"Health News - Medicine, Diet and Fitness"

One health plan has come to a conclusion that many physicians already have reached: The financial benefits of office-based electronic medical records systems are not worth the cost to doctors.

Relying on information from past studies, including an American Medical Association estimate that doctors see only 11 cents of every dollar saved through the use of information technology, BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts recently announced that it has decided not to require physicians to install an EMR to participate in its bonus program.

(more…)

Washington — Offering health insurance is a first step employers can take to improve employees’ well-being. A second step increasingly is likely to be taken: ensuring that the health care employees receive adequately addresses the needs of an ever-more-diverse work force.

Striving to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care is now recognized as a good business practice by some large employers, and a new coalition of business, medicine and public health groups has been formed to help advance this goal.

(more…)

Glenns Ferry Health Center used to attract international medical graduates looking for work. But the Idaho clinic is now struggling to hire IMGs and finds itself part of a national crisis facing rural health centers.

The clinic has one full-time physician and two locum tenens who run the center’s three sites in the southern part of the state. Four doctors are needed, but two years of aggressive recruiting, including offering higher salaries, have generated no new hires, putting the clinic on the verge of closing one of its offices. That would leave patients, especially Medicaid mothers who rely on the center for prenatal and delivery services, few alternatives.

(more…)

Washington — Becoming a doctor isn’t cheap. The average debt for medical school graduates is approximately $140,000, according to the American Medical Association. But the burden could get a little lighter for some medical students under a bill passed last month by the House.

A provision inserted into legislation reauthorizing the federal government’s student loan programs would allow medical specialists with five or more years of graduate medical education to qualify for up to $2,000 in loan forgiveness annually for serving in areas of need. The maximum amount would be $10,000 for five years of service.

(more…)

In some areas of North Dakota and Minnesota, Neisseria meningitidis has developed resistance to quinolone antibiotics. Public health officials recommend that ciprofloxacin, the drug from this family commonly prescribed to reduce the risk of illness in healthy people who have been exposed to this bacterium, no longer be used for this purpose.

The officials also want physicians outside the region to be alert to the possibility that the medication may not have the desired effect, according to statements issued by health departments in those states and a report in the Feb. 22 (more…)