COBRA Subsidy Ends: Did It Make a Difference?
From Sarah Kliff, writing at Ezra Klein’s blog: From Sarah Kliff, writing at Ezra Klein’s blog: With little notice or fanfare, today marks the end of federal subsidies for COBRA…
Florida Pill Mill Clinics
Florida has long been the nation’s center of the illegal sale of prescription drugs: Doctors here bought 89 percent of all the Oxycodone sold in the country last year. At…
Registries for Breast Implants?
I’m sorry I couldn’t attend the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meeting the past two days that learned the two manufacturers of silicone gel breast implants — Allergan and…
Extending the Frontiers: Working Despite Alzheimer’s and Campus Smoking Bans
When I was growing up in the 1970s I complained to my mother that I didn’t like cigarette smoke. She told me to get used to it because the major…
Physicians Oppose Increased Certification Requirements
In the past, obtaining board certification in a medical specialty was straightforward. One completed a residency, studied, took and passed a test, and was deemed “board certified”. Later, certificates required…
Has the iPad Replaced the Stethoscope?
'Thirty years ago, we depended on 2,000-page texts such as Robbins Basic Pathology and Gray’s Anatomy. We lugged these around and juggled them as we did our anatomical dissections.'…
Tablets in Healthcare
The July/August issue of Government Health IT had an article about tablets making their way into healthcare workplaces and it suggests that we respond by harnessing these assets - cautiously. The…
Social Network for Patients, Doctors and Caregivers
This is different in the fact that a social network is going through a “clinical trial” to see if the extended care and offerings helps reduce re-admission to the hospital. …
Spine Surgery Largely Unfazed by Recent Market Challenges
Few medical device markets have demonstrated the kind of staying power — prices, procedure growth, market growth — shown by spine surgical technologies. The swelling caseload of new patients, the…
CMS Depression Screening
A new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposal would screen more Medicare beneficiaries for depression, according to a recent memo. A new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)…
