Medical practices in less competitive health-care markets charge more for services, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, based on U.S. health-care data from 2010, provides important new information about the effects of competition on prices for office visits paid by preferred provider organizations, known more commonly as PPOs. PPOs are the most common type of health insurance plan held by privately insured people in the United States. The study will be ...

Searching a health service pricing website before using the service was associated with lower payments for clinical services such as advanced imaging and laboratory tests, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. Recent changes in the health care insurance market have resulted in commercially insured patients bearing a greater proportion of their health care costs. As patients have an increasing responsibility to pay for their care, they will likely demand access to prices charged for that care. Several state-administered initiatives have increased price ...

Hospital conversion from nonprofit to for-profit status in the 2000s was associated with better subsequent financial health but had no relationship to the quality of care delivered, mortality rates, or the proportion of poor or minority patients receiving care, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. During the past decade, there has been increasing attention to the growing number of nonprofit or public hospitals that have become for-profit. These conversions are controversial. Advocates argue that for-profit organizations bring needed resources and experienced ...

An examination of the relationship between physician competition and prices paid by private preferred provider organizations (PPOs) for common office visits finds that more competition is associated with lower prices paid to physicians in 10 large specialties, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. Physicians are increasingly moving away from solo and smaller practices toward larger organizations. These changes may be beneficial if larger practices with more resources are better able to coordinate care, adopt process improvements, increase use of information ...

From the perspective of the insurers and patients, between 2009 and 2012, hospital-owned physician organizations in California incurred higher expenditures for commercial health maintenance organization enrollees for professional, hospital, laboratory, pharmaceutical and ancillary services than did physician-owned organizations, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. Hospitals and multihospital systems are acquiring medical groups and physician practices as part of a strategy to build integrated delivery systems capable of providing the full range of ...

About two-thirds of FDA recalled dietary supplements analyzed still contained banned drugs at least 6 months after being recalled, according to a study in the October 22/29 issue of JAMA. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initiates class I drug recalls when products have the reasonable possibility of causing serious adverse health consequences or death. Recently, the FDA has used class I drug recalls in an effort to remove dietary supplements adulterated with pharmaceutical ingredients from U.S. markets. Prior research has found that even after FDA recalls, ...

Berkeley — The trend of hospitals consolidating medical groups and physician practices in an effort to improve the coordination of patient care is backfiring and increasing the cost of patient care, according to a new study led by the University of California, Berkeley. The counterintuitive findings, published today (Tuesday, Oct. 21) in the Journal of the American Medical Association, come as a growing number of local hospitals and large, multi-hospital systems in this country are acquiring physician groups and medical practices. "This consolidation is meant ...

From AGU's blogs: How rain falls – not just how much – may alter landslide risk New research finds that it's not just the amount of rain that falls on a hillside, but the pattern of rainfall that matters when trying to determine how likely a slope is to give way. This new information could improve forecasts of landslides, which are typically hard to predict, said the scientists conducting the research. Different rainfall patterns—a short, heavy deluge, a light, steady downpour, or sporadic showers—will trigger different numbers of landslides ...

To reduce the risk of bone fractures and the complications arising from them, the United States Preventive Services Task force (USPSTF) recommends that all women age 65 and older be tested and treated for low bone mineral density. The task force also recommends that postmenopausal women aged 50 to 64, get bone mineral density screenings if their 10-year probability of suffering a hip, vertebral, humerus or wrist fracture is 9.3 percent or greater, based on the Fracture Risk Assessment Tool. A new UCLA-led study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, ...

Philadelphia, Oct. 21, 2014 – A case study published recently in the journal Pediatrics describes an innovative, minimally invasive procedure that treated plastic bronchitis, a potentially life-threatening disease, in a six-year-old boy with a heart condition. Using new lymphatic imaging tools and catheterization techniques, physician-researchers eliminated bronchial casts, which are an accumulation of lymphatic material that clogged the child's airway. "Our technique represents a new treatment option for plastic bronchitis, which is a rare but often fatal complication ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Playing violent video games in 3-D makes everything seem more real – and that may have troubling consequences for players, a new study reveals. Researchers found that people who played violent video games in 3-D showed more evidence of anger afterward than did people who played using traditional 2-D systems -- even those with large screens. The higher anger in 3-D players was connected to the fact that, compared to 2-D players, they were more likely to feel they were "immersed in the game," said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The double-whammy of marital hostility and a history of depression can increase the risk for obesity in adults by altering how the body processes high-fat foods, according to new research. In the study, men and women with a history of depression whose arguments with spouses were especially heated showed several potential metabolic problems after eating a high-fat meal. They burned fewer calories and had higher levels of insulin and spikes of triglycerides – a form of fat in the blood – after eating a heavy meal when compared to participants ...

A new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) identifies a new cell signaling pathway that contributes to the development and progression of inflammatory bone erosion, which occurs in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Rheumatoid arthritis is a systemic inflammatory autoimmune disease that affects millions of adults worldwide. Bone erosion in joints is a major cause of disability in RA patients. The study, titled "RBP-J imposes a requirement for ITAM-mediated costimulation of osteoclastogenesis," was published online in the Journal of Clinical ...

