Attorneys appeared in Alaska state court Wednesday to argue for and against a ballot initiative that would require physicians to notify the parents of minors before abortion procedures, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Attorney Jeff Feldman filed a lawsuit against the initiative’s supporters on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Alaska and other clients. According to Feldman, the initiative fails to make clear to voters that physicians could be jailed for five years if they fail to locate a parent, verify the parent’s identification and personally notify him or her of the procedure.

The ballot measure states that if a physician is unable to contact a parent, he or she should “continue to initiate the call, in not less than two-hour increments, for not less than five attempts in a 24-hour period.” If a physician informs a parent in person, the parent must present government-issued identification and “additional documentation of the person’s relationship to the minor,” such as a birth certificate or court order of adoption. If notifying a parent over the phone, a physician would be required to verify identity and guardianship “through a review of published telephone directories” and “asking questions of the person,” the proposal states.

Attorney Kevin Clarkson, who is representing the initiative’s sponsors, argued that even though the consequences were not outlined in the ballot summary, voters would be able to infer that there would be consequences for violating the law. He added that doctors would be prosecuted only if they acted in bad faith and knowingly broke the law.

Clarkson and an attorney representing the lieutenant governor, who certified the ballot language, have asked the judge to rule by March 17 to allow enough time for an appeal to the state supreme court before the ballots are released on June 3 (Cockerham, Anchorage Daily News, 2/25).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership. You can view the entire Daily Women’s Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women’s Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2010 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

If lung cancer and heart disease aren’t bad enough, cigarette smokers are also at higher risk for developing, among other things, pancreatic cancer. Now, researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia have preliminary evidence indicating one possible reason why. Data presented during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research shows that they have found that nicotine in cigarettes increases the production of a protein that is known to promote cancer cell survival, invasion and spread.

According to Hwyda Arafat, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, the protein, osteopontin, is found in a variety of fluids in the body, such as plasma, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid and breast milk. Osteopontin is also present in different organs and plays an important role during embryonic development. Recent studies have demonstrated that osteopontin levels are significantly higher in the blood and pancreas tissue of pancreatic cancer patients. The protein, when over-produced, can make cancer cells more likely to become metastatic.

Dr. Arafat wanted to see if osteopontin might play a role in the cigarette smoking-pancreatic cancer connection. In collaboration with groups at the University of Nebraska and Rutgers University, Dr. Arafat and her co-workers looked at rats exposed to cigarette smoke and measured the amount of osteopontin in the rat pancreas and blood. They found that the more cigarette smoke to which the rats were exposed, the greater the amount of nicotine in the blood and osteopontin in the pancreas.

The researchers also looked at osteopontin expression in pancreatic cancer cell lines exposed to nicotine, finding that osteopontin expression went up when the cells were exposed to more nicotine. “We found that dose-dependently, nicotine increased osteopontin expression not only through transcriptional but also translational (protein secretion) levels in pancreatic cancer cells,” Dr. Arafat explains. Pancreas tissue samples from pancreatic cancer patients also showed higher than normal levels of the protein.

Dr. Arafat believes that osteopontin could be a drug target. “We are now proposing that perhaps blocking osteopontin can interfere with the progression of pancreatic cancer and other cancers,” she says, adding that her team would like to understand more about osteopontin’s effects on pancreatic cancer cell behavior. Dr. Arafat’s group now is comparing differences in osteopontin expression between smokers and non-smokers.

“For example, if you put the cells with nicotine and block osteopontin, will the cells still be migratory? Is it osteopontin or something else in combination that is at work here?”

Pancreatic cancer, the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in this country, takes some 34,000 lives a year. The disease is difficult to treat; it frequently is detected after it has spread. Only 4 percent of individuals with pancreatic cancer live for five years after diagnosis, and about 25 percent of those who undergo successful surgical removal of their disease live at least that long.

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Source: Steve Benowitz

Thomas Jefferson University

The most frequent error in medicine seems to occur nearly one out of three times a patient is referred to a specialist. A new study found that nearly a third of patients age 65 and older referred to a specialist are not scheduled for appointments and therefore do not receive the treatment their primary care doctor intended.

