The federal agency that regulates nursing homes and other long-term care facilities not only has cracked down on them with tough new requirements for coronavirus testing of their staff. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services also has flogged its plan to provide facilities with testing equipment and sample tests. While owners and operators have….
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The big Alzheimer’s puzzle: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Blood, too?
It isn’t just the testing for the novel coronavirus that has already anxious Americans upset these days. Controversies also are swirling around existing and developing ways for experts to screen older patients for cognitive decline, namely dementia and its most familiar form, Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60%-80% of dementia cases, is the….
Continue ReadingConcern rises over bias in race-based algorithms for medical decision-making
High-tech wizards may be pushing medicine into a brave new world where important medical decisions rely on supposedly data-driven findings that also may be rooted in an old malignancy: discrimination against black patients. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine warns that race-based tools and formulas, algorithms aimed to assist doctors….
Continue ReadingAs virus spreads, concerns surge about testing, hospitals, and nursing homes
The coronavirus outbreak spreading across the globe may be providing Americans with an unhappy view of the dirty downsides of the too-often dysfunctional U.S. health care system as it grapples with spiking Covid-19 infections. Congress has appropriated more than $8 billion, so the federal government can provide the nation the support it needs in battling….
Continue ReadingThat $ —.99 sale isn’t a deal. ‘Left-digit bias’ isn’t great for health care, either.
Highly educated and rigorously trained doctors may be just as susceptible to a built-in bias that bargain-seeking consumers yield to when they hit stores seeking 99 cent goods, buy into TV hype for $19.99 wares, or fall for a salesman’s pitch for a used car priced at $17,999. Ivy League researchers call the cognitive flaw….
Continue ReadingBattle may be in new phase against the virus now named Covid19
The spreading virus that has sickened tens of thousands and killed thousands — mostly in central China in Hubei province and its big capital city, Wuhan — now has a name: Covid19. Public health officials hope that this moniker, along with new images of the virus, will make talking about this disease easier and reduce….
Continue ReadingA top U.S. health official can’t get his. Which is why we need records reforms.
Federal regulators may be on the brink of not only protecting but also advancing patients access and use of a key component of their care: their electronic health records. Or will bureaucrats fold up in the face of a muscle campaign by corporate interests and hospitals? To its credit, the giant Health and Human Services….
Continue ReadingCrucial doctor-patient relationships showing distressing signs of fraying
Although health policy experts and doctors themselves may sing the praises of primary care providers — medical generalists who are supposed to be the first and important caregivers for most patients — recent studies suggest that yet another idealized aspect of the U.S. health care system has cost- and access-driven problems. Patients, to start with,….
Continue ReadingAs coronavirus pummels China, concern rises about U.S. health care supplies
The toll of the coronavirus outbreak in China keeps worsening, with the infections exceeding tens of thousands and the deaths spiking toward 1,000, also claiming the first American and Japanese lives of people in the disease epicenter of Wuhan. The illness’ most significant harms continue to afflict China, particularly its central province of Hubei and….
Continue ReadingNeed simple, clear, and direct ideas to be healthier? Heed these 48 words
Bravo, brevity. Four dozen words is all it takes for a doctor and noted writer on diet and obesity to offer plenty of sound advice on how to get and stay healthy. Here are the suggestions from Yoni Freedhoff, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, founder and medical director of Ottawa’s….
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