Hot MedFax

We've all been there.  The nurse coming toward us with the needle, or, as in my recent ase, the resident saying "This won't hurt" as he yanks the broken bone in your wrist to try to put it back in place. Why do these people say this, and why does it hurt so much more when they say it? A new study has found that when this happens -- your expectations violated, and not in a good way -- it's because our expectations of pain affect the experience of pain, according to Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist and first author of the study, at newswise.com. “This effect shows us how important it is to manage people’s expectations when it comes to pain," he says. Duh.   Previous studies have shown that the expectation of intense pain can make pain feel worse while the expectation of milder pain can actually make it hurt less. It all has something to do with areas of the brain but all I know is, I don't...

I was really disappointed to read this.  But a new study has found that animals do not improve well-being and care of patients in hospitals and other places that provide healthcare, according to newswise.com. "If you speak with most people they'll say it's a good thing for animals such as dogs and cats to be taken into hospitals, so that patients can derive some form of therapeutic effect from their association with the animals," the Web site quotes lead author  Professor Anna Chur-Hansen , Head of the  School of Psychology  at the University of Adelaide in Australia. But the truth of the matter is that this has just not been proven.  The study found not enough scientific data to say either way whether the presence of animals, though calming and appreciated, really do provide any actual healthcare benefits. "The assumption is that these programs are beneficial – and from the little evidence available they are likely to be – but no-one has yet fully assess...

So it's come to this.  A Florida restaurant chain has added a healthcare surcharge to its checks. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), " Eight Gator’s Dockside restaurants have instituted the surcharge, the Associated Press reported. Customers’ bills show a fee labeled “ACA,” which stands for the Affordable Care Act that will require all businesses with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health coverage or pay a fine." How would you feel about this if it came to a restaurant near you?  I admit, I thought the ACA was a wonderful Obama move but now that I've recently been assessed an almost $800 co-pay for a test that used to cost $30, I'm rethinking this a little.  I was one of those who lost their old insurance because it offered too little coverage and found reasonably priced (even slightly lower) insurance through a major insurer.  But after waiting over eight minutes on the phone to talk to a real person, and hanging up, I'm won...

OK.  So we taught the world about free love and dropping acid and Woodstock.  The Baby Boomers greedily did and bought and changed just about everything in their path in the '60s and '70s. And now we may be getting cancer in a big way, too. A new study says, as people age, a diagnosis of cancer becomes more possible -- some would say probable.  And now the front end of our bragging, boasting, bossy bunch is reaching that age (though I beat them to it when I turned 50!). "As 10,000 baby boomers reach 65 each day, the incidence of cancer is increasing, estimated to increase by 67% between 2010 and 2030," newswise.com reports. Cancer is diagnosed at a higher rate in older adults, accounts for more survivors, and yet, results in more deaths than in younger patients. “The increase in the number of older adults, the association of cancer with aging, the workforce shortage, and the financial stressors across the health care system and family networks all contribute ...

Not a big surprise.  A new survey has found that the care provided by female doctors is of a better quality than that that provided by males.  But male doctors are more productive.  I guess that's probably how it works together -- male doctors spend less time, get more done. The study team reached this answer by looking at over 800 Quebec practitioners (half of whom were women), relating to their procedures with elderly diabetic patients but I'm sure it would be the same in this country! "Women had significantly higher scores in terms of compliance with practice guidelines. They were more likely than men to prescribe recommended medications and to plan required examinations,” newswsie.com quotes lead study author Valérie Martel, with the Department of Health Administration. In Quebec all patients aged 65 and over with diabetes must undergo an eye exam by an ophthalmologist or optometrist every two years, according to the Web site. They must also receive three prescr...

Most people are going to benefit from Obamacare.  But not smokers , many of whom will be paying 50% more for health insurance, according to Kelly Kennedy at usatoday.com. The saddest part? It may hurt the poor the most. Kennedy notes that an estimated 29% of adults with incomes below the federal poverty level smoke, vs. 18% of those above. "Smokers – and chewers – in some states may have to pay as much as 50% more in premiums than non-smokers if they sign up for insurance through state health exchanges that open next month, according to provisions in the Affordable Care Act," she writes. It's the old argument.  Tax the people who smoke so much, they'll throw their cigarettes away.  But as with soda and junk food and other things that are bad for us, rarely does this work. Kennedy gives the example of a 25-year-old single man, who, under the new health exchanges, might be charged a premium of $150 a month.  But if he's a smoker, that could go up an extra ...

