Civil Unrest in Ferguson Tests St. Louis Area Hospitals
November 30th 2014Hospitals in the St. Louis area braced for another violent night Tuesday after at least 25 people were injured in riots triggered by a grand jury's decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
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Optimizing Healthcare: Professor Timothy Chan on the Centre for Healthcare Engineering
November 29th 2014Providing healthcare to millions of people requires a hugely complex system of hospitals, clinics, ambulances, research centers, suppliers, and governments-and that system needs re-engineering.
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A 2-Drug Combination Successfully Thwarts Colorectal Cancer
November 29th 2014A study by the University of Colorado Cancer Center published in the journal PLoS ONE and concurrent phase I clinical trial is examining a new strategy: targeting both important cancer-causing pathways simultaneously.
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Improvement on Medical Errors "Not Enough"
November 29th 2014The healthcare industry has made progress in reducing medical errors over the past 15 years, but it's not enough, according to Molly Joel Coye, MD, chief innovation officer of UCLA Health at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Specialty Drugs a Rising Healthcare Cost
November 28th 2014Early this week, Novation, a healthcare services company that oversees supply chain management, called on Genentech to reverse its decision to use only specialty drug distributors instead of wholesale distributors for its widely used anticancer treatments, Avastin, Rituxan, and Herceptin.
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Eric Schneider to Join The Commonwealth Fund
November 26th 2014Eric C. Schneider, MD, senior principal researcher and distinguished chair in health care quality at RAND, and director of its Boston office, will join The Commonwealth Fund as senior vice president for policy and research on February 2, 2015.
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Alarm Hazards Remain Top Safety Concern in Hospitals
November 26th 2014Medical technology hazards remain a top safety issue for hospitals and can come in many forms. However, for the fourth year in a row, alarm hazards topped the annual Top 10 Health Technology Hazards list from the ECRI Institute.
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Pre-Op Work Can Prevent Risks Associated With Morcellation: Study Finds
November 26th 2014Following on the heels of the FDA's advice on the risk of using morcellators for treating fibroids, researchers in France have released results of a study that delineates a method that can avoid the risk of morcellating a pre-existing uterine sarcoma.
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ACO Coalition Looks at Managed Care Tools to Help Employers, Promote Patient Engagement
November 26th 2014The ACO and Emerging Healthcare Delivery Coalition, an initiative of The American Journal of Managed Care, held its most recent WebEx session this week. Participants discussed new strategies and technologies that both employers and healthcare organizations can use to get patients to take ownership over their own care.
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CMS' New Chief Data Officer Part of Transparency Fix
November 25th 2014Amid last week's news that CMS had miscalculated the number of enrollees under the Affordable Care Act was a quieter announcement that the agency had appointed a chief data office to improve transparency, among other tasks.
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Restricted Specialty Drug Distribution Could Raise Cancer Drug Costs
November 25th 2014Genentech's decision to use a handful of specialty drug distributors instead of wholesalers for the distribution of the most commonly used anticancer medications has raised concerns of availability and cost.
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HHS Proposes Fixed Open Enrollment Dates, Automatic Re-Enrollment Alternatives
November 24th 2014In the first 2 years of the Affordable Care Act, open enrollment has run for 2 different time periods, and HHS is looking to set a fixed date for future years. Plus, it offers a solution to automatic re-enrollment.
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Another Unforced Error Rattles ACA Year 2 Open Enrollment
November 24th 2014The disclosure that a calculation error caused the Obama administration to add an extra 400,000 people to ACA enrollment figures for months puts a dent in the 2015 open enrollment, in part because it fits a narrative of a lack of transparency for reporters who cover the administration.
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Northwestern Study Discovers Treatment For Pediatric Gliomas
November 24th 2014The study, published in Nature Medicine, identified a small molecule inhibitor that increases histone methylation, compensating for the reduced methylation caused by mutation in the H3F3A gene, resulting in gliomas.
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