Health Insurance :: 7 Tips for Selecting Long-Term Care Insurance
As the massive Baby Boomer generation braces for retirement, many are turning to long-term care insurance to prepare for potential age-related care.
Life
Medicare :: To stop Medicare physician payment cuts
AMA doctors spoke with one voice at the organization’s annual meeting in Chicago, calling on Congress to stop Medicare physician payment cuts and instead update payments in line with practice cost increases. Next year, Congress plans to cut Medicare physician payments by 10 percent, placing seniors’ access to health care at risk.
Healthy :: It’s not too late to change, lowering cardiac risk later in life
Can adopting a healthier lifestyle later in life help – or is it too late? In a study published in the July 2007 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston found that people 45 to 64 years of age who added healthy lifestyle behaviors could substantially reduce their risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and reduce their death rate.
Healthcare :: Computerized doctors’ orders reduce medication errors
Doctors are famous for sloppy scribbling ? and handwritten prescriptions lead to thousands of medication errors each year. Electronics to the rescue: U.S. hospitals that switched to computerized physician order entry systems saw a 66 percent drop in prescription errors, according to a new review of studies.
Health Care :: Strategies to address rising health care costs
The American Medical Association (AMA) announced that the nation’s physicians today voted to approve a set of strategies for containing health care costs and achieving even greater value for health spending. Physicians at the AMA Annual Meeting asserted that successful cost-containment must focus on balancing costs and benefits.
Law :: New regulations needed for patients receiving animal tissue donation
A new article in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics calls for a change in the regulations surrounding xenotransplantation, the transplanting of animal cells, tissues or organs into humans. Although few xenotransplantation procedures have been done to this time, there appears to be a lack of awareness among potential xenotransplant patients about the risk of the procedures, and the required lifetime of infectious disease monitoring that come with it.
HIV :: Awareness-raising measures to stem spread of HIV in Iran
A senior official from the United Nations Children?s Fund (UNICEF) currently in Iran has called for maximum efforts to prevent HIV and AIDS from becoming a general epidemic in the country.
HIV :: New method for screening drug-resistant forms of HIV
A growing number of drug-resistant strains of HIV are a threat to the effectiveness of current treatments despite anti-HIV drug cocktails decreasing the number of HIV-related deaths and improving the quality of life for HIV patients.
Stem Cell :: Scientists identify a mouse embryonic stem cell more like our own
Scientists have discovered a new type of mouse embryonic stem cell that is the closest counterpart yet to human embryonic stem cells, the National Institutes of Health announced today. The cells are expected to serve as an improved model for human ES cells in studies of regeneration, disease pathology and basic stem cell biology.
Gene :: Researchers find gene that spurs development of the epididymis
Human sperm cells travel up to 6 meters in their transit from testes to penis, and most of that journey occurs in the epididymis, a tightly coiled tube that primes the cells for their ultimate task: fertilization. In a PNAS paper released this week, researchers report that they have discovered a gene — and related mechanism — essential to the embryonic development of the epididymis.