The Kaiser Family Foundation has produced an informative and entertaining short animated movie that explains the problems with the current health care system, the changes that are happening now, and the big changes coming in 2014.
Narrated by newscaster Cokie Roberts (a member of Kaiser’s Board of Trustees), the nine-minute animation explains plainly how health care hadn’t worked in the past, addresses the controversies surrounding its passage, and outlines what will happen in the near future and in 2014.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
British scientists announced that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been linked to deleted or duplicated DNA segments (copy number variants), which leads to developmental difference in the brains of children with the condition.
Researchers scanned genomes of 366 children with ADHD and compared them with 1,047 unrelated, ethnically matched control subjects. They reported full results in The Lancet.
Rare copy number variants were almost twice as common in children with ADHD compared to the other children. Researchers commented to Reuters that there was a significant overlap between copy number variants found in ADHD and elements of the genome linked to autism and schizophrenia, specifically in a region on chromosome 16.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
Government healthcare reform efforts are picking up the pace to roll out new reimbursement and practice models for primary care.
Medicare is giving out $10 billion for pilot projects encouraging new models of primary care, including the patient-centered medical home. New Jersey just passed legislation to explore the patient-centered medical home. Now, Massachusetts, the early adopter of mandatory health insurance, is now ambitiously planning how to take on the fee-for-service reimbursement system and moving toward accountable care organizations. Under discussion are the scope of power for state regulators, what rules will apply to accountable care organizations, and how to get rid of the existing fee-for-service system.
Blogger and pediatrician Jay Parkinson, MD, MPH, comments about the “bureaucrats in Washington” that, “they’ve decided for doctors that we’ll get paid for strictly office visits and procedures when, in fact, being a good doctor is much, much more about good communication and solid relationships than the maximum volume of patients you can see in a given day.”
Now, it’s those same bureaucrats who are changing the system, trying to find a model that will accomplish just those goals. (CMS Web site, NJ Today, Boston Globe, KevinMD)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) coordinat[ed] “National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day” this [past] Saturday [September 25th], encouraging people to turn in their unused prescription drugs. The agency hopes the event will help decrease rates of crime and addiction linked to prescription drug abuse, the New York Timesreports.
This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Many Americans are not aware that medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are increasing at alarming rates, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, many Americans do not know how to properly dispose of their unused medicine, often flushing them down the toilet or throwing them away – both potential safety and health hazards.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
The Washington Postasks whether “old age” should be reconsidered as a legitimate cause of death for the elderly. Because more people are dying at very advanced ages with multiple system failure, it’s often harder for physicians to pinpoint the specific underlying cause, but using “old age” as a catch-all term could make mortality data less meaningful, the article said.
An upcoming revision of the International Classification of Diseases might provide some guidance: “Each revision of the ICD is the right moment to reconsider this question,” the co-head of the ICD’s mortality statistics committee told the Post. (Washington Post)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
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