http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A new study that tracked what Alzheimer's disease and related disorders (ADRD) costs Medicare during three distinct stages of patient care suggests that the government insurer could realize substantial savings through efforts to reduce the hospitalizations that occur before patients became permanent nursing home residents. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-pre-nursing-home-hospitalization-dementia-patients.html Health Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:37:17 EST news253273017 As loved ones age and face challenges that prevent them from living on their own, family members often struggle with the decision to place their relatives in nursing homes. Sometimes viewed as last alternatives, long-term care facilities can have reputations as hopeless, institutionalized environments. Now, those negative perceptions are changing, say two University of Missouri researchers in the Sinclair School of Nursing. After conducting a statewide survey of Missouri nursing homes, the researchers found that nearly 90 percent of nursing home residents and their family members are satisfied with the residents' long-term care facilities. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-expert-comment-missouri-nursing-homes.html Health Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:47:21 EST news252064036 Pediatricians who show an unconscious preference for European Americans tend to prescribe better pain-management for white patients than they do for African-American patients, new University of Washington research shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-pediatricians-pain-medication-judgments-affected-unconscious.html Health Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:44:26 EST news251379851 Providing personal mobile computers to medical residents increases their efficiency, reduces delays in patient care and enhances continuity of care, according to a "research letter" in the March 12, 2012, issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-personal-mobile-doctors-efficiency.html Other Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:00:04 EST news250779376 (HealthDay) -- Double gloving during surgery reduces the risk for transmission of bloodborne pathogens to medical personnel as well as minimizing the transfer of health care-associated infections to patients, according to a study published in the March issue of the AORN Journal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-gloving-exposure-pathogens.html Surgery Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:00:01 EST news250350324 The majority of institutionalized elderly female patients are vitamin D deficient and there is an inverse association of vitamin D deficiency and mortality, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-vitamin-d-deficiency-linked-higher.html Health Tue, 06 Mar 2012 08:12:15 EST news250243929 In a newly published study, researchers found the majority of medical residents surveyed experienced a decline in empathy over the course of the oft-used "long-call" shift. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-medical-residents-empathy-declines-long-call.html Health Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:50:01 EST news247220436 A visit to the emergency department during nonsummer months was associated with a three-fold risk of acute respiratory or gastrointestinal infection in elderly residents of long-term care facilities, according to a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-three-fold-infection-elderly-emergency-department.html Health Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:21:42 EST news246547282 Nursing home residents with dementia who use average doses of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are three times more likely to have an injurious fall than similar people who don't use these drugs. The association can be seen in people who use low doses of SSRIs and the risk increases as people take higher doses. The results are published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-nursing-home-residents-dementia-antidepressants.html Health Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:40:03 EST news246168702 Health care coverage increased dramatically in parts of China between 1997 and 2006, a period when government interventions were implemented to improve access to health care, with particularly striking upswings in rural areas, according to new research by Brown University sociologist Susan E. Short and Hongwei Xu of the University of Michigan. The findings appear in the December issue of Health Affairs. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-chinese-health-coverage-efforts.html Health Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:37:55 EST news242325454 (AP) -- Government inspectors will tell lawmakers Wednesday that the Medicare health plan needs to do more to stop doctors from prescribing powerful psychiatric drugs to nursing home patients with dementia, an unapproved practice that has flourished despite repeated government warnings. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-inspector-highlights-psych-drug-elderly.html Health Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:27:49 EST news241885658 The scoring system government agencies use to rate nursing home quality does not provide an adequate evaluation because they do not take into account the degree of cognitive impairment of their patient populations and whether facilities include a specialized dementia unit according to a new study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-nursing-home-quality-scorecards-dont.html Health Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:43:02 EST news241094574 Patient handovers have increased significantly as a result of the restrictions on the number of hours residents are allowed to work. Multiple shift changes, and resulting consecutive sign-outs, during patient handovers are linked to a decrease in both the amount and quality of information conveyed between residents, according to a new study by Dr. Adam Helms from the University of Virginia Healthsystem in the US and his colleagues. Their work1, which characterizes the complex process of resident sign-out in a teaching hospital, appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine2, published by Springer. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-hospital-patients-shift-shuffle.html Other Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:17:21 EST news238335368 The decision by nursing homes whether or not to treat an ill resident on-site or send them to a hospital are often linked to that person's insurance status. A new study out this month shows that on average individuals enrolled in Medicaid are 27 percent more likely to be sent to the hospital than individuals with private insurance – decisions that often result in higher costs of care and poor health outcomes. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-nursing-home-hospitalizations-driven-payer.html Health Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:02:36 EST news236865748 A new study in the Sept. 29, 2011, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that nearly one in five nursing home residents with advanced dementia experiences burdensome transitions in the last 90 days of life, such as moving to a different facility in the last three days of life or repeat hospitalizations for expected complications of dementia in the last 90 days of life. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-dementia-patients-burdensome-transitions-days.html Health Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:42:14 EST news236454118 Residents who attend conferences that focus on missed or misinterpreted cases are 67% less likely to miss important findings when reading on-call musculoskeletal x-ray images, a new study shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-resident-conferences-focus-result-higher.html Other Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:21:45 EST news235909294 Higher flu vaccination rates for health care personnel can dramatically reduce the threat of flu outbreak among nursing home residents, according to a study published in the October issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-flu-vaccines-nursing-home-workers.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:05:29 EST news235047912 The new limits on hours that physicians-in-training can work will prove costly for U.S teaching hospitals, which will need to spend up to $1.3 billion a year, and possibly more, to effect the changes, a new UCLA study suggests. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-limits-physician-hours-costly-hospitals.html Other Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:47:12 EST news234715602 Feelings of burnout persist among internal medicine residents despite significant cutbacks in duty hours for doctors-in-training in recent years, a national study by Mayo Clinic found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-mayo-clinic-widespread-medical-resident.html Other Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:47:07 EST news234546372 Nursing home residents taking certain antidepressant medications are at an increased risk of falling in the days following the start of a new prescription or a dose increase of their current drug, according to a new study by the Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew SeniorLife, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-nursing-home-residents-heightened-falling.html Health Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:30:01 EST news229967182 Among nursing home residents at high risk for pressure ulcers, black residents had higher prevalence rates than white residents from 2003 through 2008, with the disparity largely related to the higher rates among nursing homes that disproportionately serve black residents, according to a study in the July 13 issue of JAMA. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-prevalence-pressure-ulcers-black-high-risk.html Health Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:49:59 EST news229708189 UC Irvine psychologist Karen Rook can trace her interest in how loneliness affects the elderly to her childhood, when she saw a much-loved, once-robust grandmother decline markedly after losing her husband. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-lonely-people.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:57:08 EST news226155417 Sleep deprivation is an issue that affects practising physicians and not only medical residents, and we need to establish standards for maximum work and minimum uninterrupted sleep to ensure patient safety, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-deprivation-doctors.html Health Tue, 24 May 2011 12:22:14 EST news225458518