Before they headed off to their holidays, Congress and President Obama wrapped up what many hope will be a helpful fiscal package to benefit Americans’ health: The 2016 omnibus budget bill, which got so much attention, also provided some of the strongest health care funding in more than a dozen years, news reports say. This….
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It may be time for deep-dive reading on medical science’s horizons — editing the human genome, understanding inflammation’s role in health
Scientific research can move with such speed that it can be tough to keep up with it, as steady advances pile on each other until progress once thought unheard of becomes commonplace. That’s why it can be enlightening to find timely, long-form reporting for savvy but not necessarily technical audiences on topics like human gene….
Continue ReadingTapeworm talk? Maybe that’s one way to get health care attention
Just in time for Friday the 13th: Tired of the office jocks chin-wagging all day long about the Skins, Nats, Caps, and whatever? Weary of hearing other colleagues chatter about Kardashians, haute coture, or activities in trendy clubs with names that can’t be mentioned in family settings? Here’s a bizarre health-related topic that’s guaranteed to….
Continue ReadingDifferences shrink between black, white Americans in life expectancy
The gap between black and white Americans in life expectancy is shrinking, for good reasons and bad ones. Good: Heart and blood vessel disease is not killing African Americans quite as lethally as before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. There is also good news of improvements in black Americans’ deaths due to cancer, HIV,….
Continue ReadingWhen will we wise up about fast food, wellness, and food risks?
If Americans hadn’t already gotten a clue from books like Fast Food Nation and films like Super Size Me about just how harmful fast-food eating can be to health, they can look now to the latest outbreak of food-borne illness to raise further red flags, this time an E. coli outbreak tied to Chipoltle fast-food outlets: 40….
Continue ReadingAging Eyes: What’s Normal, What’s Not
Like every other body part, our eyes change as we age. Mostly, the changes are unwelcome, but some are more annoying than threatening. But some changes, as explained in Healthbeat, a publication from the Harvard Medical School, are serious and require immediate attention. Normal age-related changes include increasing difficulty focusing on close objects — many….
Continue ReadingSix Reasons You Might Be Feeling Forgetful
Aging brings many unwelcome but normal challenges to health and fitness, including possible lapses in memory. But some such problems can be the result of common behaviors you can alter to improve your brain’s ability to remember things, and retrieve them more easily. Here, courtesy Harvard Health Publications, are six common contributors to memory impairment…..
Continue ReadingA Move Toward Eliminating Medical Bill Surprises
It probably has happened to you or someone you know: A patient chooses the doctor and the facility where the procedure occurs mindful of his or her insurance plan’s network, then later receives a surprise bill showing, sometimes, thousands of dollars owed for out-of-network care. The services were provided, but the patient never knew about….
Continue ReadingA Reliable Online Library of Safety Stuff You Want to Know
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Its Patient Safety Primers are topical resources for people seeking information on everything from Adverse Events After Hospital Discharge to Wrong-Site, Wrong-Procedure, and Wrong-Patient Surgery Because it’s a government compilation replete with acronyms and abbreviations, and because….
Continue ReadingCataract Surgery Does Not Require the Pre-Op Tests Doctors Like to Perform
Surgery to remove cataracts is a common procedure accompanied by, apparently, an equally common preoperative routine of testing that appears to be wholly unnecessary. According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, (NEJM) “preoperative testing is not recommended for patients undergoing cataract surgery, because testing neither decreases adverse events nor improves outcomes.”….
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