement. While it is not unheard of for economists and policy experts to weigh in on health care issues, the scope of their talks reached well beyond their respective disciplines, venturing into the realms of anthropology, philosophy and even ancient history.
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This graphic by National Geographic provides a thought-provoking look at various countries' per capita health care spending, average annual visits to a doctor, and average life expectancy.
Enough said.
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I was in Hong Kong over the holidays visiting family. Having a young son, it was inevitable that we would visit many playgrounds as part of our adventures in the city. In several of these playgrounds we came across an exercise area dedicated to elderly fitness, branded HealthBeat.
I was intrigued by them on many levels. The metal structures and their accompanying visual instructions are simply designed. They are playful, colorful, curiously compelling and non-intimidating. They were typically sited alongside children’s playground equipment so that a parental guardian might exercise while their child played.
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In his latest article on health care reform,http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/14/091214fa_fact_gawande,Atul Gawande likens health care to agriculture, which in the 1900’s was also strangling our country’s economy:
In 1900, more than 40% of a family’s income went to paying for food. At the same time, farming was hugely labor-intensive, tying up almost half the American workforce. We were, partly as a result, still a poor nation. Only by improving the productivity of farming could we raise our standard of living and emerge as an industrial power.
Gawande takes us through our government’s history of pulling our country out of the grips of the agricultural crisis, which did not entail sweeping, radical change, but rather, fostering pockets of innovation and staging pilots of trial and error.
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By DAVID LEONHARDT The evidence-based medicine practiced at Intermountain hospital could be the cure for American health care.
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At last month’s Business Innovation Factory Summit, a keynote speaker shared a personal story of self- diagnosing and battling breast cancer. Breast cancer has been adopted as an universally recognized female charitable cause by marketers worldwide. Pretty pink ribbons abound from yogurt cups to sneakers to credit cards. So what are the chances that you assumed that the keynote speaker was a woman?
He wasn’t.
This got me thinking about probabilities in healthcare.
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Amidst the health care reform media frenzy, I am surprised by how little press is devoted to comparative effectiveness (CE) research. CE is, quite simply, the comparison of different management options for a given medical condition, such as surgery and drug therapy for the same condition. More than $1 billion of stimulus funding was recently allocated to CE, which is sure to usher a sea-change in the way that physicians on the front lines practice medicine as well as the way that medical devices and other health care products are developed.
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