December 2 Senate GOP Leadership Press Conference
Senate GOP leaders discussed appropriations, taxes and health care at their weekly news conference on Dec. 2. Website: http://www.rollcall.com Follow us: http://www.twitter.com/RollCall Like...
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Ramsay Health Care Triathlon Pink Brooks Fun Run Pink Sunshine Coast Highlights
Held on Sunday 30th November, 2014, 800 participants took part in the event held at Sunshine Coast Stadium. The day was about challenge, participation and fun as well as raising funds for charities...
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Ramsay Health Care Triathlon Pink & Brooks Fun Run Pink Sunshine Coast Highlights - Video
HOW TO GET EVEN BETTER RESULTS FROM YOUR WORKOUT
Do you wonder how to get EVEN BETTER results from your workout? This simple secret can show you how to be your BEST! Pick your PACt(TM) water up at all major retailers throughout California...
By: Tracy Campoli
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Khmer News Video Clip | Excercise For Health
Cambodia health Khmer health care Khmer healty Cambodia health care Khmer news video Cambodia videos clip Cambodia news video 2014 Khmer news video clip Khmer news today November ...
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#GivingTuesday
Thank you for supporting Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. Your contributions will help women, men and young people continue to have access to the health care they need. #unselfie ...
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The Benefits Prescription Retin A for Acne, Wrinkles Cell Turnover
A nurse from the Laser Image Company in Redondo Beach describes Prescription Retin A for Acne, Wrinkles Cell Turnover. Many people use this product to help with skin texture, to lessen...
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The Benefits Prescription Retin A for Acne, Wrinkles & Cell Turnover - Video
Interntional Medical Corps health care workers discuss life at an Ebola Treatment Unit
Video and Audio provided by International Medical Corps Staff The Take Away Audio Diary: A Doctor #39;s Fight Against Ebola USAID Cephas #39;s Survival: It #39;s Always a Good Day When a Cured...
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Interntional Medical Corps health care workers discuss life at an Ebola Treatment Unit - Video
Senior Healthcare Gap
More seniors are choosing Prince George as a place to retire. It #39;s a trend that #39;s putting a new level of stress on the health care system. And the stress is creating gaps in the system. It #39;s...
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Actually, national health spending grew 3.6% in 2013, the lowest annual increase since 1960, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began tracking the statistic, officials said Wednesday.
Spending slowed for private health insurance, Medicare, hospitals, physicians and clinical services and out-of-pocket spending by consumers. However, it accelerated for Medicaid and for prescription drugs, according to the report, published online by the journal Health Affairs.
Premiums for private health insurance grew 2.8% last year, compared to a 4% increase in 2012. Low overall enrollment growth, greater usage of high deductible plans and other benefit design changes and the health law's medical loss ratio and rate review provisions contributed to the decline, the Centers found.
Nearly 190 million people -- or 60% of the population -- were covered by private health insurance in 2013. Enrollment increased 0.7% last year, the third straight annual increase.
Consumer out-of-pocket spending -- including co-payments and deductibles or payments for services not covered by a consumer's health insurance -- grew 3.2% in 2013, down from the 3.6% growth in both 2011 and 2012.
Spending for physician and clinical services grew 3.8% last year, a slowdown from 2012 when spending grew 4.5%. Expenditures for hospital care increased 4.3%, slower than the 5.7% rate of growth in 2012.
Drug costs, however, rose at a faster rate than the previous year. Total spending growth for retail prescription drugs increased 2.5% last year, compared to 0.5% in 2012. Drug spending growth increased in 2013 for several reasons, among them higher prices for brand-name and specialty drugs.
Overall, health care spending has grown at historically low rates for the past five years, which is consistent with declines generally seen during economic downturns, such as the Great Recession that crippled the U.S. economy at the end of 2007. Looking ahead, "the key question is whether health spending growth will accelerate once economic conditions improve significantly; historical evidence suggest that it will," noted the authors, who are from the Centers' Office of the Actuary.
They also pointed out, however, that in the near term, the health sector will "undergo major changes that will have a substantial impact" on consumers, providers, insurers and sponsors of health care. These are the result of the health law's creation of online exchanges, its expansion of Medicaid, and restraints the law made to the Medicare program, the analysts found.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Actually, national health spending grew 3.6% in 2013, the lowest annual increase since 1960, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began tracking the statistic, officials said Wednesday.
Spending slowed for private health insurance, Medicare, hospitals, physicians and clinical services and out-of-pocket spending by consumers. However, it accelerated for Medicaid and for prescription drugs, according to the report, published online by the journal Health Affairs.
