Category: Healthblog

The medical education establishment is gearing up to push for more doctors to be trained in medical schools and residency programs — an expensive undertaking that would be financed largely by the federal government.
Since 2000, 18 separate reports “produced or funded by states, medical societies, hospital associations, and research centers have concluded that doctor shortages […]

The list of witnesses testifying before the Senate Special Committee on Aging this afternoon includes the predictable academic docs and health-world leaders, along with a striking anomaly:
Martha Stewart, Founder, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, New York, NY
You ask: What, is she going to teach the Senators a cute way to fold napkins when they have […]

If you tell somebody how many calories are in that bacon double cheeseburger he’s about to order, might he order the grilled chicken sandwich instead?
New York City’s Health Department thinks so, and a federal judge just greenlighted the city’s plan to force chain restaurants to post calorie counts.
The New York State Restaurant Association had […]

Last year, Medicare said it would stop paying hospitals to treat certain conditions that arise after patients are admitted to the hospital and tend to be caused by poor hospital care. Now the feds say they may expand the program to more than double the number of hospital-associated conditions that won’t be reimbursed.
The shift is […]

Albert Fuchs, a primary care doc, lands on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page this morning telling the story of his career as a physician and a business owner.
He opened a practice and grew so busy he couldn’t keep up. So he dropped the insurance plan with the worst reimbursement. As his practice continued to […]

Will Rituxan work for lupus?
On the one hand, the drug is already approved for rheumatoid arthritis which, like lupus, is an autoimmune disorder. On the other hand, it just failed in a trial of patients with a hard-to-treat form of multiple sclerosis, also an autoimmune disorder.
Results of a Rituxan trial in lupus are due in […]

We’re used to thinking about costs of care at the end of life, but medical advances mean cost questions are cropping up at the beginning of life as well.
Consider Synagis, a treatment that reduces the risk of respiratory syncytial virus (pictured) — a nasty bug that causes 125,000 infant hospitalizations and about 500 infant deaths […]

Bisphenol A, a chemical that shows up in all kinds of plastic products, is drawing more concern from health officials in the U.S. and Canada this week.

Globe & Mail

Bottles containing Bisphenol A that were pulled from a Canadian retailer last year.

“[T]he possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed,” says this new […]

When it comes to liposuction, we figure there may be a few questions floating around that some of our readers haven’t had the opportunity or the courage to ask.

Thanks to the kind folks at The HealthCare Channel, we have a “virtual office visit” with a real plastic surgeon to the stars: Peter Fodor, a Beverly […]

It’s been nearly four years since Merck pulled its painkiller Vioxx off the market, but the shadow of the drug is still haunting the company from beyond the grave.
This week’s JAMA lands with one article that says some published studies of the drug were actually written by uncredited ghostwriters hired by the company, and a […]