Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My FatherAnd How We Can Fix It
David Goldhill, former President of Universal Television Group, discusses how he entered the healthcare policy debate with his 2009 article in The Atlantic and subsequent memoir, Catastrophic...
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Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My FatherAnd How We Can Fix It - Video
The American Institue of Health Care Professionals Can Help You Become a Health Care Case Manager
https://plus.google.com/b/103116614854777869116/103116614854777869116/posts Many nurses, while happy with the daily grind of care of patients, still strive for more. They woul...
By: Dominick Flarey
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Commissioning and Primary Health Care: What Is Commissioning?
"Commissioning is about how to make the really difficult decisions about how we allocate scarce resources to meet the needs of a particular local or national population." Dr Mark Booth from...
By: PHCRIS
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Commissioning and Primary Health Care: What Is Commissioning? - Video
Commissioning and Primary Health Care - is it a path for Australia?
"Commissioning is about how to make the really difficult decisions about how we allocate scarce resources to meet the needs of a particular local or national population." Dr Mark Booth from...
By: PHCRIS
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Commissioning and Primary Health Care - is it a path for Australia? - Video
Inside the AFL-CIO #39;s Health Care Lobbying Efforts
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka met earlier this month with state labor leaders to discuss the labor federation #39;s health care lobbying efforts.
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Health Care as Human Right Vs. Health Care as Commodity
Viewer support keeps the show going: http://www.Patreon.com/AcronymTV Subscribe - http://bit.ly/VUl21B FOLLOW | Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AcronymTV Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dennist...
By: Dennis Trainor, Jr
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Health Care as Human Right Vs. Health Care as Commodity - Video
Meet our Health Care Providers - Elizabeth B. Roberts, M.D., Ph.D.
Get to know Dr. Elizabeth Roberts, OB-GYN at Virginia Women #39;s Center in Richmond, Virginia. Learn more: http://www.virginiawomenscenter.com/staff-Elizabeth-B-Roberts-MD-PhD.html.
By: Virginia Women #39;s Center
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Meet our Health Care Providers - Elizabeth B. Roberts, M.D., Ph.D. - Video
Last Minute Push for Health Care Enrollment
With the deadline just days away to enroll in a health care plan on the exchange, pushes from the white house all the way down to local volunteer groups aim to enroll last minute subscribers.
By: Joseph Khalil
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Health Care Attorney jobs in Iowa
http://www.bcgsearch.com/attorney-jobs/pa-6-loc-104/Health_Care-jobs-in-Iowa.html Search Health Care Attorney jobs in Iowa. Find Iowa Health Care Attorney jobs on BCGSearch.com.
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Companies Ramp Up Wellness to Lower Health Costs
That little voice telling you to exercise, get in shape and get healthy is probably coming from your boss. More companies are beefing up wellness programs to try and cut down their health care...
By: AssociatedPress
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Sourcewise gathered experts and advocates to explain the new California health plan initiative (fifth from left Amber Cutler and (rightmost) Marcelo Espiritu. PHOTO BY HARVEY BARKIN/INQUIRER.net
SANTA CLARA, California Now that about eight million have enrolled in health care plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare), what happens to those who do have Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-Cal, Kaiser, other health care plans or combinations of plans?
Sourcewise (formerly Council on Aging Silicon Valley) recently invited the public to its third session in explaining the Coordinated Care Initiative (CCI), a somewhat confusing and involved process. Sourcewise has made it easier for close to 2,000 attendees to understand CCI.
California took the lead in implementing a health care program that may soon become the nationwide model depending on its progress in the selected eight counties.
Californias CCI passed in July 2012. This year, the goal is to fully implement it in Alameda, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties
In Santa Clara County, residents with Medi-Cal number about 210,000. Residents with both Medicare and Medi-Cal are about 35,000. No estimate was given on residents with Kaiser or other work-related health care plans.
Approximately 5,700 Asian seniors live in poverty (in the county), said Marcelo Espiritu, Sourcewise Health Insurance product analyst. Seventy-six percent of Asian seniors struggle to meet basic needs. About 15 percent of the 77,000 Asian seniors are Filipino in Santa Clara.
Medicare beneficiaries possess the white card with red and blue stripes on top. They are 65 years or older or under 65 with certain disabilities such as End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD).
