Returning by Popular Demand! ASIPP Plans Cadavar Workshop and Ultrasound for Non-Spinal Interventions in Vegas

ASIPP has scheduled a Cadaver Workshop for Basic, Intermediate and Advanced (Disc Interventions) and an Ultrasound for Non-Spinal Injections Course. to be held Aug. 22-24 in Las Vegas.

 Description

This 2½ day review course and cadaver workshop includes interventional

techniques (basic, intermediate, and advanced), Ultrasound for non-spinal

injections, and Disc Interventions (advanced). Participants experience

a comprehensive and intense learning opportunity, focusing on

interventional pain management techniques

Ob jectives

After this course, participants should be able to:

- Describe the delivery of multiple aspects of interventional pain

management.

- Review multiple areas of interventional pain management including

fluoroscopic interpretation and radiation safety

-           Demonstrate skills through interactive review of images

Category I Credit

The Institute for Medical Studies designates this educational activity for

a maximum of 15.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.

Acc ommodations

Planet Hollywood

3667 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV 89109

(866) 317-8289

Brochure 

Register Online

Economists Debate: Has All the Important Stuff Already Been Invented?

EVANSTON, Ill.- Robert Gordon, a curmudgeonly 73-year-old economist, believes our best days are over. After a century of life-changing innovations that spurred growth, he says, human progress is slowing to a crawl.

Joel Mokyr, a cheerful 67-year-old economist, imagines a coming age of new inventions, including gene therapies to prolong our life span and miracle seeds that can feed the world without fertilizers.

Wall Street Journal 

Clinton Finds Hurdles on Book Tour

It was supposed to be an easy re-entry into the world of campaign-style politics, a book rollout that put Hillary Clinton in front of adoring crowds and handpicked interviewers from the national media.

Yet Week One of Mrs. Clinton's book tour proved a tougher slog than the once-and-probably-future presidential candidate might have preferred. Mrs. Clinton looked unpolished in some of her appearances, critics said, fueling perceptions that she's out of practice after a six-year sabbatical from the rough-and-tumble of national politics.

She sounded tone deaf when she talked about her family emerging from the White House in 2001 "dead broke," gliding over the reality that her husband possessed earning potential that no ordinary American could match.

Wall Street Journal

Access to this article may be limited.

Medical Merger Part of 'Tax Inversion' Wave

Medtronic Inc. MDT -0.15% 's agreement on Sunday to buy rival medical-device maker CovidienCOV -0.03% PLC for $42.9 billion is the latest in a wave of recent moves designed-at least in part-to sidestep U.S. corporate taxes.

Covidien's U.S. headquarters are in Mansfield, Mass., where many of its executives are based. But officially it is domiciled in Ireland, which is known for having a relatively low tax rate: The main corporate rate in Ireland is 12.5%. In the U.S., home to Medtronic, the 35% tax rate is among the world's highest.

Such so-called "tax inversion" deals have become increasingly popular, especially among health-care companies, many of which have ample cash abroad that would be taxed should they bring it back to the U.S. Most notably, Pfizer Inc. PFE +0.27% recently mounted an aborted takeover bid for the U.K.'s AstraZenecaAZN.LN -0.66% PLC, in what would have been a roughly $120 billion deal in part using its foreign cash and aimed at lowering the U.S. drug maker's corporate tax rate.

Wall Street Journal 

Access to this article may be limited.

20 Highest Hospital Payments for Physician Services

Hospitals with the highest payments to physicians for ED, anesthesiology, radiology and ICU payments

Every year, all U.S. hospitals participating in the Medicare program disclose the amounts they paid to physicians for both professional coverage and administrative services. Healthcare Transaction Advisors has analyzed this payment data for 2012 and identified some of the highest dollar amounts paid to physicians by hospital department.