According to a new study appearing in the February 2010 issue of theJournal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, only 71 percent of patients age 65 or older who are referred to a specialist are actually scheduled to be seen by that physician. Furthermore, only 70 percent of those with an appointment actually went to the specialist’s office. Thus, only 50 percent (70 percent of 71 percent) of those referred to a specialist had the opportunity to receive the treatment their primary care doctor intended them to have, according to the findings by researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine.

The Institute of Medicine, in its seminal report “To Err is Human,” defines a medical error as a “wrong plan” or a failure of a planned action to be completed.

“Patients fail to complete referrals with specialists for a variety of reasons, including those that the health care system can correct, such as failure of the primary care doctor’s office to make the appointment; failure of the specialist’s office to receive the request for a consultation – which can be caused by something as simple as a fax machine without paper – or a failure to confirm availability with the patient,” said Michael Weiner M.D., M.P.H., first author of the study.

“There will always be reasons – health issues or lack of transportation, for example – why a referred patient cannot make it to the specialist he or she needs, but there are many problems we found to be correctable using health information technology to provide more coordinated and patient-focused care. Using electronic medical records and other health IT to address the malfunction of the referral process, we were able to reduce the 50 percent lack of completion of referrals rate to less than 20 percent, a significant decrease in the medical error rate,” said Dr. Weiner.

The JECP study followed 6,785 primary care patients seen at an urban medical institution, all over age 65, with a mean age of 72. Nearly all (91 percent) of the patients were covered by Medicare.

“This is not necessarily the fault of patients or doctors alone, but it may take both working together – along with their health system – to correct this problem. Our study highlights how enormous a problem this is for patients who were not getting the specialized care they needed. Although our findings would likely differ among institutions, unfortunately overall trends are similar in other parts of the country” said Dr. Weiner.

Dr. Weiner is director of the Regenstrief Institute’s Health Services Research Program, director of the Indiana University Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research, and director of the VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence on Implementing Evidence-Based Practice at the Roudebush VA Medical Center.

Co-authors of the study are Anthony J. Perkins, M.S., of the Regenstrief Institute and the IU Center for Aging Research, and Christopher M. Callahan, M.D., a Regenstrief Institute investigator and Cornelius and Yvonne Pettinga Professor in Aging Research at the IU School of Medicine. Dr. Callahan is founding director of the IU Center for Aging Research.

This study was supported by the National Institute on Aging.

Source:
Cindy Fox Aisen
Indiana University School of Medicine

Patients who are at high risk of a cardiovascular event are substantially undertreated, according to the
authors of a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Dr Emma Heeley, Senior Research Fellow at the George Institute for International Health, and her
co-authors conducted a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey of 322 GPs, who were asked
to collect data on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and their management in 15-20
consecutive patients aged 55 years and over.

Their study found low uptake of absolute risk-based care in general practice, with just 63 per cent of
GPs reporting using CVD risk calculators. There were also substantial differences between patients’
CVD risks as perceived by GPs and when calculated using Framingham risk equations and different
guideline adjustments, leading GPs to underestimate their patients’ absolute risks.
“The AusHEART study shows that large evidence-practice gaps exist in primary and secondary
prevention of CVD for older Australians,” Dr Heeley said.

Of the 1548 patients with established CVD, only half were prescribed a combination of a blood
pressure-lowering medication, a statin and an antiplatelet agent, despite evidence for the benefit of
this combination of therapy being well established in this group, Dr Heeley said.
“When stratified by absolute risk category, around two-thirds of patients at high risk of a first CVD
event were not prescribed a combination of a BP-lowering medication and a statin,” she said.
Dr Heeley said the findings were not only related to individual clinicians; they were also attributable
to system failure.

“Because around 85 per cent of Australians visit a general practitioner every year, primary care is the
ideal setting for CVD prevention … A stronger effort to rationalise the many guidelines for
assessment and management of CVD risk factors is needed, accompanied by simple tools to help
general practitioners implement them,” Dr Heeley said.

“Harmonisation of guidelines with the PBS is a key accompanying step.”

“This survey highlighted that most patients aged 55 or older who attend GPs are at high risk of
CVD,” Dr Heeley said. “We recommend that GPs assess the absolute CVD risk of their older
patients and ensure that high-risk patients receive evidence-based pharmacotherapy.”

Source
The Medical Journal of Australia

Doctors in Northern Ireland have today called for the future sustainability of Northern Ireland’s health service to be made a priority.