Medi-Cal beneficiaries possess the plain white card with the states seal on the front. They are usually low-income Californians.
What CCI offers
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Complex health care system for Californias elderly and poor explained
More health-care workers got the flu vaccine this past season than ever before after controversial rules were aggressively enforced, prompting the firing of one worker who refused to comply.
Health Minister Terry Lake confirmed Wednesday the worker was terminated in December after declining to get a shot or wear a mask in patient-care areas.
Arnold Hoekstra, who worked as a nurses aide at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Grand Forks, said he was let go after various disciplinary meetings with officials with the Interior Health Authority.
Mr. Hoekstra, 49, said he doesnt believe vaccines are medically viable.
I refused anything to do with that policy because it wasnt based on the truth, he said an interview.
Were introducing very harmful products, chemicals and neurotoxins and what have you, into our bodies which actually make us sicker and develop various diseases because of it.
Mr. Lake said 80 per cent of health-care workers in B.C. were vaccinated, a 10-per-cent increase from the previous flu season. The remaining health-care workers chose to wear masks.
Some people have concerns about vaccines, Mr. Lake said, when asked why some health-care workers are not getting vaccinations.
Our primary concern is the patient. So by being immunized youre protecting the patient, but also by wearing a mask we feel that that is efficacious in protecting the patient as well, Mr. Lake said.
He said the goal next year is to further increase the rate of vaccination among health-care workers beyond the 80 per cent.
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VICTORIA Health Minister Terry Lake says one health care worker was fired during the flu season for failing to follow new protocols that require staff to either get vaccinated or wear a mask when treating patients.
Lake said the worker from B.C.s interior went through a progressive disciplinary approach and was given opportunity to comply with the requirement to either be vaccinated or wear a mask, and through that disciplinary approach finally was terminated.
He would not reveal any details about the firing, or why the employee refused to comply, saying that it is a personnel matter.
The employee is believed to be the first person fired since the province brought in the controversial policy requiring vaccinations or masks for all health care professionals last year.
B.C. is the only province to implement such a flu-prevention policy, and received a backlash from various health care unions that threatened legal action because they believed the move violated workers rights and wasnt justified by scientific evidence.
The government argued it would help protect vulnerable patients against contracting influenza from caregivers.
Some people have concerns about vaccines, said Lake. Our concern is the patient, obviously. We want to keep the health care workers healthy, but our primary concern is the patient. And so by being immunized we are protecting the patient but also by wearing a mask we feel that is efficacious in protecting the patient as well.
The government said Wednesday that 80 per cent of health care workers ultimately did get vaccinated, which was a 10 per cent increase from the previous flu season.
A record 1.4 million British Columbians were vaccinated since November 2013 and the years vaccine was 74 per cent effective in protecting against the most predominant H1N1 strain this season, the Health Ministry said.
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B.C. health care worker fired for refusing vaccination, mask
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
24-Apr-2014
Contact: Scott LaFee slafee@ucsd.edu 619-543-6163 University of California - San Diego
A newly identified genetic disorder associated with degeneration of the central and peripheral nervous systems in humans, along with the genetic cause, is reported in the April 24, 2014 issue of Cell.
The findings were generated by two independent but collaborative scientific teams, one based primarily at Baylor College of Medicine and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the other at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in the Netherlands and the Yale University School of Medicine.
By performing DNA sequencing of more than 4,000 families affected by neurological problems, the two research teams independently discovered that a disease marked by reduced brain size and sensory and motor defects is caused by a mutation in a gene called CLP1, which is known to regulate tRNA metabolism in cells. Insights into this rare disorder, the researchers said, may have important implications for the future treatment of more common neurological conditions.
"What we found particularly striking, when considering the two studies together, is that this is not a condition that we would have been able to separate from other similar disorders based purely on patient symptoms or clinical features", said Joseph G. Gleeson, MD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, professor in the UC San Diego departments of Neurosciences and Pediatrics and at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego, a research affiliate of UC San Diego. "Once we had the gene spotted in these total of seven families, then we could see the common features. It is the opposite way that doctors have defined diseases, but represents a transformation in the way that medicine is practiced."
