Hand hygiene initiative is designed to help reduce healthcare-associated infections in U.S. hospitals, including 90,000 related deaths and $5 billion in added costs
(Mentor, Ohio) - STERIS Corporation (NYSE:STE) today announced the U.S. launch of Partners in Your CareSM , an evidence-based program shown to increase and sustain hand hygiene compliance and thus reduce healthcare-acquired infections by partnering patients with healthcare workers.
"Think about this the next time you visit a medical facility. Research indicates that more than 60 percent of healthcare workers do not properly wash or sanitize their hands prior to treating a patient," said Robert Mosher, vice president, Applied Infection Control, STERIS Corporation. "Consequently, the spread of infection by worker to patient contact in healthcare settings continues to be a serious problem."
Read more...FeatureXpress
i-Newswire, 2005-03-26 - Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs ( VA ) and the University of California at Los Angeles ( UCLA ) found that a diet high in docosahexenoic acid, or DHA--an omega-3 fatty acid found in relatively high concentrations in cold-water fish--dramatically slowed the progression of Alzheimer's disease in mice. Specifically, DHA cut the harmful brain plaques that mark the disease. The results appear in the March 23 online edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Senior author Greg M. Cole, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System and UCLA, said that unlike many studies with mice, this one points to the benefits of a therapy that is easily available and already touted for other medical conditions. DHA--either from food sources such as fish and soy, or in fish-oil supplements--is recommended by many cardiologists for heart health, based on scores of previous studies.
Read more...iNewswire.com
Alliance helps public stay “alert” to the latest science discoveries from 12 federal
science agencies, introduces Science.gov Alert Service
Science.gov, the “go to” Web portal for federal science information, now provides a free and convenient “Alert” service that delivers information about the most current science developments right to desktops each Monday.
Launched at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Feb. 17-21, 2005) in Washington, D.C., the Science.gov Alert Service provides weekly emails to those interested in science across the nation.
From the Science.gov homepage (www.science.gov), individuals can set up an account and let Science.gov do the searching for them. Each week, up to 25 relevant results from selected information sources will be sent to the subscriber's email account. Results are displayed in the Alert email and in a personalized Alert Archive, which stores six weeks of alerts results. In the Archive, past activity can be reviewed and Alert profiles edited.
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By: UPMC News Bureau on Mar 07 2005 08:00:11
PITTSBURGH – "Despite multiple challenges, health care professionals are embracing information technology and are enabled to do their jobs more efficiently with the use of electronic health records," stated G. Daniel Martich, M.D., vice president of eRecord at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) at a March 4 presentation before the American Medical Association's Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement in Chicago.
The Consortium includes representatives from more than 60 national medical specialty and state medical societies, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and works to develop evidence-based clinical performance measures and clinical outcomes reporting tools to support physicians in quality improvement efforts.
Read more...eMaxHealth
3/9/2005 10:52:00 AM
To: National Desk, Health Reporter
Contact: Susan Herold of Consumers Union, 202-462-6262, Grace Trimble of the Atlanta Regional Commission, 404-463-3192
ATLANTA, March 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Atlanta area residents will be the first to participate in a nationwide outreach effort by Consumers Union to put easy-to-understand information about the effectiveness, safety and price of prescription drugs in the hands of seniors, low-income residents and the uninsured to help them navigate the confusing prescription drug marketplace and get the best value for their health-care dollar.
"Our goal is to get unbiased information on prescription drugs into the hands of millions of consumers, and Atlanta is the starting point for that," said Gail Shearer, project director of Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs. "Only when consumers and doctors have independent information on the effectiveness, safety and price of medicines will we see real change in the prescription drug marketplace. We hope to level the playing field for consumers who are confused by all the advertisements for prescription drugs."
Read more...US Newswire
By Rob Stein
The Washington Post
Published on: 03/07/05
WASHINGTON — Aspirin does not protect women against heart attacks in the same way it does for men, but the venerable painkiller does cut women's chances of suffering a stroke, researchers reported Monday.
A long-awaited 10-year study of nearly 40,000 women, the biggest and best such study to date, provides the first strong evidence of the benefits of taking aspirin regularly for healthy women, a practice that many have already begun based largely on studies of men.
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Wednesday March 2, 7:00 am ET
# WASHINGTON, March 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Leaders in medical management can learn about current industry practices and get the preliminary results of URAC's latest survey of industry trends from a field of experts at the National Managed Healthcare Congress, March 7-9 at the Washington, DC Convention Center.(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030501/URACLOGO )
Garry Carneal, JD, MA, president and CEO of URAC, will present preliminary findings of the accrediting organization's "Trends and Practices in Medical Management: 2005 Industry Profile" as one component of a Medical Management Symposium, Monday, March 7 from 8 to 11 a.m.
Read more...Yahoo Finance
ThrombosisClinic.com is an educational web site for healthcare practitioners with an interest in the prevention and management of thrombosis, which remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States. By offering CME/CE programs and key resources, we address the many clinical challenges facing healthcare professionals and their patients. Aimed at being the primary resource for thrombosis education, our daily updates and input from leading experts in the field provide the latest advances in treatment, as well as tools and materials to help answer practical questions.
A Teleconference Series to Accelerate Health Care Improvement
Catherine D. DeAngelis, MD, MPH; Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP
JAMA. Feb. 23, 2005;293:1004.
Translating the results of published studies into clinical action is a challenge. JAMA readers know, and we acknowledge, that the devil is in the details in taking useful knowledge from page to patient—just as it is in moving basic scientific insights from bench to bedside. This is one of the reasons for the frustrating and recurring finding that important clinical research innovations rarely reach all the patients who potentially could benefit.
Thanks to a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, JAMA, in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), is pleased to announce an 18-month test of a new resource called Author in the Room. This program is designed to help our readers explore specific, peer-reviewed articles directly with the articles’ authors so that the reported clinical science can be more effectively and quickly incorporated into clinical practice. This initiative will comprise 12 conference calls, roughly 1 call per month, each call focusing on the practical application of a potentially useful research finding that has recently been published in JAMA.
01 Mar 2005
The American Medical Student Association (AMSA), the nation's largest independent medical student organization, today released survey results showing that a large majority (72.7 percent) of medical students surveyed believe that global HIV/AIDS is the "crisis of our generation." Nearly 90 percent of respondents agree that the US should make its response to the pandemic a higher or top priority.
While medical students ranked global HIV/AIDS as what should be one of healthcare's top three priorities, the survey shows that many medical schools provide insufficient or poorly coordinated education and little or no clinical experience on the topic.
Read more....Medical News Today