BMA(NI) has highlighted its concerns about the effect that required efficiency savings are having on the health service in the short term, and constraints on the health budget in future, in a briefing note issued to the Minister for Health, the Health Committee and Department of Finance.

Dr Paul Darragh, Chairman of the BMA’s Northern Ireland Council said,

“We are facing unprecedented financial constraints to our health service, and tough questions need to be asked about what the priorities should be for our public services, with the health service continuing to be the subject of close scrutiny.

“Frontline health services need to be supported and protected, and we urge politicians to work together to ensure that Northern Ireland’s health service is the best that it can be”.

Key to delivering a world class health service within financial constraints is the need for a professionally led, patient centred service.

Dr Darragh continued,

“BMA(NI) wishes to work constructively with policy makers to ensure that this happens, as it is our members who deal with the realities of the constraints on the health service on a daily basis.

“Better workforce planning and investment in the health service instead of squandering money on expensive private providers would provide better care for patients.

“Doctors are realistic about what the health service can provide, but we urge caution as to how Trusts will achieve efficiency savings. The caution is not that the efficiency savings are to be made, but at what cost to future service provision”.

Source
British Medical Association Northern Ireland

After remaining stable for 2 decades, the average hours worked per week by physicians decreased by about 7 percent between 1996 and 2008, according to a study in the February 24 issue of JAMA.

“The potential expansion of health insurance coverage and associated reform of the delivery system, combined with recent forecasts of physician shortages (particularly in primary care), have catapulted issues related to the adequacy of the physician workforce high up on the health policy agenda. Whether the workforce is equipped to handle the demand for physician services depends on both the quantity and specialty distribution of physicians and the number of hours worked per physician. Most research and policy debate on the physician workforce, however, has focused on the numbers of current and future physicians and has largely ignored the hours worked by physicians,” the authors write. “Recent trends in hours worked by physicians may affect workforce needs but have not been thoroughly analyzed.”

Douglas O. Staiger, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and colleagues examined trends in hours worked by physicians using data from the U.S. Census Bureau for each year between 1976 and 2008, and also examined whether trends were associated with trends in physician fees both nationally and by geographic region within the United States. The final sample included 116,733 monthly surveys of physicians obtained from 27,874 households. Trends were estimated among all U.S. physicians and by residency status, sex, age, and work setting. Trends in hours were compared with national trends in physician fees, and estimated separately for physicians located in metropolitan areas with high and low fees in 2001.

The researchers found that average hours worked per week among all physicians changed significantly during the study period. Between 1977 and 1997, physician work hours were fairly stable, at approximately 55 hours per week. However, between 1997 and 2007, work hours per week decreased steadily, decreasing nearly 4 hours per week to 51 hours per week (7.2 percent). Hours decreased significantly during the last decade (between 1996-1998 and 2006-2008) for both resident physicians (9.8 percent) and all other physicians (5.7 percent). Resident hours remained high through 2002 and then decreased sharply following the imposition of work-hour limits in 2003, whereas hours of all other physicians decreased more steadily during the last decade.

“Between 1996-1998 and 2006-2008, hours worked decreased significantly among younger and older physicians, male and female physicians, physicians employed in hospital and nonhospital settings, and among self-employed and non-self-employed physicians. [Among nonresident physicians], the decrease in hours during this period was largest for [those] younger than 45 years (7.4 percent) and those working outside of the hospital (6.4 percent), and the decrease was smallest for those aged 45 years or older (3.7 percent) and for those working in the hospital (4.0 percent),” authors write.

They add that in contrast, average weekly hours of other professionals such as lawyers, engineers, and registered nurses changed very little during the past 30 years, which is consistent with national trends in average weekly hours among all workers.

The researchers also found that after adjusting for inflation, average physician fees decreased nationwide by 25 percent between 1995 and 2006, coincident with the decrease in physician hours. “In 2001, [average] physician hours were less than 49 hours per week in metropolitan areas with the lowest physician fees, whereas physician hours remained more than 52 hours per week elsewhere.”

“Our results have implications for how reform efforts and market forces may affect the future physician workforce. Our findings are consistent with the possibility that economic factors such as lower fees and increased market pressure on physicians may have contributed, at least in part, to the recent decrease in physician hours. Further reductions in fees and increased market pressure on physicians may, therefore, contribute to continued decreases in physician work hours in the future. Whatever the underlying cause, the decrease in [average] hours worked among U.S. physicians during the last decade raises implications for physician workforce supply and overall health care policy,” the authors write.

