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It's not often when my relatively off the grid town of Riverside becomes a focal point for national news.  Riverside, California is known for its former glory for citrus, smog, and other current attractions such as The Mission Inn, Lunar Festival, Festival of Lights (Mission Inn), and a new UCR School of Medicine, now has become a focal interest for Wuhan's Corona Virus. Flashback ten or more years ago when the former March Air Force Base was in operation.  It was a major Strategic Air Command location. In those days in the 1950s and 60s, there was a ready alert squadron parked their with dark and looming B 52 Stratofortress bombers and their pilots poised at the southern end of the 13000-foot runway ready to be launched at a moment's notice. Their daily practice sessions could not be missed with the roar of engines and a trail of smoky engine exhausts. What a difference, this week 195 souls arrived from the consul in Wahun, China.  There was no fanfare, and there was no ...

The management of chronic health conditions such as prevention, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension creates a burden upon health care providers. There are now the means to have better monitoring by non-physicians. Access to monitoring and decision-makers are augmented by several offerings. One example follows: Integrated Chronic Care Platforms have transformed disease management and prevention, replacing episodic care with combination therapy of smart connected devices, AI learning, and expert coaching. This digital care model helps payors and large employers lower costs and improve member and employee health. Health data monitoring from smart, connected health devices. Translation of health readings into insights to make healthy habits and behaviors last. A digital health company with outcomes in all of diabetes, hypertension, and prediabetes. Scalable care with seamless deployment and enrollment that integrates and doesn't silo. Chronic disease management takes place in the ho...

Categories of Blood Pressure A new analysis shows no harm in diastolic blood pressure higher than 80 mmHg, but 2017 AHA/ACC guidelines could cause millions to be considered hypertensive and possibly treated inappropriately, authors assert. Isolated diastolic  hypertension  is now more prevalent, owing to the definition of hypertension used in the most recent US blood pressure guidelines, but the condition does not appear to be associated with increased risk for cardiovascular outcomes, a new study suggests. The findings and recommendations are controversial.  Association of Isolated Diastolic Hypertension as Defined by the 2017 ACC/AHA Blood Pressure Guideline With Incident Cardiovascular Outcomes Importance    In the 2017 American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) guideline, the definition of hypertension was lowered from blood pressure (BP) of greater than or equal to 140/90 to greater than or equal to 130/80 mm Hg. The new diastolic...

Does Medical Specialty Determine Speeding Drivers?  Your will be surprised about the worst offenders.  According to US research, psychiatrists are more likely to speed when driving to a medical emergency than surgeons and obstetricians. Also cardiologists are more likely to drive flashier cars (41% of all cardiologists) while General Practitioners (GPs) are the least likely speciality to be in a luxury car when booked (20%). Researchers at the Harvard Medical School in Boston,  analysed the speeding tickets issued to 5372 doctors and 19,639 non-doctors in Florida from 2004-17 to determine whether fast driving, luxury car ownership and leniency by police officers differed among medical specialities. They  hypothesised that rates of extreme speeding would vary across specialties , owing to underlying personalities and specific professional requirements. “For example, physicians in some specialties may exhibit thrill-seeking behaviour, whereas physicians in certain spec...

Modern Epidemiology has had the benefit of computer modeling of epidemics, which forecast the development of epidemics and pandemics. Chinese health authorities say an outbreak of a pneumonia-like illness has sickened 305 people and killed five”...   There are many similarities between the current outbreak to the SARS one from its geolocation to its spread to the viruses themselves.  However, much has changed within the 17-year gap between those two pandemics. For one, technology in the healthcare sector has known an exponential boom. New technologies that were nonexistent or poorly developed in 2003 are now more affordable and widespread and can help manage and even prevent such cases. Let’s see how this can be the case. Electron Microscopy of Intracellular Corona Virus A.I. to detect the spread of an epidemic At the beginning of the SARS outbreak, China covered up the existence of the virus from both its citizens and the world. Even if China seems to have  become m...

