News From Around the Web
> In a recent interview with SearchHealthIT, American Telemedicine Association President-Elect Ed Brown calls the recent acceleration of telehealth "dramatic," and said that telehealth is close to being a "mainstream part of the healthcare system." Interview
Provider News
> Employing an interdisciplinary model of care tailored to elderly patients reduce costs, as well as improves care of elderly patients while hospitalized, a study published online this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found. The study looked at the cost-effectiveness of Acute Care for Elders (ACE) units at the University of Alabama at Birmingham medical center compared with a multidisciplinary usual care unit in treating hospitalized patients 70 or older. Article
> Diagnostic errors are the leading cause of successful medical malpractice claims, and are the most common, most costly and most dangerous of medical mistakes, according to new research published in BMJ Quality & Safety. Researchers analyzed 350,706 paid claims from the National Practitioner Data Bank from 1986 to 2010 and found diagnostic errors represented 28.6 percent of the claims and accounted for the highest proportion of total payments--35.2 percent or $38.8 billion. Article
Mobile Health News
> Three years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in Louisiana, many residents still suffer from medical conditions linked to the oil spill. However, Health eVillages, a program of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights and Physicians Interactive, announced today that it will provide much-needed help to one of the hardest hit areas in Southwest Louisiana in the form of handheld devices which include the latest specialized medical reference content including videotaped instruction by some of the world's top medical professionals. Article
Medical Imaging News
> While the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) created quite a bit of lingering controversy three years ago when it recommended against routine mammogram screening for women between the ages of 40 and 49, a new study from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston suggests there remains quite a bit of resistance to the USPSTF findings. The study, published in the April 19 online edition of the journal Cancer, analyzed data from about 28,000 women asked about their mammography use in the 2005, 2008 and 2011 National Health Surveys. Article
And Finally… Can the hotel pay the bills with IOUs or Monopoly money? Article