Each child tested was affected by undiagnosed neurological problems. All of the children were discovered to carry a mutation in the CLP1 gene and displayed the same symptoms, such as brain malformations, intellectual disabilities, seizures and sensory and motor defects. A similar pattern emerged in both studies, one led by Gleeson, with Murat Gunel, MD, of the Yale University School of Medicine and Frank Baas, PhD, of the Academic Medical Center in the Netherlands, and the other by Josef Penninger and Javier Martinez of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, teamed with James R. Lupski, MD, PhD, of the Baylor College of Medicine.
"Knowing fundamental pathways that regulate the degeneration of neurons should allow us to define new pathways that, when modulated, might help us to protect motor neurons from dying, such as in Lou Gehrig's disease," said Penninger, scientific director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
The CLP1 protein plays an important role in generating mature, functional molecules called transfer RNAs (tRNAs), which shuttle amino acids to cellular subunits called ribosomes for assembly into proteins. Mutations affecting molecules involved in producing tRNAs have been implicated in human neurological disorders, such as pontocerebellar hypoplasia (PCH), a currently incurable neurodegenerative disease affecting children. Although CLP1 mutations have been linked to neuronal death and motor defects in mice, the role of CLP1 in human disease was not known until now.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
24-Apr-2014
Contact: Bill Hathaway william.hathaway@yale.edu 203-432-1322 Yale University
An international team of researchers have identified a previously unknown neurodegenerative disorder and discovered it is caused by a single mutation in one individual born during the Ottoman Empire in Turkey about 16 generations ago.
The genetic cause of the rare disorder was discovered during a massive analysis of the individual genomes of thousands of Turkish children suffering from neurological disorders.
"The more we learn about basic mechanisms behind rare forms of neuro-degeneration, the more novel insights we can gain into more common diseases such as Alzheimer's or Lou Gehrig's Disease," said Murat Gunel, the Nixdorff-German Professor of Neurosurgery, and professor of genetics and neurobiology at Yale.
Gunel is a senior co-author of one of two papers published in the April 24 issue of the journal Cell that document the devastating effects of a mutation in the CLP1 gene. Gunel and colleagues at Yale Center for Mendelian Genomics along with Joseph Gleeson's group at University of California-San Diego compared DNA sequencing results of more than 2,000 children from different families with neurodevelopmental disorders. In four apparently unrelated families, they identified the exact same mutation in the CLP1 gene. Working with the Frank Bass group from the Netherlands, the researchers also studied how CLP1 mutations interfered with the transfer of information encoded within genes to cells' protein-making machinery.
The discovery of the identical mutation in seemingly unrelated families originally from eastern Turkey suggested an ancestral mutation, dating back several generations, noted the researchers.
Affected children suffer from intellectual disability, seizures, and delayed or absent mental and motor development, and their imaging studies show atrophy affecting the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and the brain stem.
The second Cell paper by researchers from Baylor School of Medicine and Austria also found the identical founder mutation in CLP1 in another 11 children from an additional five families originally from eastern Turkey.
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Genetic legacy from the Ottoman Empire: Single mutation causes rare brain disorder
Ricky Ashby Microbiology Podcast
This video is an assignment for Environmental Microbiology. It is a mock lecture on Gene Therapy and the utilization of viruses found in the environment as vectors. The supplemental reading...
By: Frederick Ashby
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Jean Bennett on gene therapy as a treatment for blindness
Jean Bennett of the University of Pennsylvania on gene therapy as a treatment for blindness http://www.CharlieRose.com.
By: Charlie Rose
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Jean Bennett on gene therapy as a treatment for blindness - Video
Pronounce Medical Words Gene Therapy
This video shows you how to say Gene Therapy. How would you pronounce Gene Therapy?
By: Medical 101
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WASHINGTON Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They beamed gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing. The approach reported Wednesday isnt ready for human testing, but its part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.
Normally, microscopic hair cells in the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.
Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. Theyve been implanted in more than 300,000 people but, while highly successful, they dont restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.
The idea behind the project was a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves, whose bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins, usually provided by the hair cells.
Researchers at Australias University of New South Wales figured out how to deliver one of those growth factors. They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deaf guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in stronger-than-normal electrical pulses. That made the membranes of nearby cells temporarily permeable, so the gene could slip inside. Those cells began producing the growth factor, which in turn stimulated regrowth of the nerve fibers closing some of the space between the nerves and the cochlear implant, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The animals still needed a cochlear implant to detect sound but those given the gene therapy had twice the improvement, they concluded. Senior author Gary Housley estimated small studies in people could begin in two or three years.
