A new study led by a Simon Fraser University health services and policy researcher says we should be concerned about Canadian federal and provincial policymakers' increasing interest in moving to activity-based funding (ABF) of hospitals.
Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), this study is the first systemic review of worldwide evidence on ABF. It involved 19 researchers at several Canadian, Swiss and Australian universities.
SPOKANE, Wash.—Americans are in a world of hurt.
Nearly one in five U.S. adults are in pain most every day for spells of three months or longer, according to an analysis by Jae Kennedy, professor of health policy and administration at Washington State University Spokane. The estimated 39 million adults in persistent pain outnumber the residents of California.
Previous studies have said so much pain costs hundreds of billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and health care. And that doesn't take into account pain's psychic toll.
Chicago, October 27, 2014—The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research today released the results of a major new study and related reports on the recovery from Superstorm Sandy in 12 New York and New Jersey neighborhoods hard hit by the 2012 storm.
The type of sound processing that modern hearings aids provide to make speech more understandable for wearers may also make music enjoyment more difficult, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The findings, published in the journal Ear and Hearing, suggest that less sophisticated hearing aids might actually be more compatible with listening to music, especially recorded music that has itself been processed to change the way it sounds.
A new Canadian guideline recommends that the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test should not be used to screen for prostate cancer based on evidence that shows an increased risk of harm and uncertain benefits. The guideline is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American College of Physicians (ACP) and American Osteopathic Association (AOA) are urging Congress to extend the current-law payment parity for primary care and immunization services under Medicaid for at least two years. Absent congressional action, federal support for this policy runs out at the end of the year. Collectively representing nearly 423,000 physicians, the four groups met with dozens of congressional offices on Capitol Hill recently.
Case Western Reserve University mental health researcher Joseph Galanek spent a cumulative nine months in an Oregon maximum-security prison to learn first-hand how the prison manages inmates with mental illness.
What he found, through 430 hours of prison observations and interviews, is that inmates were treated humanely and security was better managed when cell block officers were trained to identify symptoms of mental illness and how to respond to them.
Since 2007, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), an EU agency, has gathered information on patients' experiences with adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in the European ADR database, EudraVigilance. Both authorities and pharmaceutical companies have a duty to report information about ADRs to the database, which provides new knowledge about unknown and serious ADRs:
LOS ANGELES — A new model of delivering primary care studied by Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) researchers has the potential to improve the health of patients with type 2 diabetes.
The model encourages doctors to be more of a "medical home" for their patients by being accessible to patients in person and by phone, developing good ongoing relationships with their patients, and being more proactive in helping coordinate care for patients with difficult health problems.
VANCOUVER ─ Different ethnic groups have widely varying differences in both the prevalence and awareness of cardiovascular risk factors, a finding that highlights the need for specially designed education and intervention programs, according to a study presented today at the 2014 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.
VANCOUVER ─ People facing mental health challenges are significantly more likely to have heart disease or stroke, according to a study presented today at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.
"This population is at high risk, and it's even greater for people with multiple mental health issues," says Dr. Katie Goldie, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto
Newly published findings from the University of Waterloo are giving women with bad backs renewed hope for better sex lives. The findings—part of the first-ever study to document how the spine moves during sex—outline which sex positions are best for women suffering from different types of low-back pain. The new recommendations follow on the heels of comparable guidelines for men released last month.
Just three years ago, a patient at Sahlgrenska University Hospital received a blood vessel transplant grown from her own stem cells.
Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, Professor of Transplantation Biology at The Univerisity of Gothenburg, and Michael Olausson, Surgeon/Medical Director of the Transplant Center and Professor at Sahlgrenska Academy, came up with the idea, planned and carried out the procedure.
Missing a vein
October 24, 2014 – For patients with a severe type of stroke called subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), treatment at a hospital that treats a high volume of SAH cases is associated with a lower risk of death, reports a study in the November issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
Clinical trials carried out in the former East Germany in the second half of the 20th century were not always with the full knowledge or understanding of participants with some questionable practices taking place, according to a paper published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Moreover, the country agreed to the trials due to impending bankruptcy there and Western pharmaceutical companies took advantage of the situation, said researchers who have studied documents from the time.