Popular Articles

Blogs Comment On Health Reform Legislation, Maternal Mortality, Other Topics
The following summarizes selected women"s health-related blog entries. ~ ""Operation Rescue" Founder Warns of "Violent Convulsions" if Health Bill Doesn"t Ban Abortions," Ian Millhiser, Think Progress: Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry is "probably the first public figure to raise terrorism as a potential response to a health bill which allows Americans to keep the same access to reproductive care that they currently enjoy," Millhiser writes in a blog post responding to Terry"s warning "that his supporters may engage in violent acts of terrorism unless Congress prohibits abortion services from being covered in the new health reform legislation." According to Millhiser, Terry recently said that there are some people ""who will be tempted to acts of violence"" and that ""history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow"" the legislation. Millhiser writes that many conservative policymakers are "pushing a poison pill amendment" to Congress" reform bill that would prohibit the coverage of abortion services in plans offered within a national health insurance exchange. He notes that 71% of U.S. residents oppose an amendment that would "cut off women"s access to reproductive care" (Millhiser, Think Progress, 7/20).~ "Gestation Is a Life-Changing Experience for Women," Jessica Grose, XX Factor: Grose"s post responds to Francis Kissling"s recent Salon opinion piece discussing the ""new pro-lifers."" According to Grose, this movement "seeks to make bearing and raising children easier, and reducing abortion that way." She continues, "It almost sounds reasonable to pro-choice Kissling, except for one thing: making bearing children "easier" doesn"t acknowledge how gestation can change a woman"s life." According to Kissling, the ""new pro-lifers barely acknowledge the difficulties of childbirth,"" and the movement ""denies the reality that even in modern Western culture, in the high-tech U.S., every woman who agrees to be pregnant still risks dying if the pregnancy goes awry."" Kissling also wrote that the ""new antiabortionists want to use their rosy view of pregnancy as the frame for public policy, and that is where they become indistinguishable from the old antiabortion movement. For both groups, women are passive participants in gestation."" Grose writes that "many of the new pro-lifers don"t support efforts to bring contraception to women who don"t have access to it," an issue that is "likely to come back in a big way in the next few months as the administration"s new health plan is debated" (Grose, XX Factor, 7/20).~ "Thanks, Abstinence-Only Education!" Feministing: "Thanks to a decade of misinformation and masquerading as sex education, teens are having the same amount of sex, using contraception less and getting pregnant more," a Feministing blog entry states. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that trends in reproductive and sexual health of U.S. teens and young adults ""have flattened, or in some instances may be worsening."" According to the blog entry, "We"re reaping what we"ve sowed." Although President Obama"s 2010 budget proposal includes cuts in abstinence-only education funding, "de-funding these programs is not enough," the blog says. It adds, "We have to undo the damage that"s been done to young people and support real solutions." The blog concludes, "The purity-pushers are not going anywhere, but this is about more than politics, ... it"s about our health and futures" (Feministing, 7/20).~ "Human Rights Resolution Spotlights Disparities in Maternal Health Care in the U.S.," Ximena Andion Ibanez et al., RH Reality Check: A "vast majority" of pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths are "preventable and can therefore be understood to reflect widespread indifference to the rights of the world"s poorest women," Ibanez writes in a blog post co-authored by Center for Reproductive Rights Deputy Director Laura Katzive and Michelle Movahead, an attorney at the ce
diet pills
ERT Launches New Online Gateway To Improve Cardiac Safety In Clinical Trials
ERT (Nasdaq: ERES), a leading provider of centralized ECG, ePRO, eClinical technology and other services to the biopharmaceutical, medical device and related industries, announced today the launch of a unique online web interface - My Study Portal(TM). Following the successful launch of ERT"s new website, My Study Portal is aimed at enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of cardiac safety data management in clinical trials.
News of the day
Insured Immigrants Have Lower Medical Costs Than U.S.-Born Citizens, Study Finds
Insured immigrants have lower medical expenses than insured U.S.-born citizens after taking into account their health status and other characteristics, according to a study released on Thursday and published in the American Journal of Public Health, Reuters Health reports. For the study, Leighton Ku, a health policy researcher at George Washington University, and colleagues examined data on adults ages 19 to 64 from the 2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and found that about 44% of recent immigrants and 63% of established immigrants were insured.After controlling for possible contributing factors, researchers found that medical costs averaged about 14% to 20% less than those who were born in the U.S. The finding was the same even after taking into account lower insurance levels among immigrants. Ku said, "When you control for their health status and all sorts of characteristics like age, they actually have medical expenditures that are far below those of U.S. citizens." According to the study, "Being a recent immigrant or an established immigrant was independently associated with both a reduced likelihood of using any medical care in the year and with lower total medical expenditure levels, compared with U.S.-born adults" (Reuters Health, 5/14).
Nutrition