Premiums for private health insurance grew 2.8% last year, compared to a 4% increase in 2012. Low overall enrollment growth, greater usage of high deductible plans and other benefit design changes and the health law's medical loss ratio and rate review provisions contributed to the decline, the Centers found.
Nearly 190 million people -- or 60% of the population -- were covered by private health insurance in 2013. Enrollment increased 0.7% last year, the third straight annual increase.
Consumer out-of-pocket spending -- including co-payments and deductibles or payments for services not covered by a consumer's health insurance -- grew 3.2% in 2013, down from the 3.6% growth in both 2011 and 2012.
Spending for physician and clinical services grew 3.8% last year, a slowdown from 2012 when spending grew 4.5%. Expenditures for hospital care increased 4.3%, slower than the 5.7% rate of growth in 2012.
Drug costs, however, rose at a faster rate than the previous year. Total spending growth for retail prescription drugs increased 2.5% last year, compared to 0.5% in 2012. Drug spending growth increased in 2013 for several reasons, among them higher prices for brand-name and specialty drugs.
Overall, health care spending has grown at historically low rates for the past five years, which is consistent with declines generally seen during economic downturns, such as the Great Recession that crippled the U.S. economy at the end of 2007. Looking ahead, "the key question is whether health spending growth will accelerate once economic conditions improve significantly; historical evidence suggest that it will," noted the authors, who are from the Centers' Office of the Actuary.
They also pointed out, however, that in the near term, the health sector will "undergo major changes that will have a substantial impact" on consumers, providers, insurers and sponsors of health care. These are the result of the health law's creation of online exchanges, its expansion of Medicaid, and restraints the law made to the Medicare program, the analysts found.
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If you're new to the job market or looking for a change of employment, you might want to consider getting into the health care sector.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says the demand for primary health care services will continue to grow dramatically this decade and beyond. Part of that growth results from a U.S. population that's both aging and expanding. Another reason HHS cites is the estimated growth of health insurance coverage "under full implementation" of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which assumes all states will expand Medicaid.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects health care-related occupations and industries will add the most new jobs in the U.S. between 2012 and 2022.
"Job prospects across the entire health care sector are expected to grow through the next decade as more Americans gain access to health insurance and providers add staff to meet the demand," said Tony Lee, publisher at CareerCast, a job-search portal.
While many top health-care jobs require at least an associates or bachelor's degree, CareerCast says it's one sector where hiring remains above-average.
And a new CareerCast report, using data from its Jobs Rated report metrics, lists the top 10 health care jobs heading into the new year, including salary and the field's projected job growth over the next seven years. The firm considered a number of factors in its assessment, including pay, employment prospects, stress levels and environmental factors, with data drawn from federal and private sources:
Audiologist Average annual salary: $69,720 Projected job growth by 2022: 34 percent
Dental hygienist Average annual salary: $70,210 Projected job growth by 2022: 33 percent
Dietitian Average annual salary: $55,240 Projected job growth by 2022: 21 percent
Medical lab technician Average annual salary: $34,160 Projected job growth by 2022: 22 percent
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Washington County seeks tighter rules in contract bidding
Washington County is ratcheting down costs and imposing stricter rules on health care contracting at its jail, after a recent audit revealed staffing shortages from its medical contractor and a lack of oversight from the county.
A new Request for Proposal for jail health care services was issued Nov. 25 by the Washington County Administrators Office (CAO). Bids are due Jan. 16 for inmate care beginning July 1.
The current provider, Corizon Health Services, lost its contract two years early.
On Nov. 24, County Auditor John Hutzler released a final audit of jail health care services showing Corizon had not provided adequate staffing for inmate care.
We estimate the value of the minimum specified staffing that the county didnt receive between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2012, to be at least $350,000, according to Hutzlers audit.
After we raised concerns about Corizon staffing in an interim report last year, the county extended Corizons contract for only two years rather than the four, which the contract would have allowed, Hutzler said. That extension will expire June 30, 2015.
Corizon is eligible to bid again, under significantly changed terms. The new contract should leave little doubt about expectations, checks and balances, and the ramifications of falling short.
Whoever wins the contract will be subject to new accuracy checks from a third-party auditor who will check hospital billings.
More than a dozen changes have been made to the document, including tightened performance and service requirements, new budget controls and clearly spelled-out minimum staffing requirements by position, day and shift.
