Day 45 - Fasting For Weight Loss - Still Going Strong!

Another daily update, just 11 days to go until the juice fast is complete.

Today's video is next to some busy traffic and probably the drivers in the cars going past thought I was crazy. Still some interesting information I feel in todays video, so please take a look.

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A Possible Health Benefit of Botox; Teens Are Still Sexting

Discovered: Another health benefit for Botox, teens are still sexting, coffee continues being awesome, and parents are less likely to catch a cold.

RELATED: In Weiner's Wake, a Brief History of the Word 'Sexting'

Botox has another (maybe) health benefit. Real Househumans, take note: wonder-youthenizer Botox may (may!) help multiple sclerosis tremors. This adds to a small list of health benefits the wrinkle smoother has, including helping with chronic migraines, excessive sweating and other MS symptoms, like an overactive bladder. Though, before you Botoxers go around using this as the deviated septum of wrinkle-reduction excuses, note science hasn't quite confirmed anything. "This study is fairly preliminary, and it had a small number of patients," explains researcher Nicholas G. LaRocca. "There are several questions that need to be answered by doing larger and longer-term studies," added researcher Dr. Anneke van der Walt. [Reuters]Teens are still sexting. Continuing the trope that more than 1 percent of kids send explicit texts, science has another study finding that one in four teens have sent each other nudie photos using digital devices. In a survey of almost 1,000 10th and 11th graders from seven different Houston-area schools, 28 percent said they had sent a sext and 57 percent said they'd been asked to send over an little digi-porn. "Most teens, especially girls, said they had been at least 'a little bit' bothered by a request to send a naked picture," writes Reuters's Genevra Pittman. Oh, also not at all surprisingly, the kids who sexted most also sexed most. 77 percent of female sexters and 82 percent of male offenders had done the deed, compared with 42 percent of girls and 45 percent of boys who hadn't sent these messages. "If we extrapolated this 28 percent to nationwide, that's millions of kids that are prosecutable for child pornography," said researcher Jeff Temple. [Reuters]Coffee gets awesomer. Following last week's coffee prevents heart failure finding, science gives us another gem, finding that coffee might prevent skin cancer. "I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone," said researcher Jiali Han, with what we read as a big-ole wink. "However," she continued, “Our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption. This list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease." Drink on, addicts. [CNN]Parents have a lower risk of developing a cold. As you drag your kids to some kid-friendly July 4 lameness, take this piece of research to remind yourself why having children was a good idea. Science has found the risk of getting a cold is halved in parents compared to non-parents. "We found parenthood predicted a decreased probability of colds among healthy individuals exposed to a cold virus," explains researcher Rodlescia S. Sneed. The researchers even say it might mean there are other physical benefits to parenthood, guys. "Our results, while provocative, have left room for future studies to pursue how various aspects of parenthood (e.g., frequency of contact with children, quality of parent/child relationships) might be related to physical health, and how parenthood could 'get under the skin' to influence physical health," he continues. [Wolters Kluwer Health]

Image via Shutterstock by Robert Kneschke

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Day 45 - Fasting For Weight Loss - Still Going Strong!

Another daily update, just 11 days to go until the juice fast is complete.

Today's video is next to some busy traffic and probably the drivers in the cars going past thought I was crazy. Still some interesting information I feel in todays video, so please take a look.

View the original article here

Women Still Pay More for Health Insurance, Data Shows

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Automating health care still a daunting task

By Russ Britt, MarketWatch

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (MarketWatch) — The effort to drag the health-care industry into the technology age trudges onward, and it’s still not clear whether the nation’s 500,000 to 600,000 physicians will successfully make the journey.

That’s the finding from a number of health-care industry officials charged with pulling the medical profession into the 21st Century when it comes to managing patient records as well as automating the back-office operations of hospitals and clinics throughout the U.S.

The key is getting patient data automated to the point where doctors don’t have to duplicate costly tests and X-rays, and so more than 35,000 professionals were gathering in Las Vegas this week to get some guidance on where the effort is heading.

Hospital food is getting a makeover. Eager to compete for patients, some hospitals are one upping each other in meal offerings, offering luxury meal order programs.

Zachery Jiwa, chief technology officer for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, is responsible for getting doctors and hospitals online in one of the worst-performing states in the union when it comes to public health issues.

He says as recently as 18 months ago, there was skepticism over whether the effort would get any traction in his state. Now he says enough doctors have met the criteria needed to receive more than $100 million in cumulative federal incentive funding.

“I think it’s a testament that we have a little more certainty,” Jiwa said. “I’m pleased with the acceleration.”

He adds, however, that the movement remains in its infant stages. That’s evidenced by the number of hospitals that can actually exchange records in his state -- two in the central Louisiana town of Lafayette.

“We have a long way to go,” he said, later adding. “It’s hard to change people’s mentality in the South.”

The effort to automate the health-care industry got underway in 2009 as part of the controversial $787 billion stimulus program. A total of $30 billion was set aside as an incentive for doctors and hospitals to transform patient records from analog to digital.

Doctors can receive up to $45,000 each by automating their offices.

Doctors have to meet a number of criteria by the end of 2013 in order to receive those dollars; those who have already jumped through the initial set of hoops have gotten their initial rounds of funding.

