Hospital Medicine

This trial aims to explore whether or not their is a relationship between inflammation and obesity in asthma patients and how this relationship can impact a patient's response to treatment.

This continuing medical education activity is sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs and focuses on COPD.

This website for medical professionals was developed by the COPD Foundation.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations states that medication errors continue to be one of the most frequent causes of preventable harm in healthcare. As Tangalos sees it, electronic and IT solutions hold the greatest promise to eliminate these errors.

The development of clinical medical-practice guidelines is a difficult and arduous process. Experts in various disciplines volunteer many hours of their time for medical research reviews and analyses and meetings with fellow guidelines-panel members, and painstakingly writing and reviewing the final report. However, there are many concerns about the quality of medical research serving as a basis for those guidelines.

Surveys show that more than 90% of US hospitals do not use even a basic EHR, despite the improvements to efficiency, care coordination, and patient safety to be gained by implementing an EHR. Some hospitals, however, have been quick to recognize the benefits of EHRs, and have already taken steps to prepare for a paperless future.

As hospital medicine continues to evolve and grow as a specialty, hospitalist groups are looking to branch out and provide more services.

A variety of factors are prompting hospitals to expand coverage to provide 24/7 hospitalist care, leading to the creation of a new sub-specialty: the nocturnist. Although many programs, in an effort to recruit nocturnists, promise shorter hours, more flexible scheduling, and better pay, the lifestyle adjustment nighttime coverage requires is not for everyone.

In addition to running IPC: The Hospitalist Company, the leading provider of hospital medicine in the United States, Dr. Singer was Modern Physician's Physician Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008 and has continued to shape IPC Link, a proprietary clinical communications technology designed by hospitalists for hospitalists. His dedication to the growing field and ability to recognize the power of technology in shaping the delivery of healthcare makes him an excellent source of information when it comes to "hot topics" in hospital medicine.

I overhead two women chatting about symptoms the other day while they were surfing WebMD on their respective iPhones for diagnoses - their discussion was as public and non-chalant as if they were shopping. I mused over this for a minute, unsure if I should be disturbed or not, and then found myself wondering which URLs really are the "go-to" sites for health information. An answer was only a click away via Google search at eBizMBA.com.

Way back in January, Phil Baumann, RN, provided an empathic answer to the question/concern that was on everyone's mind then: "Yeah Twitter seems great and all, but can you use it for anything useful in healthcare?" We followed up with him to see how 2009 went.

As the mean BMI in the U.S. edges higher, I thought that a discussion of 2 recent analyses regarding lipids was pertinent to the season.

Some neurologic disorders increase the risk of problematic outcomes of pregnancy. Data on such associations have been scant, but this is beginning to change. For example, with regard to epilepsy, there are a number of pregnancy registries which track outcomes related to antiepileptic drug therapy. However, large trials and population studies are not common.

HITECH says covered entities must be able to monitor and record every time that patient data is accessed, enabling the entity to comply with the new notification requirements should unauthorized access occur. Will the new rules end up restricting the efficient exchange of data that is crucial to providing high-quality healthcare?

As EHRs are widely adopted and the quantity of information about a patient expands dramatically, does provider liability increase even if the quality of care is vastly improved?

Large organizations with mobile workers, such as hospitals, face diminished productivity when communication is inefficient and its employees are unable to locate their coworkers in a timely manner.

Bravo. The government finally has its healthcare IT priorities straight. Unfortunately, it won't be able to achieve them.

In "Managing Opioid-Induced Constipation in Ambulatory-Care Patients," Clyde R. Goodheart, MD, MBA, MS, and Stewart B. Leavitt, MA, PhD, note that constipation is a frequent side effect of treatment with opioid medications.

Below are select statistics on the prevalence, incidence, and mortality rates associated with angina pectoris in the US.

For those interested in health information technology, there is now an excellent, new, powerful website about this topic called the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. In their most recent report, "Can Cleveland Clinic Be a Model for Digital Medicine?" they discuss how this hospital system has failed to recoup their $100 million investment to date.

Education focuses on a range of topics including disease process, nutritional management, and psychological adjustments to preventing diabetic complications, detecting changes, monitoring levels and participating in physical activities.

Researchers from Imperial College London have found the trigger that causes inflammation and artery damage in patients with atherosclerosis.

Some pundits have written that health insurance mandates are well beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. Others have picked up on these arguments and applied them to the EHR-implementation incentives under the HITECH Act as well. The bottom line is that these arguments fail, for four reasons.

There has been much discussion about the HITECH Act and the effects it will have on healthcare in this country. The health IT industry and the federal government claim that EHR use will lead to a decrease in costs and an overall improvement in patient care. Skeptics like me disagree with these claims and feel that the push to adopt complex EHRs will be a bad deal for physicians.

As you're recovering from Thanksgiving, here are just a few reminders about some events this week.

Lately, I've been thinking about how fast everything moves these days. This is true in technology, medicine, business, and other important areas of our lives. Keeping up with changes in healthcare is a real challenge; just reading monthly print medical journals won't cut it anymore in the digital age. Now, practically every day I find myself looking something up on Wikipedia.

According to results from the National Institutes of Health Bypass Angioplasty Revascularization Investigation in Type 2 Diabetes (BARI 2D) study, many patients with diabetes and heart disease may achieve better results with drug therapy instead of angioplasty.

The results of two recent studies show that plasma can be used effectively in the making of devices for wound healing and disinfection.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the approaching fire storm over the patient-centered medical home model reminds me of the destructive powers seen before in HMOs.