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GENEVA: Ebola-related deaths in west Africa will be higher than the number of people directly infected because of its disruption to already weak health care services, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday. The WHO is convening a meeting in Geneva next week with finance and health ministers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, donors and NGOs, to develop practical actions on how to improve health care systems for the future. Ebola has strongly impacted the already weak health systems, and Ebola has probably killed more people than the 6,000 linked to the disease itself, said the WHOs coordinator of health systems, Gerard Schmets. He added: This is a real critical situation that these countries are facing. Vaccination programs and general health services have stopped altogether in the worst affected areas of the three countries, which have born the brunt of the outbreak, while pregnancy care has also been hit, he said. There was already a shortage of health workers Sierra Leone had only two doctors for every 100,000 people, or just about 120 doctors for six million people before the Ebola outbreak began. Since then, health workers have been disproportionately hit by the virus, with 333 dying across the three countries, out of 575 who were infected, the WHO says. Malaria remains a pressing problem, while people with chronic diseases have had to interrupt their treatment to move to other districts to continue their care, Schmets said. The gathering on Dec. 10-11 will include representatives of the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the Centers for Disease Control and groups working to combat Ebola on the ground in the affected countries. In the longer run we need to strengthen these health systems and to rebuild health systems that will be stronger, to be able to address future emergencies, Schmets said. Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders warned Tuesday that the international response to Ebola is still too slow and piecemeal as officials said the disease is further crippling the economies of the three West African countries hardest hit. The vast majority of infections are in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, poor countries that have been left to handle the crisis without sufficient help, said the medical aid group. Foreign governments have focused primarily on financing or building Ebola case management structures, leaving staffing them up to national authorities, local health care staff and NGOs (non-government organizations) which do not have the expertise required to do so, said the group, which is a primary provider of treatment in the outbreak, said in a statement Tuesday. It reiterated its call for countries with biological-disaster response teams to deploy them. In addition to killing thousands, the Ebola outbreak, which was identified in March in Guinea, has shut hospitals, schools and markets, hampered cross-border trade and resulted in the suspension of many of the airline flights.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
4-Dec-2014
Contact: Federico Santoni federico.santoni@unige.ch 022-379-5719 Universit de Genve @UNIGEnews
Cancers are due to genetic aberrations in certain cells that gain the ability to divide indefinitely. This proliferation of sick cells generates tumors, which gradually invade healthy tissue. Therefore, current therapies essentially seek to destroy cancer cells to stop their proliferation. Through high-throughput genetic sequencing of glioblastoma cells, one of the most deadly brain tumors, a team of geneticists from the University of Geneva's (UNIGE) Faculty of Medicine discovered that some of these mutations are caused by supplemental extrachromosomal DNA fragments, called double minutes, which enable cancer cells to better adapt to their environment and therefore better resist to treatments meant to destroy them. Read more in Nature Communications.
Although scientists have known for about twenty years about double minutes, little chromosomal fragments which sometimes appear during cellular division, they have just started to understand their exact function. Due to replication errors, these mini-chromosomes lack centromere, which allows them to replicate extremely rapidly and autonomously. Scientists therefore suspect that they play a role in the development of cancers, diseases that are caused by mutations in genes that control cellular metabolism and development.
Professor Stylianos Antonarakis and his team in the Genetic Medicine and Development Department of UNIGE's Faculty of Medicine, in collaboration with the Geneva University Hospitals' (HUG) Centre of Oncology, identified double minutes in glioblastoma cells with specific oncogenes. To this end, the scientists used advanced methods of bioinformatics to perform high-throughput genetic sequencing. The researchers then noticed that one of the main genetic mutations responsible for the anarchic development of cancer cells was not found on actual chromosomes, but only on these double minutes, which, given their very fast proliferation, multiplied the impact of this mutation. The researchers had therefore identified an oncogene whose malignancy was amplified by the number of its copies present on each double minute, but which was not present on the chromosomes themselves.
An Intriguing Adaptability in DNA
The Geneva team also discovered that cells can modulate the number of double minutes according to their environment, and especially in response to chemotherapy. To counter the aggression caused by these treatments and ensure its survival, the cell reduces its number of double minutes until they disappear completely. It is thus freed from the oncogenetic mutation that was present in these DNA fragments. But glioblastoma, like most cancers, depends on a combination of several genes. The tumor therefore begins to exploit a new gene in order to keep growing. Paradoxically, the cell can return to its initial chromosomal state with regards to that specific oncogene, but other oncogenic genes are then activated in the still living cell. The double minutes therefore act as adjustment variables in cancer cells and limit the effects of therapies, explains Sergei Nikolaev, joint lead author of the study.
