March 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription “Unfortunately, the Republicans are a little bit like the boy who killed his two parents and then wants sympathy because they're an orphan. They've tried to stop the passage of this bill, slowed it up. We'll vote for the Senate bill in the rule, and then we will amend the Senate bill in the process.”—House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on ABCnews.com. FULL STORY »
March 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Just in time for opening arguments in the epic federal court drama between rival unions in San Francisco this week, the Service Employees International Union and the National Union of Healthcare Workers have launched Web video attacks on their opponents. FULL STORY »
March 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription After 16 years at 1 N. Franklin St., the Chicago headquarters of the American Hospital Association has moved. While 155 N. Wacker Drive is just three blocks away, the move certainly wasn't as simple as a walk around the block. It took 80 moving trucks to haul everything to the new digs, says John Evans, senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer. FULL STORY »
By the Associated Press |
March 17, 2010
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Basic Web Registration Britons trying to cheer up their hospitalized friends and relatives of'ten have to do so standing up; sitting on the bed usually isn't allowed. FULL STORY »
By the Associated Press |
March 16, 2010
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Basic Web Registration Thieves staged a brazen heist at a pharmaceutical warehouse in Connecticut, scaling a wall, cutting a hole in the roof and rappelling inside to steal about $70 million in antidepressants and other prescription drugs, authorities said. FULL STORY »
March 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription “Drink two and call me in the morning,” is what Jason Ludlow, director of hospitality and retail sales at the Cooper Mountain Winery in Beaverton, Ore., says as he poured a sample of the 2007 pinot noir Doctors Reserve for Outliers and other visitors exploring the state's Willamette Valley wine country recently. FULL STORY »
March 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription While Outliers is generally opposed to using jargon, we're compelled to share a few medical expressions patient-safety advocate Robert Wachter posted on his “Wachter's World” blog. (Wachter is widely credited with coining the term “hospitalist,” so much so that a “Wachter + coined” Google search finds 17,300 references.) FULL STORY »
March 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription The Truth About Nursing has no issue with Mariah Carey's talent, but the Baltimore nurse advocacy group is scathing in its review of the pop singer's recent video for “Up Out My Face,” in which Carey appears dressed in a high-heeled, low-cut nurse costume. FULL STORY »
March 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription “We doctors are extremely good at rationalizing. Somehow we manage to figure out how the very best care just happens to be the care that brings us the most money.”—Howard Brody, a family physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Newsweek. Brody has proposed that every medical specialty identify five procedures that are done a lot and cost a lot but provide no benefits to some or all of the patients who receive them. FULL STORY »
By the Associated Press |
March 10, 2010
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Basic Web Registration As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time—the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries. FULL STORY »
March 08, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription “That kind of a cost, compared with the rest of the world, is like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.”—Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett on the need for reform that helps contain costs, citing healthcare costs as a drain on the U.S. economy. FULL STORY »
March 08, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription The Vancouver Olympics may be history, but some members of the U.S. team will still be appearing on TV screens as part of an HHS campaign against childhood obesity. Videos featuring figure-skating medalist Michelle Kwan, 2010 skeleton racer Noelle Pikus-Pace, 2010 Olympic snowboarder Louie Vito and others were shot during the Winter Games, with the athletes offering kids advice on how to keep healthy. The Let’s Move campaign is a special project of first lady Michelle Obama. FULL STORY »
March 08, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Outliers' mother taught us it wasn't polite to make fun of someone's name. But sometimes while perusing articles about hospitals across America … well, we just have to wonder: What were they thinking? FULL STORY »
March 08, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Here's one for the “Thanks a lot, pal” file: Kentucky GOP Sen. Jim Bunning, who is—depending on your point of view—credited or blamed for personally blocking the proposed “doc fix” for a few days last week, won re-election in 2004 thanks in no small part to the financial support he received from the healthcare industry and the American Medical Association. FULL STORY »
March 01, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription The snow may have melted but it seems the costs associated with recent snowstorms are still piling up for some hospitals.When the new year began, Maryland hospitals didn’t bank on heavy snowstorms adding to their financial headaches for 2010. FULL STORY »
March 01, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Although the promotion so far has resulted in more calls from reporters than prospective patients, Tony Mammen at 21st Century Urology in Orland Park, Ill., says he’s pleased with the response to his practice’s promotion to schedule vasectomies March 18-19 and March 25-26—the first and Sweet 16 rounds of March Madness, aka the NCAA basketball tournament. FULL STORY »
March 01, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Everyone knows that a hearty bowl of chicken soup helps cure what ails you. But in the case of at least four patients at hospitals in Northern California, a lunchtime bowl of hot soup stopped them cold. On Feb. 10, these unfortunate souls found glass fragments in chicken soup served at separate Kaiser Permanente facilities. Thankfully, no harm came to the patients who ate the soup, according to Kaiser Permanente. FULL STORY »
February 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Scott Brown's election to the U.S. Senate has had major consequences for healthcare reform, but it also caused another small healthcare ripple. FULL STORY »
February 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Outliers imagines the recruiting poster for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's new global health issues course might read a little something like this: Wanted: Medical students interested in an exchange program with counterparts in the far-flung regions of Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Travel requirements: Bus fare to get to class on time. FULL STORY »
February 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Low patient volumes got you feeling blue? Tired of the nagging suspicion that your personal idiosyncrasies are being caused by repressed memories from a past life? FULL STORY »
February 22, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription It's not exactly like writing the great American novel on his employer's dime, but Alan Wesley is certainly enjoying an unusual creative outlet as corporate publications manager for SSM Health Care in St. Louis. FULL STORY »
By Associated Press |
February 16, 2010
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Basic Web Registration Egypt's famed King Tutankhamun suffered from a cleft palate and club foot, likely forcing him to walk with a cane, and died from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria, according to the most extensive study ever of his mummy. FULL STORY »
February 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription The Health News Florida Web site broke a big story earlier this month when it reported that a Florida doctor who is living in a federal prison after pleading guilty to health fraud in September 2008 is listed on the Florida Health Department Web site as having a “clear/active” medical license. FULL STORY »
February 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription The healthcare debate is often focused on cost burdens associated with caring for poor and low-income Americans. But as science reporter Rebecca Skloot makes clear in her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, if it weren't for one poor woman and the contribution of her prolific “HeLa” cells, treatments for an endless list of diseases, including polio, leukemia, Parkinson's disease and influenza, would only be a dream. “HeLa” comes from the first two letters of Lacks' first and last name. FULL STORY »
February 15, 2010
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Print Magazine Subscription Outliers likes to think we keep on top of all the latest trends and fads that ripple through the industry, but we seem to have been oblivious to one that appears to be a popular target for plastic surgeons: new moms. Cosmetic surgery sees ample opportunities for what one health system described as procedures to “improve upon the natural changes of a mother's body,” if an unscientific Google search of “mommy makeover” is any indication. That search also brings up a lot of results for plastic surgeons in Southern California. Hmm. FULL STORY »
