For a mere 68 cents per day, you simply can't afford
to miss out!
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If
your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more,
you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
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Featured Business
MedaBytes is a part of the Maricopa County Medical Society's family of
businesses. We were established to assist the medical community with their
computer and networking needs.
Like the other family members, MedaBytes strives
to offer a valuable service at a fair price.
www.medabytes.com
602.253.2983 |
Volunteer Opportunity - TOPS (Team of Physicians for Students)
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The
Maricopa County Medical Society would like to invite you to participate in
volunteering at this year's TOPS events which
will take place on Saturday, April 25th,
2009 from 7am to 5pm, at Mesquite High School in Gilbert and/or on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at Sunnyslope
High School from 7am to 5pm in Phoenix (shifts are available from 7am to 1pm, 11am to 5pm and
an all day shift).
At these events, free pre-participation
sports physical screenings will be performed for underserved high school
athletes whose parents cannot afford the sports medicine physical screening
that the high schools require. Last
year, TOPS performed over 2500 physicals and expects to be equally as busy this
year, with students from over 60 high schools in the valley represented.
For more information, please visit our website:
www.mcmsonline.com
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Free Asthma Screening
Program
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May 9, 2009
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Scottsdale
Healthcare Conference Room 7300
3634 North
Drinkwater Blvd.
Scottsdale,
AZ 85251www.acaai.org
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Pri-Med Phoenix
Diabetes in Depth 2009
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Diabetes In Depth is a 1-day CME program presented by Pri-Med in
collaboration with the American Diabetes Association. At the program,
expert faculty will present clinically relevant practice and patient
care issues in diabetes diagnosis and treatment. Our interactive
sessions and workshops are aimed to better help you educate and manage
your diabetic patients.
May 14th, 2009
Hyatt Regency Phoenix
To register, please visit:
www.primed.com
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SAVE 50%
Refer a new member and save 50% on your MCMS membership dues!
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Maricopa County
Medical Society
326 E. Coronado Road
Phoenix, AZ 85004
Phone: 602.251.2015
Fax: 602.256.2749
Serving medicine,
serving the community
since 1892...
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InforMed Society is published by the Maricopa County Medical Society.
Copyright © 2009
Questions or Comments, please email us at:
InforMed@mcmsonline.com
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From the President...
All Aboard the Train to Reformville!
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Brian R. Riveland, MD
The Health Care Reform train is gaining steam and rolling
down the track. The flurry of activity
and speculation is staggering; it is rather difficult to keep up with. So to help us all jump on the train we are
going to have a little quiz this month.
Question #1:
What is "ARRA"?
A: The 70's pop group, made up of Agnes, Ralph, Roberta and
Arnold who's single," Poppa Pia" did not quite make it on the charts
B: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The answer of course is B.
I am certain you all have looked at all the provisions in this act and
have read the 470 pages. In case you haven't, you may not be surprised to learn
that there is much affecting medicine and much having nothing to do with
economic stimulus. Among the items you
may find interesting:
There is considerable expansion of the privacy provisions
(HIPAA) to include definition of penalties and other enforcement
provisions. There are subsidies and
expansion of COBRA provisions, matching federal funds for Medicaid. It establishes a new council for Comparative
Effectiveness Research to strengthen the delivery of evidence based medicine
and decrease duplication of services.
There is funding for Prevention and Wellness, Community Health
Centers, Indian Health
Service and Research. There is funding
to increase training of primary care providers (no mention of improving
reimbursement however).
Read more....
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FDA Warns: Avoid Pistachios Amid Salmonella Scare
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In another food scare sure to rattle consumers who watched the national
salmonella outbreak in peanuts unfold, federal food officials are now warning
people not to eat any food containing pistachios, which could carry
contamination from the same bacteria.
The Food
and Drug Administration said central California-based Setton Pistachio of Terra
Bella Inc., the nation's second-largest pistachio processor, was voluntarily recalling more
than 2 million pounds of its roasted nuts shipped since last
fall.
"Our advice
to consumers is that they avoid eating pistachio products, and that they hold
onto those products," said Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food
safety. "The number of products that are going to be recalled over the coming
days will grow, simply because these pistachio nuts have then been repackaged
into consumer-level containers."
For more information...
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2009 Blow the Whistle on Asthma
Asthma Walk
Saturday April 4th, 2009
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The American Lung Association of Arizona's Blow the Whistle
on Asthma Walk will take place Saturday, April 4th at Scottsdale Civic Center. Registration begins at 8:00 AM and the walk
begins at 9:00 AM. Join us to help
Arizonans breathe easier!! Arizona has the second
highest asthma rate in the country with approximately 600,000 residents who
struggle to breathe. In addition,
asthma is the leading cause of school absenteeism and it costs this country
approximately $16 billion annually. We
need your help.
The Asthma Walk is a morning full of fun, food and fighting
lung disease. A leisurely 5K walk is
followed by a free pancake breakfast complete with toppings, live
entertainment, a kid's corner with clowns, face painting and bounce houses,
free massages and more! Bring your
family, friends, neighbors and coworkers to raise money for critical research,
local education and Camp Not-A-Wheeze, the American Lung Association's summer
camp for Arizona
children with asthma.
