HLAC Health News

How do you like your coffee? Rectally. It might not occur to you, sipping your morning coffee, that you could derive tremendous health benefits by simply shooting that coffee directly into your rectum. Yet many people believe this.

"What we've seen is this federal money really has made a big difference," said lead study author Julia Adler-Milstein, an assistant professor in the U-M School of Information and School of Public Health. [The big problem will occur] ". . after the government grant money runs out in January 2014." A full 74 percent of the exchange programs reported that they're struggling to develop a sustainable business model. Over the years, some organizations have closed their doors when grants ended. Adler-Milstein offers one explanation why: "The health care providers are not willing to pay for the service at the level needed," she said. "They don't see enough value, and that's because much of it doesn't accrue to them. It goes to patients and to health insurance companies. The central challenge is that the incentives and the business model are not aligned yet for this to really work."

A study has revealed that telehealth, a way of monitoring a patient's health in their own home, can be used safely with actively mobile patients in place of the standard post-operative clinic visit.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday that more than 1,100 health centers in all 50 states will share $150 million in grants for outreach. It's the largest pot of federal money for in-person enrollment assistance.

For first time readers, homeopathy is based on several fictions, totally divorced from reality, made up in the 1800′s. The first law . . . is, "similia similibus curentur," or "let like be cured by like." Substances which cause specific symptoms can be used to cure diseases which cause the same symptoms. . . . Say you have a headache. What causes a headache? Being smacked on the head by a hammer. So in homeopathic thinking, being hit on the head with a hammer would cure your headache.

"Because rare but potentially serious adverse events of prescription drugs are often discovered only after market approval, observational postmarketing studies constitute an important part of the U.S. drug safety system," write Kevin Fain, J.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues.

Imagine a world where everybody took their medicines and doctors prescribed only generic medications (when available)? According to a report by CVS Caremark, America would save billions of dollars every year.

The participants were less likely to endorse the "stick" plans because they were perceived as a punishment for being overweight. However, they did not seem to distinguish between the three "stick" plans, in spite of a $100 difference in premiums. Rather, they appeared to evaluate the plans on moral grounds.

"The United States spends more than the rest of the world on health care and leads the world in the quality and quantity of its health research, but that doesn't add up to better health outcomes," said Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME Director and one of the lead authors on the study. "The country has done a good job of preventing premature deaths from stroke, but when it comes to lung cancer, preterm birth complications, and a range of other causes, the country isn't keeping pace with high-income countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere."

Ironically, licensing statutes are enacted based on the states' constitutional power to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public. Yet these CAM practice acts actually increase public vulnerability to unsafe and ineffective health care practices.... 1. Practice acts grant CAM practitioners a broad scope of practice, including legalization of scientifically implausible and unproven (or disproven) diagnostic methods, diagnoses and treatments.

The first issue is available for free on ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22130764

Researchers created clinical scenarios related to four common pitfalls of EDIS use in emergency departments: communication failure, poor data display, wrong order/wrong patient errors and alert fatigue.

Offit gives Vioxx as a case in point. Vioxx, approved in 1999, was a huge hit for treating arthritis pain. It's a more refined version of the drugs in the same class as aspirin and ibuprofen, without causing the stomach bleeding that can make them dangerous. Tests showed it could raise the risk of heart attacks and Vioxx's maker pulled it off the market. "So which is more dangerous: Vioxx or vitamins? Indeed, both have dangers," Offit writes. "The better question is, why does everybody know that Vioxx can cause heart disease and nobody knows that megavitamins can cause cancer? The answer is that we have chosen not to know."

Along with other walk-in retail clinic chains such as Kroger's Little Clinic and Walgreen's Take Care Health, MinuteClinic is gearing up for an anticipated swell of newly insured people come Jan. 1, 2014, when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully implemented.