Healthcare Trends

Scientists and health advocates are beginning to study why men typically die five years earlier than women. On average, American men live 75.2 years, compared with 80.4 years for women. Men who face leading causes of death, such as heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and AIDS, die at younger ages than women. This marked "health disparity" between men and women has attracted attention from scientists and men's advocacy groups, some of whom are calling for the establishment of a federal …

It's one of those tragic stories that makes one absolutely certain that our healthcare system is broken (if you had any doubt). Middle-class, employed Delbert Davis incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debts, declared bankruptcy and ultimately died because he wasn't able to get insurance or self-pay for a liver transplant. Delbert, who was in the printing business, lost his health insurance in late 2004. Not long after, he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver but told …

Of late, facilities have been sending single-use devices to third-party companies for cleaning, then reusing them. But there may more risks involved than providers realize, a new study suggests. Researchers from the Loma Linda University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery found that even after reprocessing, some single-use arthroscopic instruments showed proteins and nucleic acids from previous patients. In the study, which looked single-use shavers, researchers found traces of tissue on …

Joining a growing number of providers, auto maker Toyota Motor is building an on-site clinic for its workers. Toyota is spending $9 million to create the clinic, which is included in the design of a new facility in San Antonio, Texas. Right now Toyota spends about $11,000 per year on healthcare per U.S. plant worker. To shrink these expenses, the Toyota clinic will cover a broader array of services than many factory medical offices or …

A group of Mayo Clinic-affiliated researchers studying arthritis drugs has publicly apologized for failing to fully disclose financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. The researchers, who looked at cancer risks among patients taking Remicade, Enbrel and Humira for rheumatoid arthritis, published the results of their study last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers didn't disclose, however, that they had let Humira maker …

New Jersey is playing host to a growing number of long-term acute care beds, a service designed to fill the gap between standard acute care and nursing facilities. The state now has nine such hospitals, and more are planned. Nationally, there are more than 400 such hospitals currently open. These facilities, which offer no services other than extended care, target patients with serious conditions who will be hospitalized for three weeks or more. Many long-term acute care patients are on …

Despite its having been "scrubbed," a laptop formerly belonging to Intermountain Health Care apparently still contained a file with personnel data on 6,000 employees who worked for Intermountain in 1999. The provider's human-resources department donated an old laptop to a charity, and somehow, no one realized that the file was still accessible on the laptop's hard drive. The rogue file provided information of great potential value to an identity thief, including names, social security …

Today, it's growing increasingly common for physicians to integrate their beliefs on socio-medical issues such as access to abortion and contraception into their practice. This can lead to conflicts with other doctors who don't share their views, and potentially, put major stress on the practice as a whole. To avoid these stresses, it's important to begin at the hiring stage, with physician executives spelling out …

If Roche has its way, a gaggle of happy penguins will charm consumers into stocking up on flu drug Tamiflu. Using penguin characters from a current children's feature as a theme, Roche Pharmaceuticals has developed a multi-million dollar ad campaign to create demand for the costly medication. Tamiflu, which has attracted international attention as a possible stopgap in the war against …

Dr. Claudia Henschke is deeply convinced that all smokers and former smokers should get routine CT scans. In a recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Henschke estimated that routine CTs could prevent as many as 80 percent of the nation's 160,000 annual deaths from lung cancer. For her study, Dr. Henschke scanned 31,567 people at more than 30 hospitals around the world. The scans found cancer in 484, with 85 percent were at Stage I. The …