- Medicare’s three-day rule may lead to longer-than-needed hospital stays (fiercehealthcare.com)
Medicare's rule that says patients must stay in the hospital for three days before it will cover their care in a skilled nursing facility may not be helping patients,…costing Medicare plans money… the average hospital length of stay decreased for patients whose plans eliminated the rule, while it increased for those that still applied the rule…
- Pharmacist Home Visits Improve Heart Failure Management (pharmacytimes.com)
Community pharmacists (University of Rhode Island) who expand their roles and make home visits to heart failure patients after hospital discharge can improve outcomes… investigators created a community pharmacist-provided home health service…this program facilitated successful transitions of care, improved medication adherence, and decreased 30-day HF-related (heart failure) hospital readmission rates…
- Proof-of-concept study shows successful transport of blood samples with small drones (medicalxpress.com)Can Unmanned Aerial Systems (Drones) Be Used for the Routine Transport of Chemistry, Hematology, and Coagulation Laboratory Specimens? (journals.plos.org)
proof-of-concept study…researchers have shown that results of common and routine blood tests are not affected by up to 40 minutes of travel via hobby-sized drones… investigators say that's promising news…people ..in rural and economically impoverished areas ...give health care workers quick access to lab tests.. Drones already have been tested as carriers of medicines…
- GAO IDs 3 ways DEA can improve communications with pharmacists, manufacturers (drugstorenews.com)PRESCRIPTION DRUGS More DEA Information about Registrants Controlled Substances Roles Could Improve Their Understanding and Help Ensure Access (gao.gov)
lack of effective communications between the Drug Enforcement Agency and both pharmaceutical distributors and chain pharmacy headquarters has impacted legitimate access to pain medicines, according to a report released by…Government Accountability Office…Both distributors and retail pharmacies still request improved guidance and a greater degree of interaction with the DEA, though the agency does not concur,…
- Algorithm uses a computational model of the human body’s protein networks. (specialtypharmacytimes.com)An Innovative Algorithm is Helping Scientists Decipher How Drugs Work Inside the Body (newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu)Elucidating Compound Mechanism of Action by Network Perturbation Analysis (cell.com)
Columbia University Medical Center have developed a computer algorithm to greatly accelerate the drug production process…Detecting Mechanism of Action by Network Dysregulation uses a computational model of the human body's protein networks, and how they react with each other…able to perform experiments as different drugs enter the body, and can accurately track gene expression changes.
- Centennial Hills Hospital earns Consumer Reports’ top score (reviewjournal.com)
Centennial Hills Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas today was among nine hospitals nationwide to earn Consumer Reports' highest rating for avoiding infections....Centennial Hills got 61 out of 100 on....overall safety score based on avoiding infections, readmissions, C-sections and adverse surgical events.
- Pfizer Quits Over-the-Counter Lipitor Program After Trial Fails (bloomberg.com)
Pfizer… won’t bring an over-the-counter version of its cholesterol pill Lipitor to the U.S. market, after a trial found that patients couldn’t take the drug correctly without a doctor’s help…. trial looked at whether (patients)… would check their cholesterol after starting the drug, and take the right medical action after getting the results. The tests found that they couldn’t.
- Fetal tissue research declining, still important (newsdaily.com)
political battle over the use of fetal tissue in medical research has been reinvigorated by the release of undercover videos….interest in the use of fetal tissue is dwindling,…Newer, less-controversial technologies, including the "reprogramming" of adult skin cells to create specific types of stem cells, have rendered fetal tissue less central…
- Doctor Whose Drug Killed Teen Returns as Gene Tech Booms Again (bloomberg.com)
Jesse Gelsinger died from a medical experiment led by James Wilson (biotechnology pioneer)… Gelsinger was confronting a rare metabolic disorder,..held out hope with an unproven treatment that was supposed to rewrite the young man’s DNA….the therapy killed him.
- Health Spending to Gobble Up More of U.S. Economy in Next Decade (bloomberg.com)
Spending on health care will take up an increasing proportion of the U.S. economy over the next decade as the population ages and more people gain insurance coverage under Obamacare,…Payments for hospitals, doctors, drugs and insurance will rise by about 5.8 percent a year through 2024, 1.1 percentage points faster than overall economic growth,...