By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor http://features.us.reuters.com WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dr. Howard Stark’s office is quiet. Very quiet. No patients sit in his waiting room. No receptionist answers the telephone. Stark does not have a receptionist. Instead, he and his assistant Michele Norris-Bell check e-mail alerts on handheld devices and — between seeing patients […]

By ERIC RUTH, The News Journal http://www.delawareonline.com The state’s insurance commissioner says he won’t give up this year on several reforms that have been rebuffed by the Legislature, and will expand his agenda to include a few new causes. Outgoing Insurance Commissioner Matt Denn, who is in a Democratic primary race for lieutenant governor, said […]

At the same time, MedPAC calls for physicians to receive a 1.1% raise next year. By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. http://www.ama-assn.org Even with Medicare payments to physicians still in doubt for the final half of this year, lawmakers and their Medicare advisers already are thinking about how much doctors will be paid next year. If […]

Doctors branch out into cosmetic medicine Sofia Kosmetatos / The Detroit News When Lynn Montemayor wanted sunspots on her nose removed this year, she turned to her obstetrician-gynecologist. Ditto for microdermabrasion to rejuvenate her skin, and for Restylane injections to fill out smile lines. It didn’t matter to Montemayor that her doctor wasn’t a skin […]

http://www.dcmedmalblog.com Hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. face the prospect of a life-threatening asthma attack at a time when they have no health insurance, according to a new study recently published in the journal Ambulatory Pediatrics. Researchers utilized data collected in 2003 and 2004 at the National Center for Health Statistics and determined […]

http://www.earthtimes.org MyMedicalRecords.com, Inc. (“MMR”), a leading provider of Web-based Personal Health Records (“PHR”), has introduced MMR Pro, an easy-to-use, low-cost system to enable physicians and other healthcare providers to store their paper-based patient medical records in a secure online environment without requiring upfront costs for special hardware or software. There is mounting pressure from the […]

by: Bobby Shuttleworth http://www.waff.com The state’s free clinics may be getting help from state Senator Arthur Orr. He’s pushing a bill that would let retired doctors practice medicine, while the state pays for their malpractice insurance. This measure will benefit both doctor’s and patients.

State medical group plans to seek greater oversight By GETAHN WARD • Staff Writer Johnny Daniels has a doctor, but after feeling dizzy one afternoon last week, he went to the Take Care Health Clinic inside a Walgreens drugstore near his home in Hermitage. “It was convenient, fast, I didn’t have to wait and the […]

By Bruce Japsen | Tribune staff reporter http://www.chicagotribune.com The nation’s hospitals, which have enjoyed steady and even improving finances in recent years, could see some rough times ahead, according to a new report. New York-based Moody’s Investors Service, which provides financial ratings and evaluates debt of the nation’s nonprofit hospitals, said its “stableâ€? outlook for […]