Lost, unsecured, non-encrypted cell phone costs facility $650k in HIPAA fines
The Catholic Health Care Services (CHCS) of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization, was forced to pay a $650,000 fine. The action resulted after an employee lost a business cell phone containing sensitive information from the network’s nursing home practices. The data included medical and personal information, including in some instances social security numbers. A
So. Kim Kardashian. I hate to even post her name because all it does is strengthen her multi-million dollar empire of nothingness. And part of that nothingness is the posting of countless product placement bits on social media like Instagram. You may think it’s a harmless conduit between brainless posters and brainless viewers, but what
A new startup called ColonaryConcepts (yes, you read that correctly) seeks to “purge” the unpleasantness from colonoscopy prep. Dr. Corey Siegel and Dr. Joshua Korzenik (director of Brigham and Women’s Hospital Crohn’s and Colitis Center) have embarked on developing a new bar and beverage line to help people prep for colonoscopies. The goal, he says, is
A Japanese surgical expert is invited to perform a laparoscopic liver resection on a very ill patient at India’s prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). About 100 surgeons observe. During the operation, the patient starts to bleed. Reports say members of the audience encouraged the surgeons to switch to an open operation after
Ongoing quality measures lead to post-colonoscopy complications remaining very low
Worldwide rates of post-colonoscopy complications either remained low or decreased in the past 15 years, confirming the global safety of colonoscopy as a diagnostic, screening, surveillance and therapeutic procedure. The results suggest improvement in techniques, better and more accurate quality end-points, and the benefits of feedback and modification of “best practices” based on the analysis
Superbug Gene Isolated in U.S. — Confers resistance to last-ditch antibiotic colistin
It was bound to happen — a gene that confers resistance to a last-resort antibiotic has been detected in the U.S. But who is to blame? “It’s hard to imagine worse news for public health in the United States,” commented Lance Price, PhD, of George Washington University in Washington, DC. Read the news article here.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising that the serious side effects associated with fluoroquinolone antibacterial drugs generally outweigh the benefits for patients with sinusitis, bronchitis, and uncomplicated urinary tract infections. These drugs are commonly used in the treatment of bowel infections as well, for example infectious diarrhea or diverticulitis, although the warning does
Intensive 8-week enema treatments had promising results (MEDPAGE) Intensive treatment with fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) showed efficacy for ulcerative colitis in patients who were resistant to or intolerant of conventional therapy, a randomized trial found.
In what may come as a bit of a surprise, a new study found that overweight colon cancer patients tended to have better survival than their normal-weight peers. However, obesity increases the risk of having polyps and colon cancer to begin with. So although this is a little surprising, don’t bank on being overweight as
New Microbiome Center to merge expertise of UChicago, MBL and Argonne
New Microbiome Center to merge expertise of University of Chicago, Marine Biological Lab and Argonne National Laboratory. The University of Chicago, MBL and Argonne already have conducted some of the most influential research aimed at understanding and characterizing microorganisms.Argonne Director Peter B. Littlewood The University of Chicago, the Marine Biological Laboratory and the U.S. Department
