cope

The Guidant deal has transformed the market for cardiac defibrillators, yet the future is far from certain for the sector. New powerhouse Boston Scientific must cope with a cooling market for defibrillators in the wake of last year's recalls and the threat of Medicare reimbursement cuts. There is evidence that the problems at Medtronic and Guidant have led many doctors to hold off on recommending the potentially lifesaving technology for patients, or at least adopt a more conservative …

The final day of the World Health Care Congress focused on the Bush administration's plans for reforming the health insurance market. Both Treasury Secretary John Snow and healthcare point man Allan Hubbard pushed the notion of high-deductible plans coupled with HSAs, although Hubbard admitted that there were significant challenges making them work for the chronically ill whom he said accounted for two to five percent of the population. Refreshingly, he invited disagreement from the …

In a column today, The Wall Street Journal's David Wessel looks at the Medicare Part D experiment and concludes that so far the benefit is not paying off quite as well as supporters in government had hoped. The benefit is a free market approach to a major problem, and that's all good, Wessel writes. However, a majority of seniors remain confused about the benefit and appear to be blaming Washington. The problem to a large degree is that the benefit's designers "overlooked …

The CDC is developing a series of games designed to better prepare healthcare professionals for public health emergencies. A team at the University of Chicago developed the first simulation, which teaches players how to deal with a crisis situation following an anthrax attack, stressing basics like team coordination, patient screening and vaccine distribution. A new simulation designed to prepare healthcare workers to cope with an influenza epidemic is in the works. Article | Web site

As a Londoner by birth and upbringing, yesterday's news about the terrorist attack was more than a little personal for me. But once I tracked down family and friends, two thoughts occurred to me. The first is that a number of ambulance (EMT) personnel, doctors, nurses and other first responders automatically showed up to help on their day off without being asked. The same thing …

TEPR, the biggest conference about nation's (painstakingly slow) progress towards electronic health records, opened in Salt Lake City on Monday and goes through Thursday. There are tracks on more aspects of EMRs than you can think of and more vendors of EMRs in the exhibit hall than there are doctors in the US using them (well, not quite). One keynote was from David Sundwall, the Utah director of health, whose state has the most advanced health network and possibly the greatest use of …