A new approach for responding to and managing disease outbreaks is being proposed by a team of epidemiologists led by two Penn State University researchers. The team's flexible approach could save many lives and millions of dollars. The approach, called "adaptive management," allows decision-makers to use knowledge they gain during an outbreak to update ongoing interventions with the goal of containing outbreaks more quickly and efficiently. Current efforts to prevent or stem such outbreaks may fall short because of uncertainty and limited information about the real-time ...

Research by a team of epidemiologists from the UK and the USA has proposed a new approach for responding to and managing disease outbreaks. They say lives and money could be saved if decisions are adapted to relevant information about the dynamics of the current crisis and not based on retrospective analyses of prior crises, trials and interventions. Dr Michael Tildesley, a lecturer in infectious disease modelling in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at The University of Nottingham and co-author of the paper, said: "Organisations involved in the outbreak of ...

What is the best way to handle a disease outbreak? Current efforts to prevent or stem such outbreaks may fall short because of uncertainty and limited information about the real-time dynamics of the specific disease outbreak. A team of epidemiologists, led by two Penn State University researchers, proposes a new approach for responding to and managing disease outbreaks -- a flexible approach that could save many lives and millions of dollars. The approach, called "adaptive management," allows decision-makers to use knowledge they gain during an outbreak to update ongoing ...

In 2005, in a landmark paper viewed well over a million times, John Ioannidis explained in PLOS Medicine why most published research findings are false. To coincide with PLOS Medicine's 10th anniversary he responds to the challenge of this situation by suggesting how the research enterprise could be improved. Research, including medical research, is subject to a range of biases which mean that misleading or useless work is sometimes pursued and published while work of value is ignored. The risks and rewards of academic careers, the structures and habits of peer reviewed ...

Cesarean delivery is the most common inpatient surgery in the United States. US cesarean rates increased from 20.7% in 1996 to 32.9% in 2009 but have since stabilized, with 1.3 million American women having had a cesarean delivery in 2011. Rates of cesarean delivery vary across hospitals, and understanding reasons for the variation could help shed light on practices related to cesarean delivery. Katy Kozhimannil (University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, USA) and colleagues S.V. Subramanian and Mariana Arcaya (Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, ...

personalised nutrition based on an individual's genotype - nutrigenomics - could have a major impact on reducing lifestyle-linked diseases such as obesity, heart disease and Type II diabetes a study of more than 9,000 volunteers reveals strict regulations need to be put in place before nutrigenomics becomes publicly acceptable due to people's fears around personal data protection led by Newcastle University, UK, and involving experts from the universities of Ulster, Bradford, Porto (Portugal) and Wageningen (Netherlands), the study is the first to assess consumer acceptance ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Oct. 21, 2014 -- University of Oregon chemists have devised a way to see the internal structures of electronic waves trapped in carbon nanotubes by external electrostatic charges. Carbon nanotubes have been touted as exceptional materials with unique properties that allow for extremely efficient charge and energy transport, with the potential to open the way for new, more efficient types of electronic and photovoltaic devices. However, these traps, or defects, in ultra-thin nanotubes can compromise their effectiveness. Using a specially built microscope ...

MADISON, Wis. — As Dane County begins the long slide into winter and the days become frostier this fall, three spots stake their claim as the chilliest in the area. One is a cornfield in a broad valley and two are wetlands. In contrast, the isthmus makes an island — an urban heat island. In a new study published this month in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers highlight the urban heat island effect in Madison: The city's concentrated asphalt, brick and concrete lead to higher temperatures than ...

BETHESDA, MD – Age-related loss of the Y chromosome (LOY) from blood cells, a frequent occurrence among elderly men, is associated with elevated risk of various cancers and earlier death, according to research presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2014 Annual Meeting in San Diego. This finding could help explain why men tend to have a shorter life span and higher rates of sex-unspecific cancers than women, who do not have a Y chromosome, said Lars Forsberg, PhD, lead author of the study and a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden. LOY, ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – Chest pain doesn't necessarily come from the heart. An estimated 200,000 Americans each year experience non-cardiac chest pain, which in addition to pain can involve painful swallowing, discomfort and anxiety. Non-cardiac chest pain can be frightening for patients and result in visits to the emergency room because the painful symptoms, while often originating in the esophagus, can mimic a heart attack. Current treatment — which includes pain modulators such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) — has a partial 40 to 50 ...

Customized genome editing – the ability to edit desired DNA sequences to add, delete, activate or suppress specific genes – has major potential for application in medicine, biotechnology, food and agriculture. Now, in a paper published in Molecular Cell, North Carolina State University researchers and colleagues examine six key molecular elements that help drive this genome editing system, which is known as CRISPR-Cas. NC State's Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, an associate professor of food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences, and Dr. Chase Beisel, an assistant ...

A longstanding question among scientists is whether evolution is predictable. A team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara may have found a preliminary answer. The genetic underpinnings of complex traits in cephalopods may in fact be predictable because they evolved in the same way in two distinct species of squid. Last, year, UCSB professor Todd Oakley and then-Ph.D. student Sabrina Pankey profiled bioluminescent organs in two species of squid and found that while they evolved separately, they did so in a remarkably similar manner. Their findings are published today in ...