But those numbers are small. Part of the problem is getting physicians to change their work habits and bring a laptop or tablet along to the bedside. Another issue is that countless vendors have emerged, all with their own systems, and interoperability issues abound. Read MarketWatch special report on the issue.

And there is no guarantee that true interoperability – the ultimate goal of the effort – will ever be achieved.

Pete Gutierrez is associate chief operating officer for Denver Health, a network of 458 doctors that treat mostly Medicaid and indigent patients. He says 38% of his patients have no insurance at all.

Nevertheless, the non-profit organization has managed to not only stay afloat but prosper. It separated itself from city government and became a private entity in 1997. Gutierrez says Denver Health has been in the black ever since, using a Six Sigma-style operational approach.

When it came time to automate patient records, Denver Health chose Siemens AG /quotes/zigman/279102/quotes/nls/si SI +0.41%   /quotes/zigman/206549 DE:SIE +1.01%  to partner with and decided that it should be its sole contractor in order to avoid interoperability issues within its own network. Achieving true interoperability, however, with other networks is tough to envision.

“It’s horrible, the amount of duplication,” Gutierrez said. Read more of MarketWatch special report on the issue.

Charlene Underwood chairs the advisory board for Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, or HIMSS, sponsors of the Las Vegas gathering. She says roughly 41,000 of as many as 600,000 doctors nationwide have met the criteria known as “meaningful use.”

Under those guidelines, doctors and hospitals must show they have met certain criteria for automating systems, including prescribing medication via electronic means or ordering and receiving lab results. They also need to create online portals so that patients can have an electronic record of the treatments and medications they’ve received.

Underwood says a total of 176,000 are registered in the program and should be able to meet the “meaningful use” criteria, but the industry has set a goal of having all those doctors, plus another 24,000 up and running by the end of 2012.

Underwood agrees the task is daunting, but she says the industry is motivated.

“People get the goal,” she said. “There is a passion around trying to do it right.”

/quotes/zigman/279102/quotes/nls/si Russ Britt is the Los Angeles bureau chief for MarketWatch.

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Report: Electronic health records still need work

WASHINGTON (AP) — America may be a technology-driven nation, but the health care system's conversion from paper to computerized records needs lots of work to get the bugs out, according to experts who spent months studying the issue.

Hospitals and doctors' offices increasingly are going digital, the Bipartisan Policy Center says in a report released Friday. But there's been little progress getting the computer systems to talk to one another, exchanging data the way financial companies do.

"The level of health information exchange in the U.S. is extremely low," the report says.

At the consumer level, few people maintain a personal health record on their laptop or electronic tablet, partly due to concerns about privacy, security and accuracy that the government hasn't resolved.

"How will sensitive health data be kept confidential and secure in digital data-sharing environments?" the report asks. "Many consumers ... are waiting for a reassuring answer to this question."

The report offers a window on progress toward a goal set by President Barack Obama, and President George W. Bush before him, that everyone in the United States should have an electronic medical record by 2014.

While making no predictions, the report offers a collection of details indicating that the goal is a long shot at best.

"Will 100 percent of our nation have electronic health records by 2014?" asked Janet Marchibroda, who directs the center's health technology initiative. "I would say getting to that last mile is difficult." She expects the majority of hospitals and doctors to meet the goal, but it's another matter when it comes to consumers.

In politically polarized Washington, the center tries to tackle national problems from a pragmatic perspective. The report, more than six months in the making, was produced by a panel representing hospitals, doctors, insurers, consumers and technology companies. The review was led by two former senators with ties to the health care industry, Democrat Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Republican Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Electronic medical records are seen as a crucial component in creating a system that's more efficient and less prone to error. The government has committed up to $30 billion to encourage this shift, mostly through incentive payments to hospitals and doctors that were authorized in 2009 under Obama's economic stimulus law. Payments started flowing last year.

The report found that 5 percent of eligible doctors received payments last year, while about 33 percent had registered with the government that they intend to qualify.

Overall, about one-third of doctors' offices had some form of electronic records last year, compared with one-fourth in 2010.

Among hospitals, 32 percent received the incentive payments last year, the report said, while 61 percent notified the government they intend to qualify.

Those are signs of momentum, but the report found little progress in devising ways for the different computer systems to communicate with each other.

Part of the problem is that there isn't much financial incentive for competing health care providers to share information.

If an emergency room orders a test on a patient that a family doctor had run a week ago, the hospital gets paid for it. If the emergency room doctor relies on the test results from the family doctor, that's less revenue for the hospital.

"Health information exchange will not occur at optimal levels ... without a viable, sustainable business model," the report said.

Only from 7 percent to 11 percent of individuals have a personal electronic medical record. Some early adopters still run into problems with basic tasks such as downloading test results, renewing prescriptions online or scheduling appointments.

The report also says the government must address gaps in privacy protections. For example, a federal health privacy law that applies to hospitals, doctors, insurers and data transmission companies doesn't apply to companies that market electronic medical records directly to the public.

"This uneven coverage of federal health privacy law can be confusing for consumers and contributes to reluctance," the report said.

____

Online:

Bipartisan Policy Center report: http://tinyurl.com/86vgum3

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Health disparities still persist among ethnicities

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