The RAND Corporation and Health Dialog Services Corporation today announced an alliance that will entitle Health Dialog to exclusive, worldwide rights to integrate select RAND quality measures into its existing provider performance measurement tools and care management services.
A potential new biomarker for heart failure may be more powerful than established measures in identifying patients at increased risk for death from several causes. In a report to appear in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that has received early online release, an international research team describes finding that blood levels of a protein called ST2 both indicate the presence of heart failure among patient with shortness of breath and powerfully predict the risk that a patient will die during the following year.
For many people, hearing loss is part of aging. Hearing loss affects approximately one-third of people over age 65. Among people age 75 and older, 40 percent to 50 percent experience hearing loss.
The study confirms the relation between a mutation in the serotonin transporter gene and exposure to threatening life events in depression. The disorder affects 20 percent of Spaniards visiting the doctor.
The National Inquiry into Management and Medicine looked at hospitals across the UK, focussing on the often troubled relationships between doctors and NHS managers. It found that where the two sides have formed a genuine alliance, the health service runs more efficiently ? and patient outcomes are improved.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) welcomes the release of the six healthcare workers held in Libya since 1999. The medical professionals (five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor), were flown to Sofia, Bulgaria where they were pardoned on arrival by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.
Artificially inducing menopause may reduce breast cancer recurrence in premenopausal women with early-stage breast cancers.
American Public Health Association Commends Senate for Voting to Protect Children’s Health by Reauthorizing SCHIP. Statement by Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, FACEP (E), Executive Director, American Public Health Association:
Researchers predict as many as one in four people aged over 65 years will be diagnosed with dementia by 2020. To confront this looming health problem, a team of health care researchers led by the University of Western Sydney’s Professor Esther Chang, has been working on a series of related projects which aim to improve the lives of people with advanced dementia, their carers and families.
The annual Antenatal Survey of women attending public health facilities, which is designed to give general trends in HIV infection over time, shows that in 2006, there are pleasing signs of changes in the right direction even though HIV remains an important public health challenge in South Africa.