Hawaii is once again the healthiest state in the United States, according to the latest America's Health Rankings. This is despite the fact that the state's diabetes rate has doubled in the past 15 years. "Our state is facing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes type 2 that is preventable, and costly to our health and pocket books," Virginia Pressler, Hawaii's director of health, said in a press release for a recent chronic disease symposium But Hawaii as a whole still has a lower prevalence of obesity compared to other states, as well as fewer preventable hospitalizations, and better mental health.
The problem of crowded emergency rooms isn't just an inconvenience for patients — it can actually harm them. But a newly released George Washington University study found some of the most crowded U.S. hospital emergency rooms aren't doing much to prioritize the problem. Published this week in Health Affairs, the study found nearly one in five of the most crowded emergency rooms did not use bedside registration, one of the proven interventions used to address high volumes of patients. Looking at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2007 to 2010, the study also found nearly all of the most crowded emergency departments did not use proven scheduling tactics to plan surgeries to match inpatient bed availability.
A person's end-of-life desires are most often thwarted when well-meaning loved ones see the patient in some sort of distress, says Teri Helton, program manager for Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurses Association, a nonprofit hospice program in Ventura County. And instead of calling the hospice nurse, she says, they call 911. "So the paramedics will take them to the hospital in a rush and what ends up happening is they go through tests, they go through extra trauma in the hospital instead of being treated with the dignity and kindness they would in their home," she says. Mike Taigman has long wanted to change that paradigm.
Snooping on celebrities has been a bane for health systems around the country for years. The proliferation of electronic medical records systems has made it easier to track and punish those who peek in records they have no legitimate reason to access. Below is a partial list of high-profile breaches and the consequences that accompanied them, compiled from news reports. October 2007: Palisades Medical Center in New Jersey suspended 27 workers without pay for a month for looking at the medical records of actor George Clooney, who had been treated there the prior month after a motorcycle accident.
The proposed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) plan for coverage of the Watchman left atrial appendage (LAA) closure device shouldn't require a registry control arm and should adjust performance and patient selection criteria, a trio of professional societies argued.
A Senate investigation of drug-price spikes at four companies kicked off Wednesday with specialists from all corners of the health-care system testifying that they're powerless to manage the out-of-control prescription costs. The hearing launches the Special Committee on Aging's investigation into the soaring prices of old drugs, including the recent overnight price hike of Daraprim from $18 to $750. Doctors and policy experts offered a slew of proposed policy solutions, such as expediting applications for generic drugs to increase competition and requiring companies to reveal how much drugs really cost.