Stem cell tourism  is a term recently coined to describe a growing practice among patients to pay large sums of money to private clinics for often unproven  stem cell therapies . Patients can be desperate because conventional medicine has failed to provide a solution for their particular condition. For diseases affecting children, emotions may run particularly high: the children themselves cannot make properly informed decisions, so parents face the additional conflict of wanting the best for them while, at the same time, having to protect them from undue risk. Advertisements for these clinics, often outside the patient’s own country, claim that stem cell treatment can benefit or cure complaints ranging from diabetes, stroke, paralysis caused by spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), to wrinkles in the skin and age-related hair loss in men. Potential Risks of Stem Cell Therapies Uta Kunter, Jürgen Floege, in Regenerative Nephrology, 2011 Stem cell ...

Important HIPAA updates can have a far-reaching impact. Learn how to stay compliant.  Yes Virginia HIPAA defines what is secret and confidential and also what must be transparent to the patient.  It is their data! Everyone thinks of HIPAA as a security lock-down law, and indeed it is: a major part of HIPAA regulations is about the data holder’s responsibility to be careful with it. There have been huge penalties for allowing data leaks.   Fewer people realize that HIPAA regulations have also always included a “right of access” - here’s that page on the HHS website. It means that patients are allowed to request copies of their records, and providers must comply. This has always been true, but there’s an important change: in 2019, the government settled its first two major cases (with big fines) where a patient asked for their data and the provider dragged its feet. The right of access has never been enforced. But that has changed. How would you like an $85,000 fine? P...

  Drugmakers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co ( BMY.N ), Gilead Sciences Inc ( GILD.O ), and Biogen Inc ( BIIB.O ) hiked U.S. list prices on more than 50 drugs on Wednesday, bringing total New Year’s Day drug price increases to more than 250, according to data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.   Reuters reported on Tuesday that drugmakers including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK.L) and Sanofi SA (SASY.PA) were planning to increase prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1. Nearly all of the price increases are below 10% and the median price increase is around 5%, according to 3 Axis. More early year price increases could still be announced. Soaring U.S. prescription drug prices are expected to again be a central issue in the presidential election. President Donald Trump, who made bringing them down a core pledge of his 2016 campaign, is running for re-election in 2020. Many branded drugmakers have pledged to keep their U.S....

Good morning, it's Sunday morning, if you are tired of watching the Trump Impeachment Carnival, have your coffee watching this story. (it is a true story) Insurance companies are supposed to LOWER healthcare costs by fighting inappropriate price gouging, right? WRONG. Here's why. The story is all too common. Next time your physician orders a test, image or any service from an outside vendor. A routine doctor's visit for a sore throat brought more than $28,000 in charges for one woman. In our Bill of the Month partnership with Kaiser Health News and NPR, we take a look at unexpected medical costs. The woman’s visit shows even when insurance does cover medical charges, costs can still skyrocket in the long run. David Begnaud reports, and Kaiser Health News editor-in-chief Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss the findings. 1. Ask how much it will cost 2. Don't believe what he says, because he does not know. If he refers you to one of his staff ask hi...

Physician burnout: Which medical specialties feel the most stress? An online survey of doctors finds an overall physician burnout rate of 42%, which is down from 46% five years ago. Three new entries in the top six specialties with the highest rates of burnout compared with last year’s edition of the survey provide medical students and residents with new insight into their future careers. The numbers of physicians who report burnout vary greatly between specialties. In the Medscape survey, the highest percentage of physician burnout occurred among these medical specialties: Urology: 54%. Neurology: 50%. Nephrology: 49%. Diabetes and endocrinology: 46%. Family medicine: 46%. Radiology: 46%. The lowest rates of burnout were reported by physicians in these medical specialties: Public health and preventive medicine: 29%. Ophthalmology: 30%. Orthopedics: 34%. Psychiatry: 35%. Otolaryngology: 35%. General surgery: 35%. These findings correlate well with other studies by the AMA , Mayo Clinic...