So how much should it cost to go to the hospital?  We've all heard the horror stories.  People without healthcare wind up being charged excessively more than those with insurance (because hospitals give big deductions to insurance companies because of volume).  Even worse, sometimes one hospital can charge you $28,000 for what treatment at another would be less than half of that. According to Sarah Kliff and Dan Keating at The Washington Post, the federal government today will release the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common procedures.  Hospitals in the past kept this secret, because of competition. Just as you'd expect, the numbers reveal a wide disparity in prices.  The numbers reveal a tremendous, unexplained variation in cost of services, Kliff and Keating report.   For example, in the District of Columbia, "George Washington University’s average bill for a patient on a ventilator was $115,000, while Providence Hospital’s average c...

Admit it. You've gone to the emergency room when it really wasn't an emergency.  Strep throat.  My son falling out of my jogging stroller headfirst on the pavement.  And through a glass coffee table (maybe that one counts). But emergency rooms today see people for head colds, scrapes and even mosquito bites, and they're sick of it, according to The Washington Post. And they're taking out an ad to stop it. The ad was created by Britain's National Health Service and it shows well-dressed people waiting in line with balloon captions like "stomachache," "cough" and "unsure about illness" over their heads. "Here in the United States, emergency room trips have steadily grown, from 67 million visits in 1996 to 119 million trips in 2008, and ER trips can be expensive," Sarah Kliff posts. "One study back in 1994 found that treating non-emergency conditions in an emergency department setting contributed $5 billion to $7 billi...

OK.  So the world knows we buy Charmin bath tissue and M&Ms and like to shop at Lord & Taylor. But how would you like it if you went to the ER for an appendicitis attack and it showed up on your chart you'd had an STD in college? According to Melinda Beck of The Wall Street Journal, with all this digitizing of our medical info, "The sharing of Americans' health information is set to explode in coming years, with millions of patients' medical records converted to electronic form and analyzed by health-care providers, insurers, regulators and researchers." Many experts agree it may be next to impossible to safeguard all that patient data, or keep it from getting into the wrong hands.  New rules may change some of this, but it's still a major threat. "The reality is, our ability to exchange electronic information is already well beyond our ability to control it," John Leipold tol Beck.  He's CEO of Valley Hope Technology in Norton, Kan...

Want to know what a Heme-8 Lab costs? Or a Heme-8 with Automated Differentiated Lab?  They're each $9.37 at Johns Hopkins and it may not matter to you what they are (blood tests for diseases like lupus and others), or how much they cost. But it's starting to, for doctors, and it's helping to bring down healthcare costs, according to Sarah Kliff at The Washington Post.  She reports that, "for six months, doctors ordering certain lab tests" were able to "call up both the type of the test," and what Medicare would pay for it. It's actually caused doctors to order almost 10% fewer tests, Kliff notes.  Once the hospital started studying the costs, and relaying them to doctors, it saved $3.79 per test per day per patient.  That may not sound like much, but times thousands of patients, it's paying off. Kliff writes that doctors were not penalized for writing orders for more expensive tests, the price just got billed to the insurance company (and w...

States have been given more time to set up health information exchanges. Health information whats?  The marketplaces where you can pick and choose among healthcare policies, part of healthcare reform. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/us/us-extends-deadline-on-health-coverage-for-states.html?_r=0

It's probably not a disease you worry about, here in America, but malaria disproportionately kills people all over the world every year. Now a new vaccine given much hope has turned out not to work. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/health/malaria-vaccine-candidate-produces-disappointing-results-in-clinical-trial.html

If you're lucky enough to have employer-sponsored health insurance, maybe not so much, next year.  You'll be forking over a bigger chunk of your paycheck to cover it. http://insurance-technology.tmcnet.com/topics/insurance-technology/articles/307160-health-insurance-costs-workers-only-inching-up-but.htm