Coalition For Quality & Patient Safety Of Chicagoland PSO Taps ECRI Institute PSO For Support

ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is pleased to announce an agreement with the Coalition for Quality & Patient Safety (CQPS) of Chicagoland PSO to provide patient safety data collection, reporting, and analysis. The Chicagoland PSO focuses on local experience, patterns, trends, and patient safety initiatives specific to Chicago and the surrounding counties. CQPS will coordinate its PSO and other patient safety efforts with other Illinois-based hospital and primary care associations, the Illinois Department of Public Health, consumers and consumer advocates, other patient safety and quality improvement stakeholders, and existing patient safety collaboratives across the state. "Our goal is to engage all stakeholders in Chicagoland in practical efforts to prevent harm where we can and to learn from error when it occurs. The CQPS PSO is an exciting new tool that will advance our members" safety and quality improvement work through collaborative sharing in a legally protected and confidential manner," says new CQPS Chief Executive Officer Martin J. Hatlie, J.D. "Hospitals, medical groups, and long-term care and other providers will soon be able to learn, not only from their own events, but from those pooled throughout Chicagoland," adds Hatlie. "That"s the beauty of the program." ECRI Institute® , an independent nonprofit organization that researches best approaches to improving patient care, has 40 years of experience in operating healthcare problem reporting systems and safety initiatives. ECRI Institute PSO will provide "back office" support to the Chicagoland PSO through a Patient Safety Data Collection and Reporting System and by analyzing adverse events and other information from participating healthcare organizations. The reporting platform is powered by rL Solutions (http://www.rl-solutions.com), a leading software company with deep experience in adverse event reporting. "We applaud CQPS PSO for its commitment to promoting a culture of safety in healthcare by establishing a program to take advantage of the newly implemented federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005," says Ronni Solomon, Esq., executive vice president and general counsel, ECRI Institute. "We look forward to sharing the knowledge ECRI Institute has built based on four decades of patient safety experience, plus success in implementing the first statewide error reporting system for Pennsylvania," adds Solomon. ECRI Institute PSO will provide data collection, reporting, and analytic support and quarterly patient safety advisories. ECRI Institute PSO uses a Web-based patient safety reporting system to capture patient safety data in a standardized manner compatible with the AHRQ"s common data formats and National Quality Forum (NQF) serious reportable events. The platform, powered by rL Solutions, provides a secure way for ECRI Institute PSO to accept information from providers using any electronic system, along with an intuitive interface for manual data entry. The ECRI Institute PSO analytics team, with experience handling more than 1 million adverse event reports, comprises an interdisciplinary staff of physicians; nurses; biomedical engineers; instructional designers; quality, legal, and risk management professionals; individuals with safety, education, science, and engineering backgrounds; statisticians and data analysts; and information technology experts. In addition to the internal program team, the external advisory group includes physicians, lawyers, and senior executives at hospitals and healthcare associations. ECRI Institute PSO also offers direct PSO memberships consisting of Web-based reporting tools, member-specific analytics, assessments, culture-of-safety recommendations, interactive tools, best practices, continuing medical education (CME) courses, and advisories. About ECRI Institute For 40 years, ECRI Institute"s work in patient safety, adverse event reporting and analysis, and development of recommendations has improved patient care at hospitals and other providers around the world. ECRI Institute has a long history of investigating events and publishing authoritative risk reduction strategies. ECRI Institute is designated as an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and a Collaborating Center for Patient Safety, Risk Management, and Healthcare Technology by the World Health Organization. ECRI Institute has developed and implements the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System, a mandatory error and near-miss reporting program for Pennsylvania hospitals and other healthcare facilities, under contract to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, winner of the 2006 John M. Eisenberg Award. ECRI Institute PSO is a component of ECRI Institute. For more information, visit http://https://www.ecri.org. About Coalition for Quality & Patient Safety of Chicagoland The CQPS mission is to mobilize the diverse healthcare stakeholders in metropolitan Chicago to provide the best possible care to every patient every time by eliminating preventable harm and implementing systemic change to promote consistent excellence. Coalition for Quality & Patient Safety (CQPS) has attained listing by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a federal Patient Safety Organization under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005. By contracting with a national PSO and IT vendor(s), CQPS will collect incident report and other patient safety work product data from contracted (member) healthcare providers, and provide analysis, reporting, collaborative learning, and dissemination of best practices and patient safety advisories to advance the culture of safety. For more information, visit http://http:www.cqps.org/CPSF_initiatives/CPSF-PSO.htm. rL Solutions


Add your comment:
Name:
Site address: http://
Your message:
Enter today\\\\'s date, 2 digits
(spam protection):