Highest physician payments for emergency department

1.    Intermountain Medical Center (Murray, Utah) - $30.19 million
2.    Southcoast Hospitals Group Inc. (Fall River, Mass.) - $24.22 million
3.    Enloe Medical Center (Chico, Calif.) - $24.05 million
4.    New York Presbyterian Hospital (New York) - $22.03 million
5.    Brackenridge Hospital (Austin, Texas ) - $20.94 million

Total number of reporting hospitals paying physicians for emergency department services: 3,586
Total amount paid: $5.68 billion

Highest physician payments for anesthesiology department

1.    UPMC - Presbyterian Shadyside (Pittsburgh) - $58.23 million
2.    UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco) - $34.59 million
3.    Stanford Hospital & Clinics (Palo Alto, Calif.) - $30.88 million
4.    University Of Michigan Hospitals & Health Centers (Ann Arbor, Mich.) - $30.48 million
5.    Scott & White Memorial Hospital (Temple, Texas) - $17.45 million + $2.49 million for children's anesthesiology

Total number of reporting hospitals paying physicians for anesthesiology department services: 1,405
Total amount paid: $1.88 billion

Becker Hospital Review

New Ways to Screen for Colon Cancer

Colon-cancer screening may soon become less invasive, more accurate-and more prevalent.

That's thanks to new methods and devices either already on the market or pending regulatory approval. The technologies include a video camera embedded in a pill capsule, a DNA test and an endoscope that provides almost panoramic views of the colon.

Experts say such devices could play an important role in reducing deaths attributed to colon cancer-nearly 51,000 in the U.S. last year. But each faces barriers, including U.S. Food and Drug Administration restrictions, that may limit widespread adoption in the near term.

Wall Street Journal

Access to this article may be limited.

Patients Struggle to Learn Health Insurance Lingo

As soon as Deb Emerson, a former high school teacher from Oroville, Calif., bought a health plan in January through the state's insurance exchange, she felt overwhelmed.

She couldn't figure out what was covered and what wasn't. Why weren't her antidepressant medications included? Why did she have to pay $60 to see a doctor? The insurance jargon -- deductible, copay, premium, co-insurance -- was like a foreign language. What did it mean?

"I have an education and I am not understanding this," said Emerson, 50. " I wonder about people who don't have an education -- how baffling this must be for them."

MedPage Today

Narrow networks reemerge under ACA exchange plans

About half of the health plans offered on the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are narrow network plans, according to a recent report released by the McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform.

In its analysis, McKinsey defined narrow networks as plans that have 31% to 70% of hospitals in the rating area participating, in contrast to broad networks, which have more than 70% of hospitals participating.

It found that 48% percent of the plans offered on the ACA exchanges are narrow networks, and those plans make up 60% of the networks in the largest cities in each state.

Medical Economics

Is There an Rx for High Drug Prices? Action Points

• Total prescription sales for the 12 months ending September 2013 were approximately $326 billion, researchers found.
• Note that growth in U.S. prescription drug expenditures is expected to increase in 2014 by 3% to 5%.

In the U.S., rising prescription drug prices are the law -- at least that's the way it looks to Leonard Saltz, MD, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

"We have several arms of the government, working in different areas, that are creating the problem," Saltz told MedPage Today during the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

MedPage Today

This Country Has the Best Health Care in the World (Nope, It's Not the U.S.)

Our cousins across the pond in the U.K. are known for complaining about the National Health Service's notoriously long wait times for surgery and other medical treatment. But according to the latest report from the nonpartisan health organization the Commonweath Fund, that nation's publicly funded system is the best in the world. Meanwhile, for those of us living in the colonies, the report ranks health care in the United States in an abysmal last place.

To create its quadrennial rankings of health care systems in 11 of the most prosperous nations in North America, Europe, and Australasia, the fund crunches data on well-being from a slew of international policy and think tanks, including the World Health Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Along with being bested by the U.K., America's health care system ranked worse than those of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.

Yahoo News 

AMA adopts new telemedicine reimbursement policy

The American Medical Association (AMA) has adopted a new set of telemedicine standards and safeguards intended to ensure appropriate reimbursement, codify standards of care, and improve access to remote medical care for patients who may benefit from telehealth activities.  Telemedicine is a "key innovation" that will further the goals of healthcare reform, the AMA asserts, and help the organization reach its three primary objectives: improving health outcomes, accelerating change in medical education, and enhancing physician satisfaction and practice sustainability by shaping delivery and payment models.

"Whether a patient is seeing his or her physician in person or via telemedicine, the same standards of care for the patient must be maintained," said newly inaugurated AMA President Dr. Robert Wah. "Telemedicine can strengthen the patient-physician relationship and improve access to receive care remotely, as medically appropriate, including treatment for chronic conditions, which are proven ways to improve health outcomes and reduce health care costs."

HER Intelligence