Wednesday Bible Study: Turnabout
In Ch. 6, Haman gets his rude awakening. There is a continuity problem, however, because the king already knew that Mordecai had tipped him off to Bigthana and Teresh, as recounted explicitly in Ch. 2. But we ' ll take it that he needed reminding -- too much banqueting, I guess. 6 That night the king could not sleep; so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him.2 It
was found recorded there that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh,
two of the king ’s officers who guarded the doorway, who had conspired
to assassinate King Xerxes.3 “What h...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
CloudMD Divests Non-Core U.S. Electronic Medical Records and Practice Management Business
CloudMD Software & Services Inc. (CloudMD), an innovative health services company transforming the delivery of care, today announced that it has closed the sale of its U.S.-based Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Practice Management (PM), and Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) assets for approximately US$6.3 million. The sale was pursuant to a definitive agreement with a subsidiary of N. Harris Computer Corporation (Harris) and follows the sale of CloudMD’s Canadian EMR business in October 2022.
Karen Adams, CEO at CloudMD, commented, “We continue to successfully execute our strategy of focusing on our higher growth an...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - July 25, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP CloudMD CloudMD Software & Services Inc. EMR Harris Health IT Acquisitions Healthcare M&A INFOR Financial Inc. Karen Adams N. Harris Computer Corporation Source Type: blogs
Play
I came downstairs yesterday morning and looked out the window, to see a doe and two fawns grazing on my lawn. Evidently they were finding something worth eating among the crabgrass. But the fawns weren ' t all that interested in breakfast. They ' d nibble a bit then gambol -- i.e. jump around -- singly or together. They ' d nuzzle the mother briefly, and she might nuzzle them back. At one point they both suddenly ran off into the woods. She just waited patiently until they came running back. They seemed to be testing or teasing her. Of course at some point she ' s going to have to let them go, but not yet. What I find...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Lobbying Efforts for the Development of Means to Treat Aging are at a Very Early Stage
That so many people turn their hand to lobbying government is a sad statement of the character of our era. Those engaged in getting things done start to feel, at some level of funding, that lobbying is a necessary defense on the one hand, against Big Pharma entities who will use regulators to impede and coerce competition, and on the other hand a way to access greater funding and publicity. The trough of public funds is ever an attractive proposition, and never as easy to access without tainting everything involved as people would like to think it is. A world with smaller, less powerful governments would be a world in whic...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 24, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Hang'em high
I just have two comments about today ' s passage. The first is that the emperor twice offers Esther half of his kingdom. This seems like quite an impulsive act, especially toward a woman he hasn ' t even bothered to see for the past month. If I were her I would have taken it -- any Jews in the other half who are in danger can come to her part. The other rather weird detail is that the gallows, that Haman builds in a single day, is 23 meters high. It seems typical in the Tanakh for numbers to be multiplied by at least ten, or to even more implausibly large. Anyway, we can see how Esther is setting up Haman for a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 23, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The corporatization of medicine: Part two
2016 was in fact the first year in which fewer than half of
physicians had an ownership stake in their practice, based on a survey by the
American Medical Association.[i] The
pace of acquisition of practices by hospitals and health systems during this
period was astonishing. From 2014-2018, just four years, corporate ownership of
practices increased from 24.1% to 45.6% of all physicians in a nationally representative
sample. After selling out, physicians actually experienced a reduction in their
income.[ii]The evidence that increasing concentration of medical
services is associated with higher prices is consistent and exte...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 21, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The corporatization of medicine: Part One
This will be a multi-part series. The days of independent community hospitals and small
physician practices are just about over. Paul Starr ’s famous book The Social
Transformation of American Medicine tells the story
of rise of a “sovereign” medical profession, consisting largely of
entrepreneurs who owned their own individual or small group practices and made
their living as independent business people. They were generally suspi cious of
alternative models such as large group practice and salaried employment. But recent
decades have been marked by one overarching trend: the consolidation of the
medical institu...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 20, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The plot thickens
There ' s nothing particularly noteworthy about Ch. 4. It advances the plot and builds suspense. Keep in mind that this story, like the Book of Ruth, is of a different character than the rest of what we have read so far. It ' s a consciously crafted work of literary fiction. I ' m not saying it would get published in The New Yorker, but it does show the rudiments of the art, particularly with plotting. Donning sackcloth -- which was apparently made out of goat or camel hair -- is a common way of showing humility before God in the Biblical world. So although God is not mentioned in Esther I suppose this at least sugges...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 19, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Hey, indeedy
Remember Jack Texeira, the Air National Guard member who was sharing top secret documents with his neo-Nazi friends on social media? His lawyers want him released pending trial, and they actually have a point, although it ' sprobably the opposite of the point they intended to make.In court papers, the defense attorneys argued that Teixeira has no
financial ability or incentive to flee, and claimed the government “greatly overexaggerates Mr. Teixeira’s risk to national security.”
