Archive for the ‘Roundup’ Category

A lot went on in the health care world this week, from a 10-year-old girl getting a lung transplant to a SCOTUS ruling on gene patenting to continued discussions and commentary on ACA and its implementation. With all this going on, chances are you might have missed some of the other stories. We’ve got you covered…

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is stepping down as of next month.  Her efforts over the last four years have impacted the lives of all Americans. Politico has more on this.

Kaiser Health News ran an article on hospitalist Dr. Zubin Damania and his alter ego, ZDoggMD, who using satire sings about everything from insurance paperwork to prostate cancer. (more…)

This week DW attended Health Datapalooza. If you weren’t able to attend or didn’t catch our live tweets we’ve got you covered! Check out or summary post.

On Monday, President Obama tried to elevate the importance of mental health. In his remarks he said the treatment of mental health problems should be the same as going to the doctor for a broken bone. Politico has more on this.

NIH Director Francis Collins, in an unusual occurrence, disagreed with the federal government having to do with the research ethics of a controversial study of more than 1,300 severely premature infants. The NPR Shots Blog has the details. (more…)

Summer is here for most of us here in the U.S. which means it is time to whip out the sunscreen, but before you do read this from the New York Times. It covers the new rules that apply to sunscreen use.

Earlier this week NPR detailed how the White House is gearing up for a massive campaign to sell Obamacare to the public. The campaign will take place this summer and will cover all 50 states, plus DC.  The article states that the President’s legacy is tied to the success of Obamacare and public perception of it.

The Washington Post wrote about a young opera singer who is able to perform better than ever thanks to the lungs she received from a middle-aged Honduran woman. Read more about this amazing story here. (more…)

It may be your health, but that doesn’t stop state and federal policymakers from making important decisions that affect it almost daily. We all have to stay informed if we want to be involved in the process. What our lawmakers decide can have deeply personal impacts on our health care and on our lives, and that is why DW is pleased to introduce a new feature, which will keep you in the know on key state and federal legislative actions that may impact health care or health policy. (more…)

We imagine all our readers are looking forward to the three day weekend, we know we are!

The first part of this week we were out in San Francisco for VentureBeat’s first HealthBeat. It was a great event and we were proud to have been a part of it as a media sponsor. For summaries from the various sessions visit: http://venturebeat.com/tag/healthbeat/.

On Wednesday HHS announced that over half of doctors’ offices and 80% of hospitals that provide Medicare or Medicaid will have electronic health records by the end of this year. To learn how/why read the USA Today article.

Kaiser Health News and NPR look at how individuals who don’t have a traditional checking or savings account will get health insurance. (more…)

Happy National Women’s Health Week to all our fabulous Disruptive Women readers! Lots of groups released information and toolkits in celebration. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet here are just a few: NWLC toolkit, interactive screening chart and infographic done by HHS.

In other news, the Washington Post reported on the possibility that cancer patients and others taking pricey drugs might pay even more for their medications under ACA.

An interesting study of Medicaid recipients in Oregon found that increased health care spending had a limited impact on improving people’s health. Learn more here. (more…)

In honor of National Nurses Week this week’s roundup is exclusively focused on stories about and for nurses. From several posts that we have read (including this one by DW Pat Ford-Roegner) this week we appreciate that what nurses want most isn’t flowers, candy or even a week dedicated to thanking and appreciating them, but rather systematic change that makes it easier for them to provide quality health care to their patients. The articles below bring to light how this is happening and could potentially happen.

An article in Florida Today looks at how doctors in Brevard County, Florida have turned to nurse practitioners for help in dealing with the primary care shortage. (more…)

First, since this is our blog we are going to take a quick second to plug it… Disruptive Women has recently launched an email newsletter. Sign up to stay on top of our blog posts, events and other news and happenings.

Can you say care coordination? An article in the Washington Post earlier this week highlights the continued need to push for it in hospitals as it is still lacking, to the detriment of patient safety. (more…)

Happy Friday! For us here at DW it has been a busy and long week, so we are all looking forward to the weekend… Everybody’s working for it, right?

In “An Rx for the doctor shortage” the LA Times editorial board discusses how to provide primary care to the newly insured when there are not enough primary care doctors. They believe there are two ways to address the problem: increase the number of those doctors or allow more trained medical professionals to provide care that currently only doctors can provide.

Shocking… New York City is making headlines again (more…)

It was a rough week with a lot of news we all could have done without. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by this week’s events.

Washington Post’s Wonk Blog showed us what Obamacare could look like in, “Want to know the future of Obamacare? Take a look at Fort Dodge, Iowa.”

DC came alive this week with innovators from all over the country attending TEDMED. From the looks of Kaiser Health News’ summary a lot of good ideas were exchanged.

Interesting or scary? A study came out this week that found that hospitals make money when something goes wrong during a surgery. To learn more read Politico’s article. (more…)

It was a busy week for healthcare news. Since you are probably tapped out on budget and gun control coverage in true DW style we are going to focus on other stories from this week…

Robert Edwards a Nobel Prize winning, British embryologist responsible for the transformation of human procreation by developing in vitro fertilization died at the age of 87 on Wednesday. Check out more on his life and work here.

Good news for CMS, they might have an Administrator soon. Marilyn Tavenner faced little to no opposition during her Senate Finance Committee hearing this week. No word on when the confirmation hearing will be. (more…)

NYC is at it again…this week the city’s Department of Health launched an ad campaign urging people to review the salt in packaged foods and choose items with less salt. Check out more on this new initiative here.

A theme this week in the news has been “taking one for the team” as several Cabinet members and President Obama announced they would be giving back portions of their salaries in solidarity for those being affected by the budget cuts. To see who is giving what back click here. (more…)

DW Janice Lynch Schuster and her petition to start a Caregiver Corp were featured in the New York Times’ The New Old Age Blog. Her Op-ed also ran in the New York Times. Take a look at the petition and consider signing it.

NPR’s Shots blog ran an interesting post entitled, “Why More Patients Should Blog About Illness And Death”. It highlights the empowerment patients can feel when they are given the platform to talk about their illness and/or death.

This week there were several articles on the cost of health care in America. (more…)

We are reinstituting our Weekly Roundups, get excited! Every Friday, the Disruptive Women team will be posting links to news stories from the week that we found interesting. Be sure to check in every Friday.

There were a couple of interesting stories in the world of women’s health. One we wanted to highlght discusses how addiction is affecting more and more women. It talks about how when a country gets richer women begin to catch up with men in addiction rates. Addiction’s Shrinking Gender Gap » (more…)

Happy August! Here at Disruptive Women, we’re just wrapping up our July Body Image blog series. We’ve had such a good time reading your comments on the blog and on Facebook, and we wanted to share some of them with the DW community. (more…)