"Health & Medical News"

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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Washington — About one in six eligible physicians and other health professionals participated in a new Medicare quality reporting program during its first five months, according to preliminary figures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. About half of them are on track to get up to a 1.5% bonus for their efforts.

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Indoor Air Quality. MISLEADING ADVERTISEMENT OF HOME USE MEDICAL DEVICES … Additional information on Allergy to Perfume in the Air. CHEMICAL REACTION …

Article - The EMF Controversy - HealthyHouseInstitute.com
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Doctors agree on the basic tenets of medical professionalism, but they frequently fail to live up to those ideals in practice, according to a survey of more than 1,600 physicians in the Dec. 4 Annals of Internal Medicine.

Nearly all of the physicians surveyed agreed doctors should use medical resources appropriately, tell patients the truth, minimize disparities, see patients regardless of their ability to pay, maintain board certifications, evaluate peers’ care, avoid sex with patients, work on quality initiatives, disclose conflicts of interest, report impaired or incompetent physicians, and report medical errors.

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“We are not your father’s VA,” Jonathan B. Perlin, MD, PhD, who until recently headed the Dept. of Veterans Affairs health system, was fond of saying about today’s department.

For decades, the quality of care in the VA health system was considered woefully sub-par. Enrollees complained of shoddy facilities, uncaring medical professionals and neglectful treatment. Its reputation suffered from such accounts as Oliver Stone’s 1989 film “Born on the Fourth of July,” which depicted the paralyzed protagonist’s VA hospital setting as squalid and decaying.

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Large physician groups have long had a head start on solo and small practices in the medical marketplace because they can negotiate better health plan contracts. Now, a rising tide of evidence indicates that size also confers a quality advantage.

Researchers admit that the medical literature emerging on the relationship between group size and quality is far from a slam dunk. They argue, however, that bigger physician groups can pool capital to pay for electronic medical records systems and other quality initiatives that help them more reliably deliver guideline-based care.

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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is pouring $15.9 million into a new effort to give doctors and the public a more accurate assessment of physician performance.

The plan is to combine national Medicare and private health plan claims data and then use the data for public reporting of physician performance on quality and cost measures. Reporting in select areas is set for 2010.

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A Berkeley school of public health prof recently posted to the SPH listserv a great NASA link to high altitude photos of the southern California fires. You can click through several days worth of pics and see what conditions were like prior to the fires as well as tell when the winds kicked up as they carried dust plumes in areas unaffected by fire (for instance Oct 22nd).

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… have noted that allergic reactions to wood dust occur more often in the summer, … allergies may react more quickly and violently to the more toxic wood …

WOODTV.com & WOOD TV8 - Grand Rapids news, weather, sports and video …
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