university medical center

All is not well with the Chinese healthcare system, which has begun to see increasing rates of disease and death after years of improvement. Now, Duke University Medical Center has struck a deal with Chinese officials to help the country make progress in key areas like cancer care. Article

With the healthcare industry's increasing focus on preventing medical errors, one would think that interns and medical students who speak up about treatment concerns would be rewarded. But in reality, doctors-in-training are often afraid to confront supervising physicians, who often discount what they have to say, says Barron Lerner, M.D., of Columbia University Medical Center. Article

High-risk pregnancies are becoming more common than ever before in the modern obstetric era, experts and researchers say. But at the same time, more women and babies are surviving these pregnancies safely than could ever have been expected before. Why are so many high-risk pregnancies coming to term? Researchers say the larger numbers of inherently higher-risk forty-something moms, plus higher rates of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and multiple births due to fertility treatments …

The results are in on the latest round of Medicare's 266-hospital, three-year pay-for-performance test. And it appears that, initially, P4P incentives are doing what they're supposed to do--improve adherence to evidence-based care. For example, under the new program, managed by nonprofit hospital alliance Premier, it appears that more heart attack patients are getting aspirin when they come into the ED. The winner in the competition to date was Hackensack University Medical Center, which …

Two top executives at University Medical Center in Las Vegas were put on paid leave Wednesday, a day after CEO Lacy Thomas was fired under a cloud of suspicion. The Las Vegas Review-Journal says the two are being investigated for possible contracting fraud, though no charges have been filed while authorities comb through mountains of documents and terabytes of data seized in a raid earlier this week. Article

Las Vegas police searched the executive offices of University Medical Center (UMC) on Tuesday, looking for evidence of theft, fraud and criminal misconduct at the money-losing public hospital, according to news accounts. CEO Lacy Thomas, the primary target of the investigation that stretches from Sin City to Chicago, was fired.

"I had concerns about his lack of transparency regarding the hospital's financial situation," Clark County Manager Virginia Valentine told the Las Vegas …

According to one researcher, about two-thirds of U.S. medical schools now offer some form of training on religion and spirituality in medicine. Other researchers--with support from NIH grants--are studying the effect of third-party prayers on cancer patients. Some doctors are even calling for clinicians to take a "spiritual history" when they examine patients. But is this appropriate? Probably not, given the weak scientific evidence for a connection between religious practice and better …

"Let he who is without conflict-of-interest cast the first stone."

On Thursday, we ran a letter from Mike Wei, M.D., a FierceHealthcare reader who criticized Stanford University Medical Center's new policy …

Yesterday, we reported that Stanford University Medical Center has instated a policy prohibiting its physicians from receiving pharma and medical device industry gifts. Officials say it will prevent the industry from having any undue influence over doctors. But one FierceHealthcare reader objects to this line of thinking. "In a perfect world the policy made sense, but in the real …

Any physician who's had a visit from a pharmaceutical or device sales rep has undoubtedly received pens, mouse pads, calendars and a host of other everyday items bearing the names of various drugs. But now, Stanford University Medical Center will prohibit its physicians from receiving even the most innocuous of gifts, as well as free meals and free drug samples. Yale and the University of Pennsylvania have also instituted similar rules. The new regulations are part of an effort to assure …