These mini-chromosomes amplify the harmful effects of oncogenes and give a selective advantage to sick cells compared with healthy cells, as the tumor grows. In fact, their presence has been detected in most very aggressive cancers. We must absolutely continue our research in order to better understand this phenomenon of DNA adaptation, emphasizes Federico Santoni, joint lead author of this study. This will allow us to better measure its implications, and perhaps to find more effective therapeutic strategies against the deadliest cancers, he concludes.
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
3-Dec-2014
Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline
New Rochelle, NY, December 3, 2014--Hereditary angioedema (HAE), a rare genetic disease that causes recurrent swelling under the skin and of the mucosal lining of the gastrointestinal tract and upper airway, usually first appears before 20 years of age. A comprehensive review of the therapies currently available to treat HAE in adults shows that some of these treatments are also safe and effective for use in older children and adolescents. Current and potential future therapies are discussed in a Review article in a special issue of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ped.2014.0412 until January 3, 2015.
Based on the current medical literature, Eveline Wu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Michael Frank, Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC), report that additional therapies are now approved for use in the pediatric age group. In their article "Management of Hereditary Angioedema in Childhood: A Review" they also discuss clinical trials and published experience among younger age groups for which data are most limited.
"HAE is a potentially life-threatening disease that until recently had very limited therapeutic options for children," says Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology Editor-in-Chief Mary Cataletto, MD, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook, NY). "This special issue of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, developed in collaboration with Guest Editor Dr. Timothy Craig, has been created for physicians who care for children. It focuses on recent advances in HAE-related immunophysiology, as well as current and future therapies for acute and chronic care and prophylaxis."
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About the Journal
Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal published in print and online. The Journal synthesizes the pulmonary, allergy, and immunology communities in the advancement of the respiratory health of children. The Journal provides comprehensive coverage to further the understanding and optimize the treatment of some of the most common and costly chronic illnesses in children. It includes original translational, clinical, and epidemiologic research; public health, quality improvement, and case control studies; patient education research; and the latest research and standards of care for functional and genetic immune deficiencies and interstitial lung diseases. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology website at http://www.liebertpub.com/ped.
About the Publisher
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Are there safe and effective treatments for hereditary angioedema in children?
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
3-Dec-2014
Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline
New Rochelle, NY, December 3, 2014--Are adolescents who view pornography or music videos more likely to engage in sexting, in which they share sexually explicit content via text, photo, or video using cell phones, email, or social networking sites? A study of the media consumption and sexting behavior of more than 300 teens is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.
In "The Associations Between Adolescents' Consumption of Pornography and Music Videos and Their Sexting Behavior," authors Joris Van Ouytsel, MSc, Koen Ponnet, PhD, and Michel Walrave, PhD, University of Antwerp, Belgium, determined whether viewing pornography or watching music videos was predictive of sexting among adolescents, involving sending or receiving sexually explicit text messages, pictures, or videos. They found a statistically significant link between pornography and sexting for both boys and girls.
"The results found in this study may be useful to consider during both prevention and treatment," says Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium.
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About the Journal
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly online with Open Access options and in print that explores the psychological and social issues surrounding the Internet and interactive technologies, plus cybertherapy and rehabilitation. Complete tables of contents and a sample issue may be viewed on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.
About the Publisher
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Sexting and pornography or music video viewing among adolescents: Is there a link?
Futurist Speakers: How to Create a Culture of Innovation
One of today #39;s top futurist speakers, Scott Steinberg (http://www.AKeynoteSpeaker.com), breaks down how business leaders can create a culture of innovation a...
By: Scott Steinberg
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Futurist Speakers: How to Create a Culture of Innovation - Video
Futurist Flight Radio #27
We #39;re Back, and running with this awsome tracks, as we prepare oursefts for anthems like "Dimitto" and even "Burn It Down", originaly from Linkin Park, Remix...
By: DJ Night Eagle
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Measure Vital Signs at Home! - The Medical Futurist
There are plenty of gadgets and devices that help us live a healthier life and now these tools can be used to measure basic health parameters at home such as body temperature, ECG, oxygen saturatio.
By: The Medical Futurist
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A Futurist Evening At Vizcaya
"A Futurist Evening At Vizcaya" was the 2013 Contemporary Arts Program curated by Vizcaya Museum and Gardens for Art Basel 2013. Featured artists include: Ro...
By: VizcayaMuseum
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