To Fix Health Care, We Need to Look Beyond Medicine

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1. Researchers use fossils to determine ancient marine reptile’s eating technique : NPR The reptile lived in oceans between 247 million and 249 million years ago. It was......
2. Signal identified that prompts one kidney to grow larger when the other is lost Scientists have found an explanation for the century-old observation that if you end up with just one kidney, the lone organ gets bigger....
3. Hospital Closures Had No Measurable Impact On Local Hospitalization Rates Or Mortality Rates, 2003-11 [Access To Care] The Affordable Care Act (ACA) set in motion payment changes that could put pressure on hospital finances and lead some hospitals to close. Understanding the impact of closures on patient care and outcomes is critically important. We identified 195 hospital closures in the United States between 2003 and 2011. We found no significant difference between the change in annual mortality rates for patients living in hospital service areas (HSAs) that experienced one or more closures and the change in rates in matched HSAs without a closure (5.5 percent to 5.2 percent versus 5.4 percent to 5.4 percent, respectively). Nor was...
4. Study links improved consumer welfare to increased prescription drug advertising efforts   More people are better off thanks to the impact of an influx of direct-to-consumer advertising spending than they would be without those marketing efforts, according to a study recently published by Jayani Jayawardhana, an assistant professor in the University of Georgia College of Public Health. read more...
5. Redesigned Geriatric Emergency Care May Have Helped Reduce Admissions Of Older Adults To Intensive Care Units [Improving Care Systems] Charged with transforming geriatric emergency care by applying palliative care principles, a process improvement team at New York City’s Mount Sinai Medical Center developed the GEDI WISE (Geriatric Emergency Department Innovations in Care through Workforce, Informatics, and Structural Enhancements) model. The model introduced workforce enhancements for emergency department (ED) and adjunct staff, including role redefinition, retraining, and education in palliative care principles. Existing ED triage nurses screened patients ages sixty-five and older to identify those at high risk of ED revisit and hospital readmission. Once fully trained, these nurses screened all but 6 percent of ED visitors meeting the screening...