Thats a really clever way of delivering the nerve booster, said Stanford University otolaryngology professor Stefan Heller, who wasnt involved with the Australian work. But Heller cautioned that its an early first step and its not clear how long the extra improvement would last or if it really would spur richer sound. He said other groups are exploring such approaches as drug coatings for implants; Hellers own research aims to regrow hair cells.
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The performance of cochlear implants has been improved with the use of gene therapy, suggesting a new avenue for developing better hearing aids
A computer-tomography scan shows a deaf guinea pig's skull and cochlear implant. Credit:UNSW Australia Biological Resources Imaging Laboratory and National Imaging Facility of Australia
Gene therapy delivered to the inner ear can help shrivelled auditory nerves to regrow and in turn, improve bionic ear technology, researchers report today inScience Translational Medicine. The work, conducted in guinea pigs, suggests a possible avenue for developing a new generation of hearing prosthetics that more closely mimics the richness and acuity of natural hearing.
Sound travels from its source to ears, and eventually to the brain, through a chain of biological translations that convert air vibrations to nerve impulses. When hearing loss occurs, its usually because crucial links near the end of this chain between the ears cochlear cells and the auditory nerve are destroyed. Cochlear implants are designed to bridge this missing link in people with profound deafness by implanting an array of tiny electrodes that stimulate the auditory nerve.
Although cochlear implants often work well in quiet situations, people who have them still struggle to understand music or follow conversations amid background noise. After long-term hearing loss, the ends of the auditory nerve bundles are often frayed and withered, so the electrode array implanted in the cochlea must blast a broad, strong signal to try to make a connection, instead of stimulating a more precise array of neurons corresponding to particular frequencies. The result is an aural smearing that obliterates fine resolution of sound, akin to forcing a piano player to wear snow mittens or a portrait artist to use finger paints.
To try to repair auditory nerve endings and help cochlear implants to send a sharper signal to the brain, researchers turned to gene therapy. Their method took advantage of the electrical impulses delivered by the cochlear-implant hardware, rather than viruses often used to carry genetic material, to temporarily turn inner-ear cells porous. This allowed DNA to slip in, says lead author Jeremy Pinyon, an auditory scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Pinyon and his colleagues were able to deliver a gene encoding neurotrophin, a protein that stimulates nerve growth, to the inner-ear cells of deaf guinea pigs. After injecting the cells with a solution of DNA, they sent a handful of 20-volt pulses through the cochlear-implant electrode arrays. The cells started producing neurotrophin, and the auditory nerve began to regenerate and reach out for the cochlea once again. The researchers found that the treated animals could use their implants with a sharper, more refined signal, although they did not compare the deaf guinea pigs to those with normal hearing. The work was partially funded by Cochlear, a cochlear-implant maker based in Sydney.
Regenerating nerves and cells in the inner ear to boost cochlear implant performance has long been a goal of auditory scientists. This clever approach is the most promising to date, says Gerald Loeb, a neural prosthetics researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who helped to develop the original cochlear implant. Although clinical applications are still far in the future, the ability to deliver genes to specific areas in the cochlea will probably reduce regulatory obstacles, he says. But it is unclear why cochlear implants help some patients much more than others, so whether this gene therapy translates into actual clinical benefit is still unclear.
Listening to sounds is an intricate process, and a cochlear implant cannot simulate such complexity, says Edward Overstreet, an engineer at Oticon, a hearing technology company in Somerset, New Jersey. So it is not clear that simply sharpening the electrodes signal will help a user to hear sounds in a more natural way. We would probably need a leap in cochlear-implant electrode array technology to make this meaningful in terms of patient outcomes, he says.
If the method works well in humans, the authors say, it might help profoundly deaf people enjoy music and follow conversations in restaurants. And it might also enhance a newer type of hearing technology: hybrid electro-acoustic implants, which are designed to help people who have only partial hearing loss. The gene therapy might work to keep residual hearing intact and allow the implants to replace only what is missing, creating a blend of natural and electric hearing.
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