JAMA.
2010;303[8]:747-753.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association

Clinicians may use one of several approaches to deny patient requests for an inappropriate treatment while preserving the physician-patient relationship, according to a report in the February 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Patients request medication during approximately one in ten office visits, and most requests are granted, according to background information in the article. “Medications prescribed at the behest of patients may not always represent physicians’ first choice of treatment, particularly if the requests are commercially motivated, as for example, by direct-to-consumer advertising,” the authors write as background information in the article. “Nevertheless, physicians are cautious when rejecting patient requests for services, in part because of physicians’ perception that rejection may lower patient satisfaction.”

Debora A. Paterniti, Ph.D., of the University of California, Davis, in Sacramento, and colleagues analyzed data from a randomized trial on the behavior of primary care clinicians in response to requests for antidepressant medication. Standardized patients who were trained to request antidepressants made 199 initial visits to primary care offices in Sacramento, San Francisco and Rochester, N.Y., in 2003 and 2004, complaining of “feeling tired” and also of either wrist or low back pain. Transcripts of audio-recorded visits in which requests were denied were analyzed and assessed for strategies used to communicate denial.

Of the 199 visits in which antidepressants were requested, clinicians did not prescribe them in 88 (44 percent), and 84 of those were included in the analysis. Clinicians used six primary approaches to deny the requests.

In 53 of 84 visits (63 percent), physicians used one of three strategies that emphasized the patient’s perspective. These approaches included exploring the context of the request by asking questions about where the patient heard about the drug and why they thought it would be helpful; recommending that the patient seek the advice of a counselor or mental health specialist; or offering an alternative diagnosis to major depression.

In 26 visits (31 percent), clinicians took biomedical approaches, either prescribing sleep aids instead of antidepressants or ordering a diagnostic workup to rule out conditions such as thyroid disease and anemia. In five visits (6 percent), clinicians simply denied the request outright.

“The standardized patients reported significantly higher visit satisfaction when the physician used a patient perspective-based strategy to deny their request for antidepressants,” the authors write.

“Elucidation of these strategies provides a more nuanced understanding of physician-patient communication and negotiation than has been described previously,” the authors write. “These strategies provide physicians with alternatives for saying no to patient requests for care that is perceived to be inappropriate, offering physicians an opportunity to select approaches that fit their own style of communication, the preferences of particular patients or changing organizational climates.”

Arch Intern Med. 2010;170[4]:381-388.

Source
Archives of Internal Medicine

A large academic medical center has found that a significant percentage of outpatient referrals they receive from primary care physicians for computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies are inappropriate (based upon evidence-based appropriateness criteria developed by a radiology benefits management company), according to a study in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

While overall imaging growth is in line with or below that of other physician services – 2 percent or less annually since 2006 – a significant amount of imaging ordered and/or carried out by non-radiologists may be inappropriate.

“Radiologists, hospitals, health plans, and policy makers have struggled with ways to improve the rate of appropriate utilization of imaging studies, particularly CT, MRI, and PET,” said Robert L. Bree, MD, lead author of the study. “Our study looked at a large group of CT and MRI examinations. Evidence-based appropriateness criteria developed by a radiology management company (largely based on ACR Appropriateness Criteria®) were used to determine if the examinations were appropriate,” said Bree.

The study, performed at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, WA, included medical records from 459 elective outpatient CT and MR examinations from primary care physicians that were reviewed. “Of the 459 reviewed, 74 percent were considered appropriate and 26 percent were considered inappropriate. 58 percent of the appropriate studies were positive and affected subsequent management while only 24 percent of inappropriate studies were positive affecting management,” said Bree. Examples of inappropriate examinations include brain CT for chronic headache, lumbar spine MR for acute back pain, and knee or shoulder MRI in patients with osteoarthritis.

“Our study shows that CT and MRI examinations ordered in the outpatient primary care setting are frequently not appropriate based on the application of a national radiology benefit management company’s evidence-based guidelines. A high percentage of examinations not meeting appropriateness criteria and subsequently yielding negative results suggest a need for tools to help primary care physicians improve the quality of their imaging decision requests,” said Bree.

