American Medical Association (AMA) Blogs This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Software Marks Advances at the Connected Health Conference (Part 1 of 2)
The precepts of connected health were laid out years ago, and merely get updated with nuances and technological advances at each year’s Connected Health conference. The ideal of connected health combines matching the insights of analytics with the real-life concerns of patients; monitoring people in everyday settings through devices that communicate back to clinicians and other caregivers; and using automation to free up doctors to better carry out human contact. Pilots and deployments are being carried out successfully in scattered places, while in others connected health languishes while waiting for the slow adopti...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - October 29, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Connected Health Digital Health Digital Therapies EMR Health IT Startups Health Sensors Healthcare AI Healthcare Analytics Medical Devices mHealth Clinical Data Exchange FDA Healthcare Interoperablity Patient Engagement Pre-cer Source Type: blogs

Why SLPs Need to Pay Attention to CPT Code Surveys
Don’t delete that email! Starting Oct. 22, emails may appear in speech-language pathologists’ inboxes, and you want to pay attention to them. A response to these crucial messages can influence how payers calculate reimbursement for your services. As a practicing SLP, you can help determine fair rates by completing Current Procedural Terminology (CPT® American Medical Association) code surveys related to cognitive treatment. Are you ready to make a difference? Learn how a CPT code becomes a code and your role in the process. The American Medical Association’s step-by-step guide shows you how to accurately—and objec...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - October 17, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Neela Swanson Tags: Academia & Research Advocacy Health Care News Private Practice Schools Slider Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: blogs

AMA to Health Tech: Call a Doctor
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF Health “That’s why we’re investing so heavily in the innovation space…we look at physicians and how they’re spending their days. The amount of time they’re spending clicking away on their EHRs, wasting time – we think we can help fix it. It’s been a lot of years of other people not fixing it. We think it’s time for physicians to actually be in the rooms helping to make those solutions.” — Dr. Jack Resneck, Chairman of the Board, AMA Sounds to me like physicians are a little disappointed in health tech. Don’t get me wrong. This is not another ‘digital health snake o...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 15, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Holt Tags: Jessica DaMassa WTF Health American Medical Association Jack Resneck physician innovators Source Type: blogs

The Ivy League reduces concussion rates in football by moving the kickoff ball just five yards toward opposing team's goalpost
Following an experimental 2016 change to kickoff rules designed to encourage more touchbacks, Ivy League schools saw reduced rates of concussions on the football field.A recent study in which Brown University and the seven other Ivy League institutions participated showed that reducing kickoff returns in which players actively try to advance the ball during football games could lessen the number of concussions players suffer on the field.Results from the study, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show a sharp decrease in the rate of concussions following the Ivy League ’s d...
Source: neuropathology blog - October 14, 2018 Category: Radiology Tags: trauma Source Type: blogs

With rising obesity, microbiomes tip the scale
Human beings have grappled with obesity for thousands of years. Greek philosopher and physician Galen described “bad humors” as the cause of obesity and prescribed low-calorie foods, massages, baths, greens and garlic to his patients to help them slim down. In the 18th century, William Banting successfully lost weight following a low-carb diet and spread his mantra to the public in a pamphlet called a “Letter on Corpulence,” which sold faster than chocolates. In June 2013, the American Medical Association passed a Resolution 420 declaring obesity as a disease, paving the way for treatment reimbursement. All the whi...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 5, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/mitra-rangarajan" rel="tag" > Mitra Rangarajan, ANP-BC, MPH < /a > Tags: Conditions Gastroenterology Source Type: blogs

Challenging gender bias in the house of medicine
A guest column by the American Medical Association, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Since the 1970s, women have been carving out an increasingly large role in medicine, and the profession is becoming more representative of our society. September is Women in Medicine Month, a great time to acknowledge the changing face of medicine, but also to note that female physicians are not immune from the challenges that face women in every other workplace across the country. Today, fully half of all U.S. medical school students – and graduates – are women. And those students are receiving instruction from women more often than ever b...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 21, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/barbara-mcaneny" rel="tag" > Barbara McAneny, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Public Health & Source Type: blogs

About 1,100 Puerto Rican Deaths from Maria -- NOT 2,795 or 4,645
The estimated number of above-average “excess deaths” in Puerto Ricoattributedto Hurricane Maria (Sept 20, 2017) is a difficult figure to estimate objectively. Puerto Rico’s official figure of 64 deaths by December 9, 2017 (which the President remembered) counted only those deathsdirectlyattributed to the storm and confirmed by medical examiners. Most of thedirect deaths from Katrina were fromdrowning– which is much easier to attribute to the storm than many other causes of death. Studies of Puerto Rican deaths from Maria aspire to account for a wide range ofindirect effects that are presumed (not proven) to b...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 17, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs

Nope, “provider” still doesn’t work
In November of 2015, Dr. Suneel Dhand and William J. Carbone penned, “Physicians are not providers: An Open Letter to the AMA (American Medical Association) and medical boards.” The authors ended their piece with the following plea: “The word “provider” is a non-specific and nondescript term that confers little meaning. We, therefore, call on the American Medical Association and all state medical boards to consider discouraging and terminating the use of the word “provider.” In Dr. Dhand’s follow up piece, he waves a white flag, as he recounts a conversation with a young resident. In this conversation, Dr. ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 12, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/jennifer-weiss" rel="tag" > Jennifer Weiss, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Practice Management Source Type: blogs

Tell CMS the Payment Proposals Will Hurt Patients with Serious Illness
by Phil RodgersSubmit comments this weekend! Deadline: Monday, Sep 10, 11:59 PM ETRegular Pallimed readers willremember Amy Davis ’ excellent post regardingCMS ’ recent proposed rule updating the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program for 2019. (See thisCMS Fact Sheet to learn more). In this rule, the agency proposes historically bold changes to outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) documentation requirements and payments, among many other substantial changes in the fee-for-service Medicare program.CMS says these proposed changes are designed to " increase the amount of time that doctors and o...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - September 7, 2018 Category: Palliative Care Tags: medicare outpatient rodgers The profession Source Type: blogs

Report Says EHR Usability Tests Should Focus On Common Safety Threats
The American Medical Association and health system operator MedStar Health have published a report laying out a set of proposals designed to improve EHR safety. The report, which is also backed by The Pew Charitable Trusts, looks at ways that use of EHR usability can fail to prevent or even lead to patient harm. As readers will know, to meet certification criteria EHRs currently need to conform with EHR usability requirements established in 2015. Developers need to document how they meet clinician needs and conduct formal usability testing addressing clinicians’ efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction in using the...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - August 29, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Anne Zieger Tags: CCHIT Certification Certified EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT Hospital EHR AMA American Medical Association Center for Human Factors in Healthcare EHR Safety EHR Usability EHR U Source Type: blogs

New FDA Initiative Implies CDC Opioid Guidelines Are Not Evidence-Based
On August 22, Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb issued a press release announcing the FDA plans to contract with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to develop evidence-based guidelines for the appropriate prescribing of opioids for acute and post-surgical pain. The press release stated:The primary scope of this work is to understand what evidence is needed to ensure that all current and future clinical practice guidelines for opioid analgesic prescribing are sufficient, and what research is needed to generate that evidence in a practical and feasible manner.The FDA will ask NAS...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 23, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs

The UN ’ s Extreme Poverty Report: Further Evidence US Healthcare Is Divorced From Reality
By DAVID INTROCASO, Ph.D. In May Philip Alston, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, and John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University Law School released his, “Report of the Special Rapporteur On Extreme Poverty and Human Rights on His Mission to the United States.” The 20-page report was based, in part, on Alston’s visits this past December to California, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. After reading the report and the response to it, one is again forced to question how legitimate is our concern for the health and well being of the poor, or ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 22, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Patients human rights laws Poverty United Nations Source Type: blogs

Why Hillarycare failed …and what we need to learn from that failure
By MATTHEW HOLT In July 2005 George W Bush had relatively recently won a Presidential election in which the Republican won the popular vote (something that will likely never happen again) & the Republicans controlled all three branches of Government. Those of us liberals at the bottom of a dark trench were wondering if and how we’d get to health reform. So in another reprint to celebrate THCB’s 15th birthday, here was my then take on what went wrong in 1994 and what would happen next–Matthew Holt There are lots of versions about what killed the 1993-4 health care reform effort. Hillary C...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 14, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Matthew Holt HillaryCare Source Type: blogs

Doctors need to lead the way on divestment from fossil fuels
In the recent weeks we’ve seen frequent headlines alerting people around the country to dangerous heat waves. Physicians and nurses see these headlines and the human results of the heatwaves in the form of heat illness, people burdened with lung ailments and suffering from deteriorating air quality, and a range of individual harms brought on by wildfires and torrential downpours. Current trends in extreme temperatures are alarming and clearly linked to climate change. Amid the headlines and the spreading realization that something is different, one bold step that was taken by doctors to reverse the trend lines of c...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 31, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/mona-sarfaty" rel="tag" > Mona Sarfaty, MD, MPH < /a > Tags: Policy Public Health & Source Type: blogs

Wearables + Telephone Coaching Didn ’t Improve Peripheral Arterial Disease Symptoms
Wearables have the potential to improve our health. They can be reminders that we’re not moving enough throughout the day, and they can be useful tools for doctors to monitor the fitness progress of their patients. However, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, McDermott and her colleagues recently reported that their trial of prescribing a home-based exercise program using a wearable activity monitor (FitBit Zip) plus telephone coaching over nine months, did not improve patients’ lower extremity peripheral arterial disease (PAD), when compared to typical care that had no onsite sessions, active e...
Source: Medgadget - July 30, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Ben Ouyang Tags: Cardiology Source Type: blogs