For more
information or to sign up today visit:
www.phoenixasthmawalk.org or call
602.258.7505
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Practices paperless before 2012 could maximize Medicare bonuses
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Physicians can earn tens of thousands in IT
incentives, but they must act quickly to achieve the biggest benefit
and avoid penalties.
The recent economic stimulus package provides a
significant investment in health information technology that could
benefit many physicians. But the government is expecting doctors to do
their part to implement health IT and is prepared to penalize those who
don't.
Over the next decade, the federal government is projected to spend
more than $35 billion on Medicare and Medicaid bonuses to physicians,
hospitals and others that adopt certified electronic health records.
Because of the Medicare penalties that eventually will apply to
nonadopters, however, the net spending level will be only about $20
billion over 10 years.
Physicians with approved EHRs in place before 2011 or 2012 will be
eligible for the maximum Medicare incentive payments allowed by the
stimulus. They will receive bonuses equal to 75% of their allowed
Medicare Part B charges -- up to a sliding cap -- in each of the five
years after adoption. The maximum of $18,000 in the first year phases
down to $2,000 in the fifth year for a total five-year bonus of up to
$44,000 for early adopters.
More information.... |
DNA terrain affects function in human genome
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Researchers have developed a novel method for detecting functional
regions of the human genome: examining its three-dimensional
(3D) structure. The new approach will help researchers use genomic
information to improve human health.
In 2003, the Human Genome Project mapped the linear order of
the 3 billion human DNA base pairs-a sequence told in an
alphabet of only 4 DNA bases. This information has helped researchers
identify countless important genes, which are the parts of the
genome that code for proteins. The human genome contains an estimated
20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding genes, far less than initially
predicted. In fact, the protein-coding genes only make up a small
fraction of the human genome-about 1.5-2%. Little is known
about the remaining 98%.
A team led by Dr. Elliott Margulies of NIH's National Human
Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), and Dr. Thomas Tullius of
Boston University hypothesized that the 3D structure of DNA could
contain important clues to the function of these non-coding regions.
However, predicting the shape of a DNA molecule based on its
sequence is tricky. Similar DNA sequences can have different
3D structures, while different sequences can have comparable
structures.
Read complete article... |
Researchers identify genetic variations that may increase risk of breast cancer
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Researchers
have identified new genetic variations in two regions of DNA - located on
chromosomes 1 and 14 - that may be associated with the risk of sporadic breast
cancer. This study also confirms some of the previously identified associations
between specific regions in the genome and breast cancer risk. The findings are
reported by the Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS) team, which
includes researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the
National Institutes of Health. The study appears online March 29, 2009, in
Nature Genetics.
Nearly
every cell in the human body contains 46 chromosomes - tightly packed bundles of
DNA, half which came from each parent. While the DNA of any two people is more
than 99 percent the same, the fraction of DNA that varies among individuals can
play an important role in risk of disease. The most common type of variation,
called a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), affects just a single building
block of DNA. SNPs are used in genome-wide association studies to identify
chromosome regions that are associated with
disease.
Read more.... |
Researchers decipher blood stem cell attachment, communication
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Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have deciphered a key sequence
of events governing whether the stem cells that produce red and white blood
cells remain anchored to the bone marrow, or migrate into the circulatory system.
An understanding of the factors that govern migration of blood stem cells might
lead to improved treatment of leukemia, a cancer that affects circulating white
blood cells. The findings also have implications for culturing infection-fighting
immune cells outside the body, where they could be temporarily held in storage
during chemotherapy and other treatments which suppress the immune system.
Moreover, the findings could contribute to a strategy for growing large quantities
of red blood cells in laboratory dishes outside the body, to reduce the need
for blood donations.
Previously, researchers thought that the cellular environment in
which the stem cells reside produced the chemical signals that
determined whether the cells would be stationary or free-floating. The
current study provides evidence that the stem cells produce chemical
signals of their own that may, in turn, influence the chemical signals
they receive from their environment.
"This important discovery will advance our understanding of how blood
cells and immune cells are generated," said Duane Alexander, M.D.,
director of the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Read more.... |
Become a Role Model to the Future
Physicians of Arizona
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Have you ever considered becoming a mentor and role model to
a first-year medical student? Here's your
chance!
The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, in partnership with
Arizona State University,
places a high priority on early and continuous clinical training. All first- and second-year medical students
spend one half-day, every other week, in a primary care setting working with a
physician mentor. This part of the curriculum
is called the Longitudinal Clinical Experience (LCE).
Physician mentors are primary care internists, pediatricians
and family physicians. Mentors work with
the same student for two years. This
provides the opportunity to develop a close and long lasting relationship. Being a mentor allows you to be involved in
medical education and shaping the career of a young physician, with a time
commitment that is very manageable. The
student works with the mentor in their clinical setting, gradually assuming an
increasing level of patient care responsibilities.
There are a number of benefits to being a physician mentor,
in addition to the satisfaction of forming a long lasting relationship with a
young physician in training. As a mentor,
you will receive a UA College of Medicine faculty title that allows full
electronic access into the medical library and a discount at the UA bookstore.
Anyone interested in being a mentor or in learning more
about this possibility should contact Greg Lewis, M.D. by emailing or calling
the LCE Coordinator, Candace Johnston, at johnstonc@email.arizona.edu or
602-827-2006.
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