Gastroenterology

Large organizations with mobile workers, such as hospitals, face diminished productivity when communication is inefficient and its employees are unable to locate their coworkers in a timely manner.

Bravo. The government finally has its healthcare IT priorities straight. Unfortunately, it won't be able to achieve them.

For those interested in health information technology, there is now an excellent, new, powerful website about this topic called the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. In their most recent report, "Can Cleveland Clinic Be a Model for Digital Medicine?" they discuss how this hospital system has failed to recoup their $100 million investment to date.

Some pundits have written that health insurance mandates are well beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. Others have picked up on these arguments and applied them to the EHR-implementation incentives under the HITECH Act as well. The bottom line is that these arguments fail, for four reasons.

There has been much discussion about the HITECH Act and the effects it will have on healthcare in this country. The health IT industry and the federal government claim that EHR use will lead to a decrease in costs and an overall improvement in patient care. Skeptics like me disagree with these claims and feel that the push to adopt complex EHRs will be a bad deal for physicians.

Lately, I've been thinking about how fast everything moves these days. This is true in technology, medicine, business, and other important areas of our lives. Keeping up with changes in healthcare is a real challenge; just reading monthly print medical journals won't cut it anymore in the digital age. Now, practically every day I find myself looking something up on Wikipedia.

A new treatment has been developed for GERD that does not require an incision into the skin, an option that may shorten recovery time and reduce possible side affects.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the approaching fire storm over the patient-centered medical home model reminds me of the destructive powers seen before in HMOs.

Collaboration is important in healthcare, as evidenced by the growing number of "learning communities" and grassroots efforts that are bringing people and organizations together to work on the issue of eliminating disparities in health and healthcare.

The Diabetes Surgery Summit position statement promotes the legitimacy of gastrointestinal surgery as a dedicated treatment for type 2 diabetes in carefully selected patients.

A national health information technology infrastructure (NHITI) is not only necessary, but it is cardinal to improving delivery and reducing costs of healthcare in the United States.

The powerful vendor-lobbying group, HIMSS, has been extremely successful over the last 8 years lobbying our elected political leaders about HIT.

I have been following with interest all the discussions about the new Medical Home (aka, the Patient Centered Medical Home) concept. This is our silver bullet that will improve patient access, raise quality levels, increase overall satisfaction and save billions of healthcare dollars - all at the same time!

Researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia identified five new gene regions in young patients with childhood-onset inflammatory bowel disease.

Participants in a recent study who took the full 30 minutes to finish a test meal had higher concentrations of gut hormones that induce satiety and meal termination.

The pundits are going to have their field day with this one. "The danger [with this Bill] is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we've tried health reform and it didn't work. But the real problem will be that we didn't really try it.

The Institute of Medicine released its "To Err is Human" report in 2000. Now that we're nearing the end of 2009, safety experts are examining the extent to which the IOM's recommendations have been implemented.

We rank 19th among industrialized countries in preventable deaths in such conditions as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers, pneumonia, infant mortality, and appendicitis.

The new health Internet being designed by federal officials will hopefully be up and running by next year, a move that will allow physicians and patients to more easily exchange health information.

Pain scores were significantly reduced in the blinded phase of a Henry Ford Health System study, with many patients experiencing complete resolution of pain on the drug.

The answer may surprise you.

Rates of clostridium difficile are increasing in the outpatient setting, according to new research from the Mayo Clinic.

Latent cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection can alter mucosal immunity, thus potentially increasing the tendency of CMV-infected hosts to develop colitis.

Great for healthcare providers, but bad for patients?

Certain common herbicides and lipid-lowering fibrate drugs act in humans to block a nutrient-sensing taste receptor also present in intestine and pancreas.

At a healthcare forum hosted by Politics magazine, current and former members of Congress said they believed President Obama would sign some sort of a healthcare reform package, most likely later this year. “There would be too much political damage done if something doesn’t pass, so Congress will find a way,” said Congressman Michael Burgess, MD (R-TX).

Patients with celiac disease and related disorders are at a slightly increased risk of death when compared to patients without any problems due to celiac disease or related conditions.

President Obama addressed his goal to cover preventative screening tests last week saying that there is "no reason" for cancers, such as breast and colon, not to be caught before they become advanced, and bringing to attention the efforts of government officials to have these screening tests covered by public and private insurance companies.