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A program that targets women at risk for premature deliveries for case management has paid off for ConnectiCare, a regional HMO based in Farmington, CT.
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A "discharge by appointment" initiative at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Towson, MD, has had some success, but is being challenged by physician delays and families who aren't arriving on time.
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Patient education must be promoted so clinicians will understand how to effectively teach patients and use the resources available to them to do a good job. Yet without support from leadership, patient education initiatives often falter.
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A combination of telephonic case management and home visits has helped Optima Health decrease preterm births and low-birth-weight infants.
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Should a pandemic strike the United States, states and local communities are ready with protective equipment and plans for allocating vaccines. But some important ethical questions aren't addressed in state pandemic flu plans, one public health expert says, and those are the issues that might derail the best-laid disaster plans.
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A bill that would make California the second state in the country to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS) has worked its way through the state assembly's Judiciary Committee, but needs to clear the state House by June 8 to be eligible for consideration this year by the state Senate.
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If there is any state that is currently a lightning rod for issues relating to futility of care, it would be Texas. Medical professionals, right-to-life and disability rights organizations, churches, and civil liberties groups are doing battle over the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA); many of the same parties have taken sides over a terminally ill Austin toddler whose mother is fighting a hospital's efforts to invoke the act to end the boy's life-sustaining treatments.
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The mass shootings at Virginia Tech in April fueled the national debate over gun control, and physicians treating those killed and injured in the rampage expressed shock at the extent of the violence.
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Arecent study suggests that emergency medicine patients may not have a high level of acceptance of the practice of providing an exemption to informed consent for research involving emergency medical settings.
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The clinical research community has begun to accept the presence of clinical trial registries, despite lingering questions about intellectual property rights and other issues.