Mohsin Sandhu: June 2008 Archives
"In a report released Wednesday, the Institute of Medicine, an organization sponsored by Congress, recommended that the government consider universal health insurance, insurance that would cover all Americans regardless of their employment status or financial situation.
Currently, most Americans must be employed to receive partially covered health insurance. Employers choose an insurance plan, paying a certain amount per worker, and then workers do not have to pay full price for doctor visits or medicine.
Those who do not have jobs must either pay for private insurance, which is very expensive, cover their own medical bills, which can rise into the hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the treatment, or simply go without care because they can't afford it..."
Read the full article by Kristina Nwazota, at NewsHour Extra
"A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerized patient
records by doctors points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions,
and a health care system at odds with itself.The report, published online on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that doctors who use electronic health records say overwhelmingly that such records have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation's doctors has started using such records.
Bringing patient records into the computer age, experts say, is crucial to improving care, reducing errors and containing costs in the American health care system. The slow adoption of the technology is mainly economic. Most doctors in private practice, especially those in small practices, lack the financial incentive to invest in computerized records.
The national survey found that electronic records were used in less than 9 percent of small offices with one to three doctors, where nearly half of the country's doctors practice medicine..."
Read the full article by Steve Lohr, at New York Times
"When Mary Adams had a mammogram in October,
she didn't have to wait for a call from her doctor or even a note in
the mail to get her results.Instead, she got a message from her Cleveland Clinic doctor that her online health record had been updated. She logged onto MyChart, one of the nation's first online sites for personal health records, and voilà, there were the results: Everything was normal.
"It made me feel great," says Adams, 45, of LaGrange, Ohio. "I knew at a glance what my test results were."
Adams may be riding the wave of the future as one of the first to try out a new breed of websites that allow patients to store and access their own medical records. She has since added the newly launched Google Health to her online health arsenal.
A variety of companies from private health-care providers and insurance companies to big technology firms such as Microsoft and Google are developing and launching sites, most of them free, that allow patients to keep personal health records. They can include everything from medical histories to test results, doctors' notes and prescriptions.
Patients can input their records themselves or have them added by the few doctors' offices and other medical facilities that keep compatible electronic records online.
Because the field is so new, standards and legislation still are under development. And privacy advocates worry about sensitive records falling into the wrong hands..."
Read the full article by Janet Kornblum, at USA Today
"Garlic has long been touted as a health booster, but it's never been clear why the herb might be good for you. Now new research is beginning to unlock the secrets of the odoriferous bulb.
In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations -- it's the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.
In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found..."Read the full article by Chris Ramirez, at New York Times
