Everyone's favorite crusader--Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)--is continuing in his quest to get a clear picture of how money flows from drug and devicemakers to the medical community.

This time around Sen. Grassley has sent letters to 33 medical groups--including the American Medical Association, the Alzheimer's Association and the American Cancer Society--asking them to share details on how much money they and their directors receive from industry.

Groups quoted in a piece by the New York Times were quick to assure the world that they're planning to jump however high Grassley asks, though some were reluctant to say exactly how much of their funding was coming from drug or devicemakers. (The American Medical Association, for its part, went on the record to say that the group receives less than 2 percent of its budget from such sources.)

Demanding such information from the group's directors may cause something of a firestorm. To date, virtually no patient advocacy or medical groups have given more than a general accounting of how reliant they are on industry, much less how their directors benefit from such relationships.

To get more data on Grassley's request:
- read this piece from the New York Times

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For a while, ambulatory surgical centers in New Jersey--and to some extent, across the U.S.--watched in concern as state courts worked through a dispute between one ASC and an area health plan. Health Net of New Jersey, which sought to recover $5 million in allegedly fraudulent overpayments, had contended that the physicians who owned an ASC committed fraud by billing for referrals improperly made to their out-of-network facility.

The case began in 2007, and at the time, the ASC was operating under a state medical board opinion that allowed for the referrals in question. The Appellate Division of the state court system upheld a 2007 trial court finding that despite there being a state law in place banning self-referrals, the doctors didn't knowingly violate self-referral laws or submit false claims that violated a state insurance fraud statute.

The appeals court also tossed out Health Net's claims that the Wayne (N.J.) Surgical Center committed fraud by waiving patients coinsurance payments to incentivize them to use their facility. The court found that state law and regs don't bar physicians from waiving co-payments.

The American Medical Association and Medical Society of New Jersey say that the case will have an impact nationwide, as it will make sure they feel free to refer patients out of network as needed. Health plans, for their part, say that such referral practices drive up costs needlessly.

Get more background on the case:
- read this American Medical News piece

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Throughout the health reform debate, the public option has been one of the hottest flash points, with those for and against the idea giving little ground. However, a new approach making use of the federal Office of Personnel Management has emerged that might potentially satisfy enough legislators to move things forward.

A group of five liberal and five moderate Democratic senators are proposing an alternative that would empower the federal Office of Personnel Management to run a new national health plan. The OPM would negotiate terms with private insurers, then contract with nonprofit entities established by the private sector to run the program.

This compromise could work because it contains a politically-attractive idea: it gives ordinary citizens access to the same type of insurance coverage that members of Congress and federal workers receive. At the same time, this proposal doesn't establish a competing non-governmental plan, an idea that has sparked a great deal of opposition.

Now, the question is whether this compromise--which seems quite artful to us--will degenerate into more arguments over which shade of gray is darkest. This proposal does seem to balance the concerns of stakeholders as well as any we've reviewed, however.

Get more background on this debate:
- read this Kaiser Health News piece

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A powerful combination of factors--including improved rates of screening, new treatments and healthier lifestyles--are continuing to lower the annual number of cancer cases and deaths in the U.S., cancer researchers report.

A new study, appearing in the journal Cancer, draws on a wide range of information on U.S. cancer cases, including data from the American Cancer Society, the CDC, the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

When the number crunching was complete, researchers concluded that new cancer cases and deaths from the disease have fallen significantly for both genders and most racial/ethnic groups. This was largely due to lower incidence and death from lung, prostate and colon cancer among men, along with a drop in breast and colon cancers among women.

New diagnoses for all types of cancer fell almost 1 percent a year from 1999 to 2006, with cancer deaths dropping 1.6 percent per year from 2001 to 2006.

Learn more about the study's conclusions:
- read this HealthDay News piece

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Some physicians would probably rather have dental surgery than have to drag along family members on rounds. As it turns out, however, bringing families of pediatric patients on rounds can benefit both the patient and the family, researchers say.

To examine this issue, researchers with the Indiana University School of Medicine involved families of pediatric cancer and hematology patients in rounds conducted at Indianapolis-based Riley Hospital for Children. Riley's rounds can include not only parents, but also nurses, social workers, nutritionists, clinical pharmacists and other specialists in addition to medical students, residents, fellows and attending physicians.

Researchers behind the study, which was published in the journal Academic Medicine, found that while family members prolonged team rounds a bit, the medical team's overall workload either stayed the same or grew shorter, as those families needed far less attention at the bedside. They also noted, however, that the bigger the medical group grew, the less likely parents were to participate in team rounds.

Get more info on the study:
- read this UPI piece

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Nurses from three unions have come together to form a nurse union "supergroup" of sorts, combining the California Nurses Association, the Massachusetts Nurses Union, and the United American Nurses. One of the merged group's key focus areas is to push California's patient-to-nurse ratio requirements out into other states, as well as developing a stronger voice in the health reform debate. Press release

> While patients haven't bothered with healthcare pricing charts before, they're growing increasingly prone to do so as the recession continues to drag out. FierceHealthFinance

> New research suggests that health IT progress has been 'stunningly slow' in the 10 years since the Institute of Medicine's seminal "To Err is Human" report came out. FierceEMR

> Increasingly, states are jumping on the health information exchange bandwagon, most recently Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. FierceHealthIT

> Watch out: If drug safety information or risk disclosures are too lengthy, consumers may just ignore them, researchers have found. FiercePharma 

And Finally... Come on, how bad can one tweet be? Lighten up, folks. Article