Category: Listening to Patients With Foreign Accent Syndrome

The WSJ’s Melinda Beck devotes this week’s Health Journal column to odd ailments. One that caught our attention: foreign accent syndrome.
We’d never heard of it before, but as it turns out the medical literature is full of case reports. The problem typically follows a stroke or head injury, and is the result of brain damage […]

Five … Four … Three … Two … Say, is there time for me to get that hip replacement before my deductible resets?
The end-of-year health-care boom is upon us, as legions of the insured rush in for care before 2008 runs out.
The rush is driven by largely patients who’ve already paid their deductible for the […]

Electronic medical records face a reality gap. Health wonks and policymakers say they’re essential for gathering data, improving care and making health care more efficient. But docs — especially those in small practices — have been slow to adopt EMRs, largely because of cost.
New York City is trying to close the gap by offering big […]

Doctors say they often lose money treating patients covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for the poor. So a state lawmaker in Missouri wants to give health care workers a tax break for treating Medicaid patients.
The basic idea is to exempt reimbursements from Medicaid (known in the state as MO HealthNet) from providers’ state […]

Medicare is cracking down on medical-equipment suppliers that the agency says have been scamming the government.
Kim Brandt, director of program integrity for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calls durable equipment “year after year, the area where Medicare is most vulnerable in terms of fraud.” People create sham companies, bill Medicare for supplies like […]

With Barack Obama readying himself to take on what will be quite a high-stakes and stressful job, are we sure we actually want him to quit smoking? “The nation is too precariously balanced right now to risk having him burst into tears, or march off in a snit, or take to his bed with the […]

There’s fresh data suggesting that weight-loss surgery helps ease diabetes. This time, the research spotlighted obese teenagers.
The study in the current issue of Pediatrics focused on 11 severely obese adolescents with Type 2 diabetes who underwent bariatric surgery. After the surgery, all but one of them showed evidence of remission of their diabetes.
A comparison group […]

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, charged with enforcing health and safety laws in the workplace, has been considerably less aggressive under the Bush administration, according to a Washington Post report out today.
For instance, an OSHA epidemiologist wanted to publish a bulletin warning dental technicians about the risk of lung disease from beryllium alloys the […]

The American Psychiatric Association is getting criticism for the secret process of putting together the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a defining volume of mental disorders.
Published by the APA, the manual, known as DSM, is important for insurance payments as well as prescribing and research, and the process […]

Associated Press
Massachusetts General Hospital complex as seen from the John Hancock Tower in Boston.

Partners HealthCare, the umbrella organization over Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals in Boston, tends to get substantially heftier fees from insurers than other hospitals in the area.
What put Partners at the top of the pay scale? Consolidation and tough negotiation […]