“This is important information for policy makers as they struggle with physicians and patients who are unhappy with restrictive utilization management programs and payers and the public who are looking for ways to decrease health care costs and increase quality and safety of exams in an era of higher awareness of effects of excess radiation. A reasonable compromise might be found in the newly emerging clinical decision support systems,” he said.

Source:
Heather Curry
American College of Radiology / American Roentgen Ray Society

Clinical researchers at Scottsdale Healthcare and TGen have announced the results of two clinical trials that show promise for patients battling cancer.

The Phase I clinical trial findings, presented at the this weeks Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research by Daniel Von Hoff, MD, FACG, focused on basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and pancreatic cancer. The Arizona trials were conducted at TGen’s Clinical Research Service (TCRS) at Scottsdale Healthcare, a strategic alliance between TGen and Scottsdale Healthcare’s Clinical Research Institute.

Basal Cell Carcinoma

In the first trial, a novel molecule, GDC-0449, shrinks tumors in basal cell carcinoma (BCC) while having limited side effects, including a loss of sense of taste, and a small amount of hair loss and weight loss, suggesting a viable new treatment option. GDC-0449 works by blocking a pathway – a series of chemical reactions within a cell – known as Hedgehog, containing two genes (PTCH and SMO) that lead to a known tumor-promoting gene called GLI1. Alterations in any of these genes have been shown to lead to basal cell carcinoma and other diseases. GDC-0449 is a chemical synthetic designed to replicate the properties of cyclopamine, a chemical found in nature.

“Basal cell carcinoma affects about one million people a year and a proportion of these patients have disease that is not curable with surgery. We currently do not have any treatments that can effectively slow tumor growth in these advanced patients. This finding has potential importance in this population,” said Daniel D. Von Hoff, M.D., Physician in Chief at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Chief Medical Officer for the Scottsdale Clinical Research Institute at Scottsdale Healthcare.

Typically diagnosed with a simple biopsy, the risk of BCC increases for those individuals with a family history, or prolonged exposure to ultraviolet (or UV) rays from the sun. While BCC has an extremely low rate of metastasis, it can lead to scarring and disfigurement if left untreated.

The trial results showed durable clinical benefit – defined as tumor shrinkage visible on X-ray or other physical exam or improvement in symptoms without tumor growth – was observed in eight out of the nine patients evaluated.

The first patient treated in the trial has shown clinical improvement for approximately 450 days and is ongoing, Von Hoff says, with almost no side effects beyond minimal hair loss.

“He came to us short of breath and in pain, but he has had a very dramatic response with this drug,” Von Hoff said.

Further evaluations of the study participants measured the presence of GLI1 in skin cells sampled from the participants. Among all patients tested to date, there was reduction in this marker, indicating that the drug was affecting the hedgehog pathway.

The trial, sponsored by Genentech, also included clinical sites at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland and Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit, Michigan.

Pancreatic Cancer

In the second trial, Von Hoff and colleagues showed that a novel combination of two drugs (nanoparticle albumin-bound paclitaxel, or “nab-pacilitaxel” and gemcitabine) showed a significant clinical benefit in more than 80 percent of pancreatic cancer patients.

“Unfortunately, most patients with pancreatic cancer have a very poor survival, and until now, the only option has been gemcitabine alone or in combination with erlotinib,” said Von Hoff.

The researchers utilized the Target Now™ tumor profiling analysis, a cutting-edge oncology testing service performed by Caris Dx and Caris MPI, to better understand the characteristics expressed in patient’s tumors. In this ongoing research program, Von Hoff and colleagues found the SPARC (Secreted Protein Acidic and Rich in Cysteine) protein to be commonly found in pancreatic cancer specimens. The SPARC protein is being investigated by Abraxis BioScience in this trial as a potential target for nab-paclitaxel. A test for SPARC, developed at Abraxis and Caris MPI and applied by Caris MPI under contract with Abraxis, was utilized to analyze SPARC in the pancreatic cancer patients in the trial.

The finding of SPARC protein in pancreatic cancer patients, also described by other investigators, was the basis for this phase I clinical trial that Von Hoff presented at AACR.

“Chemotherapy often means combining more than one drug, and we do not want to just take the next thing off the shelf. We want to know as much about a tumor as possible going in,” Von Hoff said.

Researchers reported on the first 20 patients of what will eventually be a 42-patient trial.

