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not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Harold R. McAlindon |
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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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Electronic Health Record Czar sees hurdles for Incentive Plan
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President Barack Obama's point person for digitizing healthcare says
the plan to incentivize physicians to adopt electronic health records
(EHRs) could falter if eligibility requirements are too ambitious in
the April 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). EHR experts couldn't agree with him more. Keep it simple, they told Medscape Medical News.
Appointed last month as the national coordinator for health
information technology in the Department of Health and Human Services,
internist David Blumenthal, MD, will play a key role in implementing a
portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dubbed the Health
Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
Under HITECH, physicians who demonstrate "meaningful use" of an EHR
system can receive $44,000 over 5 years through Medicare or almost
$65,000 over 6 years through Medicaid. The first year to qualify for
these payments is 2011. Medicare reimbursements progressively shrink
for physicians still using paper charts by 2015. The law creates
bonuses and penalties for hospitals, too, as previously reported by Medscape Medical News.
The law's goal is not just putting a computer in every exam room, but
instead improving the healthcare of every patient who walks into the
exam room, and cutting costs in the process - hence the emphasis on
meaningful use.
For more information...
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Self-insured companies going after doctors to recover "overpaid" claims
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When Snellville, Ga., internist Joel Fine, MD, read a
note from a company called Health Research Insights, he thought it
sounded a little bit like a chain letter -- vaguely threatening,
insistent on a quick response, with few details.
The letter, addressed "Dear Health Care Professional," accused Dr.
Fine of upcoding four claims for treating Georgia-Pacific employees.
The earliest dated back to February 2005. "Of course, I was offended,"
Dr. Fine said.
HRI's letter offered him two choices: pay $347 to "immediately settle
this issue" or send complete records proving he did not incorrectly
bill for the visits in question. The letter warned that if Dr. Fine did
not pay HRI or contact them with records to prove his innocence, his
case could be turned over to federal authorities.
Read complete article...
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Medicine slams FTC over forcing physicians to police identity theft
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Organized medicine and the Federal Trade Commission
continue to joust over the application to physicians of new identity
theft prevention rules. With a May 1 compliance date just around the
corner, neither party shows signs of capitulation.
The FTC regulations require a variety of business entities -- mainly
financial and banking institutions -- to implement a written program
for preventing identity theft as well as detecting and responding to
warning signs of such incidents. The commission maintains that when
physicians defer payment for services, they become creditors --
entities that regularly extend, renew or continue credit -- under the
"red flag" rules.
The American Medical Association and dozens of state and specialty
medical societies repeatedly have objected to what they believe is an
unreasonably broad application of the regulations, as well as a lack of
forewarning by the FTC.
Read more.... |
Age-related macular degeneration prevalence due to explode by 2050
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The number of cases of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) will
increase substantially between 2010 and 2050 in the United States as
the population ages, according to the results of a simulation model of
future AMD rates published in the April issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.
However, the use of antioxidant vitamins and other new therapies can
reduce the resulting visual impairment and blindness by as much as 35%,
researchers say.
"Newly discovered prophylactic and treatment therapies for AMD offer
substantial improvements over past therapies and could potentially
offset some degree of future AMD morbidity," write David B. Rein, PhD,
from the Research Triangle Institute International in Research Triangle
Park, North Carolina, and colleagues from the Vision Health
Cost-Effectiveness Study Group. "If widely adopted, new AMD treatments
could alter the future burden of the disease by delaying the onset of
advanced AMD and by diminishing the visual impact of [choroidal
neovascularization (CNV)]."
More information.... |
| FDA issues safety labeling changes for Kaletra
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved changes on April
6 to the product label for lopinavir/ritonavir tablets and oral
solution (Kaletra, Abbott Pharmaceuticals) and also issued a new
medication guide. The new labeling changes include warnings and
precautions regarding QT/QTC interval and PR interval prolongation.
According to the revised label, in some patients,
lopinavir/ritonavir prolongs the PR interval, and cases of second- or
third-degree atrioventricular block have been reported. In patients who
may be at increased risk of developing cardiac conduction
abnormalities, such as those with underlying structural heart disease,
preexisting conduction system abnormalities, ischemic heart disease, or
cardiomyopathies, lopinavir/ritonavir should be used with caution.
The effect on the PR interval of coadministration of
lopinavir/ritonavir with other drugs that prolong the PR interval has
not yet been determined. Coadministration of lopinavir/ritonavir with
calcium channel blockers, beta-adrenergic blockers, digoxin, or
atazanavir should be undertaken with caution, and clinical monitoring
is recommended, especially for those drugs metabolized by CYP3A.
Read more.... |
Efalizumab withdrawn from US market
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Efalizumab (Raptiva, Genentech, Inc) is undergoing a
voluntary, phased withdrawal in US markets because of a potential risk
to patients of developing progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
(PML).
Efalizumab will no longer be available in the United States after
June 8, 2009, and healthcare providers are being asked not to initiate
treatment in new patients.
"The intent of the phased withdrawal is to provide sufficient time
for prescribers to identify their patients on Raptiva, inform them that
they need to discontinue treatment, and plan a careful transition to
alternative psoriasis therapies as appropriate," the manufacturers
state in a letter to healthcare professionals.
According to a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) statement, the
risk that an individual patient taking efalizumab will develop PML is
rare and is generally associated with long-term use. "Generally, PML
occurs in people whose immune systems have been severely weakened and
often leads to an irreversible decline in neurologic function and
death," the FDA notes.
For more information...
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Stem cell transplantation may be helpful in Type 1 Diabetes
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Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in patients with
newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM) helped patients achieve
long-term insulin independence and improved beta-cell function,
according to the results of a prospective phase 1/2 study reported in
the April 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"In 2007, the effects of the autologous nonmyeloablative [HSCT] in
15 patients with type 1 [DM] were reported," write Carlos E.B. Couri,
MD, PhD, from School of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, University of São
Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, and colleagues. "Most patients became
insulin free with normal levels of glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)
during a mean 18.8-month follow-up. To investigate if this effect was
due to preservation of beta-cell mass, continued monitoring was
performed of C-peptide levels after stem cell transplantation in the 15
original and 8 additional patients."
Read more.... |
Ovarian Cancer screening fails to detect early-stage disease
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Screening for ovarian cancer fails to detect early disease and leads
to a high rate of unnecessary surgeries, according to new data from the
large Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening
Trial. In addition, the data so far have failed to provide clear
evidence of an association between screening and ovarian-cancer-related
mortality.
Screening for ovarian cancer was carried out with both transvaginal
ultrasonography and the serum biomarker CA 125, and the results are
reported in the April issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
According to an accompanying editorial, on the basis of these and
other data, there does not appear to be a benefit in screening the
general population with the combination of these 2 tests.
The low prevalence of ovarian cancer is the "real enemy of
screening," writes the editorialist, David G. Mutch, MD, from the
department of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington School of
Medicine, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Any test that is designed or that is being used to detect ovarian
cancer "must have an unusually high sensitivity and specificity to have
a positive-predictive value that is sufficient to make it worthwhile to
perform a relatively risky procedure (surgical removal of the ovaries)
on a patient with a positive test," Dr. Mutch comments.
Read on...
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