public health emergency

(Infectious Diseases Society of America) Shortages of key drugs used to fight infections represent a public health emergency and can put patients at risk, according to a review published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online.

Frequent anti-infective shortages can substantially alter clinical care and may lead to worse outcomes for patients, particularly as the development of new anti-infectives has slowed and the prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens is increasing.

At a Feb. 2011 post "Does EHR-Incited Upcoding Need Investigation by CMS, And Could it Explain HIT Irrational Exuberance?" I wrote about how EMR's can facilitate medically unjustified upcoding, a form of fraud.

Here's a peculiar upcoding story out of Baltimore.

I am cited:

We just discussed how leaders of big health care corporations with histories of ethical and legal missteps want to export our supposedly "wonderful technology, wonderful approaches" to the rest of the world.  A story on the Huffington Post showed how big health care corporations, partnering with the US government, have already been doing that with not very pretty results

(MedPage Today) -- As a heat wave blankets vast parts of the Midwest and Great Plains, emergency department physicians at hospitals in those states are pleasantly surprised by light loads of heat-related illness patients.

A new toolkit of prepared cell phone text messages advising people how to protect their health after a disaster is available now through the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has declared a public health emergency for Missouri in the aftermath of severe storms and tornadoes which struck the state Sunday night.

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AP) -- Nearly one in 10 babies were born addicted to drugs last year in southern Ohio's Scioto County.

Rehab admissions for prescription painkiller addictions were five times the national average. In a rare step, the health commissioner declared a public health emergency, something usually reserved for disease outbreaks....

During a public health emergency, intensive hand hygiene measures could be implemented in schools, but it's unlikely they could be sustained, researchers said.

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday declared its first-ever "public health emergency," saying the federal government will funnel $6 million to provide medical care for people sickened by asbestos from a mine in northwest Montana.

EPA to Move Aggressively on Cleanup and HHS to Assist Area Residents with Medical Care