Teixeira’s lawyers noted that prosecutors did not seek to detain Trump —
or his co-defendant, Walt Nauta — even though the fo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 18, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: A powerful resonance, but an inexact analogy
It ' s obvious why the Book of Esther and the festival of Purim are important to Judaism today. While the specific events in Esther are fictitious, the story does strongly suggest that even in the first diaspora, in the Persian empire, the Jews faced hostility and discrimination. That they were literally marked for extermination speaks directly to the events of the 20th Century.There are some lacunae here. The author does not explain why Mordecai would not bow down to Haman, or exactly why Haman transferred his resentment of Mordecai to the entire Jewish people. The empire was multi-ethnic and multi-lingual generally. In w...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Mindlessness
Academy Health is the rather oddly named society for health services researchers. They sent me a press release which I excerpt: Today, the House Appropriations Committee released a
breathtakingly reckless bill that decimates federal research, science,
and medicine programs, and puts the health of all Americans at risk. It
is so extreme that many pundits presume it has zero chance of becoming
law, but that very extremism requires that we respond quickly and
unequivocally. . . . " This bill would eliminate the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ) in its entirety. AHRQ supports r...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 14, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Let me set the record straight
This study of parent observations and interpretations serves to develop
the hypotheses that rapid-onset gender dysphoria is a phenomenon and
that social influences, parent-child conflict, and maladaptive coping
mechanisms may be contributing factors for some individuals. Rapid-onset
gender dysphoria (ROGD) is not a formal mental health diagnosis at this
time. This report did not collect data from the adolescents and young
adults (AYAs) or clinicians and therefore does not validate the
phenomenon. Additional research that includes AYAs, along with consensus
among experts in the field, will be needed to determine if ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 12, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Cattle call (or, Here she is, Miss Achaemenid)
I ' d be interested in hearing the reactions of some women to the story presented here. Basically, the king needs a new queen so they round up all the good looking virgins and he auditions them for a night until he finds the one he likes. Mordecai, the guardian of Hadassah aka Esther, goes along with this, as it ' s her chance to get ahead, winning the coveted title of Chief Sex Object of the Empire, and apparently it ' s fine with her as well. I wonder if the women of Hadassah, the U.S. Zionist women ' s organization, ever give a second thought to the name. I won ' t say more than that, people can read this for themselves...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 12, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Mobilization for Truth, or Survival?
Scott Frickel, of my own university, and Fernando Tormos-Aponte of the University of Pittsburgh,have recently reviewed studies of what they call " science activism " and find that it is " surging, " which they refer to as a " culture shift " among scientists. They write:Science activism has long been considered taboo, as many in the field fear thatpoliticizing science undermines its objectivity.
Even so, scientist-activists have still managed to shape the U.S.
political landscape throughout history. Over the past century, for
example, scientists have protestedthe atomic bomb,pesticides,wars in Southeast Asia,genet...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 10, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Aledade Secures $260 Million Series F Financing Round to Expand and Enhance Services for its Nationwide Network of Primary Care Practices
Company Adds Two Board Members and a Senior Executive to Lead its Medicare Advantage Business
Aledade, the largest network of independent primary care practices in the country, today announced the closing of a $260 million Series F funding round to enhance and acquire services and technology to support its practices. The round was led by new investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Venrock, Avidity Partners, OMERS Growth Equity, and Fidelity Management & Research Company.
The funds raised in this financing will be used to further accelerate the growth of Aledade’s primary care network and strate...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - July 10, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Aledade Avidity Partners Dr. David Blumenthal MD MPP Dr. Efrem Castillo Farzad Mostashari MD Fidelity Management & Research Company Galym Imanbayev MD Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Inv Source Type: blogs
