Reporting AIDS: HIV Vaccine Trials

As a kid, growing up in California, Legend Rivera had some ideas about AIDS. Back then, he said, “it was like coodies.” In high school in the 1990’s, Rivera was taught that HIV wasn’t coodies and by practicing safer sex he could stay uninfected. However, until an outreach worker from the NYC Vaccine Trials Unit […]

The Evolution of the Pharmaceutical Industry Blogosphere

One of the first bloggers to focus on drug industry marketing, ethics and policy was John Mack, journalist and publisher of the popular e-newsletter Pharma Marketing News. Mack’s candid and timely commentary earned him a mention in the Wall Street Journal as a must-read blog for industry insiders.
Over the past two […]

Three Health Care Bloggers…See How They Run

Just as user generated social media such as blogs and forums have transformed commerce by making findable authentic testimonials about products and services — healthcare is under the same pressure to become more transparent about their claims to quality and value.
As patients reject HMO’s and decide to pay more for PPOs and traditional […]

The Courage Trial - An Interview with Dr. Alan Shah

video: In this interview, Dr. Alan Shah, an attending cardiologist at NYU Medical Center discusses the merits, flaws, and impact of the new Courage trial. This study compared percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to optimal medical therapy in the treatment of stable coronary artery disease (CAD), and found similar outcomes with both treatments.

While there have been smaller studies with similar findings, Dr.Shah found this study to be impressive because it involved a large number of patients (2,287) and because aggressive medical therapy was used.

Integrating Medical and Wellness Programs

Medicine and wellness do not necessarily go hand-in-hand in today’s medical environment. Health care providers and patients are beginning to realize that medicine’s mechanistic approach to healing is far from ideal. The average length of the patient-doctor exchange hovers between four and eight minutes, enough time to write a prescription but not enough time for […]

Medical Tourism: Evaluating International Markets

Medical tourism has become a booming global industry. As health care costs fly high in the United States, some patients are taking their medical business across borders and into the hospitals of Mexico, Thailand, Singapore, India, and other countries where the cost of surgery and other procedures is lower. Many of the hospitals in these […]

Celebrating The Healthcare Entrepreneur

Gary Ahlquist, senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton, presents specialized perspectives, including the strategy-driven transformation of insurance companies, health plans, and health providers.
“It’s clear that the future of health care in the U.S. will be consumer-centric, but exactly how this will play out is still coming into
focus,” Ahlquist says in a recently co-authored paper […]

What We Have Learned From The Marine Casualties Returning From War

Dr. Michael Yochelson, M.D., joins NRH as the Director of Brain Injury Programs. He obtained his B.S. from Duke University and his M.D. from George Washington University School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine internship, neurology residency and PM&R residency in the National Capital Consortium (National Naval Medical Center/Walter Reed Army Medical Center), where […]

National Nurse to Lead the Way in Health Care

Nurses are generally regarded as being kind and compassionate. What is not generally recognized is their medical expertise and the vital and often primary role a nurse plays in providing quality health care. Yet it is this combination of compassion, understanding and medical expertise that makes nurses a perfect choice as advocates and […]

Nurses Wanted… Autoworkers Could Do

The United States is facing a major nursing shortage that differs from those of bygone days. This new beast is borne of demographics: as baby-boomers grow older, the nurses at their bedsides are aging alongside them. It’s not only the nurses who are ripening; their teachers are too.
“We’ve had cyclical nursing shortages […]