confirms the growing threat posed by abuse of prescription opiates and calls on clinicians to help prevent future cases of addiction and overdose.
The study, authored by Aron Hall, finds that a majority of drug overdose deaths in West Virginia in 2006 are linked to nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals, primarily prescription opiates like OxyContin, methadone, and Vicodin. Prescription opiates played a part in 93 percent of the 295 deaths examined. Read the rest of this entry »
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Stroke Program has been certified as a Primary Stroke Center by The Joint Commission, the nation’s oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.
This distinction, awarded to centers that pass a rigorous on-site review and a thorough examination of program and patient-care data, recognizes a center’s commitment to following national standards and guidelines that can significantly improve outcomes Read the rest of this entry »
.
has relied on the Madoff Family Foundation for about a third of its donor-recruitment budget,
. No longer.
Yesterday, the group’s executive director said he had been getting calls all day from donors who said they wouldn’t be able to pledge to the organization because they’d lost money on Madoff investments. The group, which had planned on a roughly $7 million budget for next year, is looking for $1.8 million in additional Read the rest of this entry »
RENO, Nev.—A Sparks pediatrician has sued an insurance provider, claiming it bilked thousands of northern Nevada doctors out of “tens of millions of dollars” by failing to pay claims and forcing them into “one-sided” contracts.
Dr. Kevin Windisch filed the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Reno against Hometown Health Plan and Renown Health.
Hometown Health is the largest state-certified and federally qualified health maintenance Read the rest of this entry »
9:02am UK, Friday October 17, 2008
A group of medical experts are calling for a change in the abortion laws to allow women to have greater freedom of choice.
In a letter to the Times newspaper, 85 medical law and ethics specialists have called for parts of the abortion legislation to be modernised.
They call for the qualifying conditions on abortion that require women to obtain signed permission from two doctors before the procedure can take Read the rest of this entry »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Giving steroids to children who are wheezing because of viral or other infections does not help, researchers reported on Wednesday.
And an experimental treatment designed to prevent wheezing may be effective, but it seems to pose too many risks to be recommended, according to studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
About one-third of preschool children develop wheezing, which can worry parents. At least 75 Read the rest of this entry »
When it came to promoting his health insurance initiative, Sen. John McCain’s timing seemed unfortunate.
Contingencies,
an actuarial journal, the Republican presidential nominee highlighted a central tenet of his plan – deregulating the insurance industry, he wrote, ”as we have done over the last decade in banking.”
The article appeared in the journal’s September/October issue, just as the deregulated banking industry was imploding. Read the rest of this entry »
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — My Morning Jacket singer-guitarist Jim James has been released from the hospital after being injured in a fall during a concert at the University of Iowa.
A Cedar Rapids newspaper reported that James slipped and fell about 30 minutes into the show Tuesday night. The Gazette says James apparently hit his head in the fall, which happened between songs.
The rest of the concert by the Southern rock group was canceled. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Men at higher-than-average risk of prostate cancer are more likely to seek regular screening if they are married or live with a significant other, a new study finds.
Researchers found that among more than 2,400 men ages 40 to 79, those with a family history of prostate cancer were more likely to be regularly screened for the disease over a decade. However, a closer look at the data showed that this was only true of men Read the rest of this entry »
Small Melamine Amounts in Formula Are Safe, FDA Says (Update2)
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — The industrial chemical
is
safe in baby formula in small amounts, U.S. regulators said,
revising their earlier recommendations.
The Food and Drug Administration’s discovery of melamine
and a byproduct of the chemical in two U.S.-made formulas
doesn’t pose health risks, said
, director of the
agency’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, on Read the rest of this entry »