Clinical

The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) has endorsed a bill announced this week in the U.S. House of Representatives that would increase federal support and payments for telehealth services. The bill, the Telehealth Promotion Act of 2012 was sponsored by Representative Mike Thompson (D-CA 1), and would establish a federal reimbursement policy, which would preclude the exclusion of service solely because it was provided via a telecommunications system.

Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person's medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes.

The rate of people who seek preventive cancer screenings has fallen over the last ten years in the United States with wide variations between white-collar and blue-collar workers, according to a University of Miami Miller School of Medicine study.

An analysis of nationally representative survey data found significant improvement in the delivery of underused care, but more limited changes in the reduction of inappropriate care in ambulatory health care settings between 1998 and 2009, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine.

In an analysis of national malpractice claims, Johns Hopkins patient safety researchers estimate that a surgeon in the United States leaves a foreign object such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient's body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week.