"Health & Medical News"

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Washington — Medicare’s first run at incorporating chronic care management techniques into the program is closing at the end of this year, with most observers already describing the effort as a false start.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the Medicare Health Support pilot project three years ago with high hopes. By hiring eight private disease management firms to set up voluntary chronic care improvement programs for beneficiaries, CMS aimed to improve health care quality while lowering costs. At one point more than 150,000 seniors were enrolled in the programs.

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Washington — An electronic medical records system connecting patients in New York is one step closer to reality after Gov. David A. Paterson awarded $105 million in grants on March 28 to 19 community-based health information technology projects.

The grants are part of a statewide effort to implement health IT and improve health care, said New York State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, MD. “For the first time, thousands of patients in New York will have access to their own complete electronic medical records, and their doctors will be able to access medical information through a few clicks of a mouse,” he said.

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The pace of health care quality improvement appears to be slowing, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s fifth annual report compiling federal and state data on more than 200 quality metrics.

A composite measure of health care quality improved at a 2.3% average annualized rate between 1994 and 2005, with the rate falling to 1.5% from 2000 to 2005. And in a first stab at examining the cost efficiency of the American health care system, AHRQ noted that costs, as estimated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, jumped 6.7% from 1994 to 2005.

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This is an interesting story GE redesigning an EKG machine (the last one of which they made in 1999) for a place like India. The have also been advertising a lot on TV - I was able to find the ad on YouTube which is pretty cool. Four things immediately struck me:

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Washington — A postmortem of a mumps outbreak in 2006 — the nation’s largest in 20 years — is raising questions about the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Investigators who took a close look at the reasons behind the 6,584 cases of mumps that hit Midwestern states in March through May of 2006 found that a surprisingly large percentage of those who contracted the illness had received the recommended two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

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Washington — As research findings coalesce around a collection of risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, it is becoming obvious that poor and minority populations — the ones most likely to harbor risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes –also are more likely than whites to encounter this brain disorder.

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Washington — A bipartisan bill to delay Medicaid rules that would cut billions in federal funding for hospitals and physician training has attracted support in the House.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee approved the legislation unanimously on April 9. The measure would prevent until April 1, 2009, the implementation of seven Medicaid rules introduced since 2007 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. One of the regulations would eliminate on May 25 Medicaid funding for graduate medical education — an estimated $1.78 billion over five years.

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Washington — Nearly 1,000 physicians convened in Washington, D.C., earlier this month to help lobby lawmakers on Medicare payment reform in the face of a tight timeline and an even tighter budget.

Although the American Medical Association’s National Advocacy Conference covered a range of health policy issues, its main focus was on patching the Medicare payment system that otherwise will cause a 10.6% reduction in doctor pay starting July 1. The event featured congressional speakers and an opportunity for more than 100 physician and medical student attendees to meet with lawmakers following an April 2 rally on Capitol Hill.

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