“This was a phase I trial, and phase I trials are usually designed to test safety, hoping it will also determine efficacy. The fact that we saw this kind of activity in a phase I trial is dramatic,” Von Hoff said.

“The rationale behind the combination of Gemcitabine plus Abraxane was based on careful science and was designed and executed by some of the leading experts in pancreas cancer in the world. While the data is preliminary and longer follow-up will be important, the biochemical and radiographic responses look very encouraging”, says Dr. Laheru of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

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The trial, sponsored by Abraxis BioScience, also included clinical sites at South Texas Oncology and Hematology, P.A., San Antonio, Texas, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

About Abraxis BioScience

Abraxis BioScience is a fully integrated global biotechnology company dedicated to the discovery, development and delivery of next-generation therapeutics and core technologies that offer patients safer and more effective treatments for cancer and other critical illnesses. The company’s portfolio includes the world’s first and only protein-bound nanoparticle chemotherapeutic compound (ABRAXANE), which is based on the company’s proprietary tumor targeting technology known as the nab™ platform. The first FDA approved product to use this nab™ platform, ABRAXANE, was launched in 2005 for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Abraxis trades on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol ABBI. For more information about the company and its products, please visit abraxisbio/.

About Caris

Caris Dx provides world-class surgical pathology services to physicians who treat patients in an ambulatory setting. The company provides academic-caliber medical consults through its industry-leading team of subspecialty fellowship and expert-trained pathologists in gastrointestinal and liver pathology, hematopathology and dermatopathology. Caris Diagnostics provides the highest levels of service to its customers and their patients through its state-of-the-art laboratories; proprietary, advanced clinical and technology solutions; and rigorous quality assurance programs.

Caris MPI is a leading molecular diagnostic company that provides world-class genomic and proteomic analysis in the field of oncology and other complex diseases. Caris MPI translates the latest discoveries made in the research lab to patient care. Furthermore, the Tissue Banking and Analysis Center (TBAC) at Caris MPI assists pharmaceutical companies and researchers in their clinical trials for tissue procurement, preservation of key analytes for cutting edge genomic and proteomic analysis and reporting by CMPI.

About Scottsdale Healthcare

Scottsdale Healthcare’s vision is Setting the Standard for Excellence in Personalized Healthcare. Established in 1962, Scottsdale Healthcare is the not-for-profit parent organization of the Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn, Scottsdale Healthcare Shea and Scottsdale Healthcare Thompson Peak hospitals, Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center, Scottsdale Clinical Research Institute, Scottsdale Healthcare Home Health Services and Scottsdale Healthcare Community Health Services. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Scottsdale Healthcare is governed by a volunteer board of directors composed of leading local citizens. shc/

About TGen

The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research with life changing results. Research at TGen is focused on helping patients with diseases such as cancer, neurological disorders and diabetes. TGen is on the cutting edge of translational research where investigators are able to unravel the genetic components of common and complex diseases. Working with collaborators in the scientific and medical communities, TGen believes it can make a substantial contribution to the efficiency and effectiveness of the translational process. TGen’s vision is of a world where an understanding of genomic variation can be rapidly translated in a manner tailored to individual patients. For more information about TGen, please visit tgen/.

Source: Galen Perry

The Translational Genomics Research Institute

Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has just presented the Government’s National Health and Hospital Network for Australia’s future report, which he described as ‘the most significant reforms to health and hospitals since the introduction of Medicare’.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) has previously welcomed the broad directions proposed by the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission (NHHRC), most critically the evolution of a health system based on person and family centred care, greater equity and a strong emphasis on prevention.

Dr Chris Mitchell, RACGP President, understands that this was a presentation on the hospital system, but believes that this was a missed opportunity to talk directly about investment in general practice, primary health care and prevention.

The proposed National Health and Hospital Network will be funded nationally and run locally with input from local health clinicians.

“As a rural GP with a hospital appointment on the north coast of New South Wales that featured highly in the Prime Minister’s speech, I welcome the proposal for more local involvement and decision making. I hope that GPs will be able to play a significant role in these local networks,” said Dr Mitchell.

“We hope that future reports in relation to primary health care, prevention and sub-acute care will better support GPs’ key role in the communities.

“The role of the National Health and Hospital Network outlined on page 65 in the National Health and Hospital Network for Australia’s future report is very broad and we will need more details on its implementation,” concluded Dr Mitchell.

Source
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners