“NCQA Report: Quality, Spending Not Linked; Autism Fears Suspected as Children’s ... - Yahoo Finance” plus 2 more |
- NCQA Report: Quality, Spending Not Linked; Autism Fears Suspected as Children’s ... - Yahoo Finance
- Closing In to an MRI Diagnose for Autism - Softpedia
- Autism and Jaundice: Connected? - Transworld News
| NCQA Report: Quality, Spending Not Linked; Autism Fears Suspected as Children’s ... - Yahoo Finance Posted: 13 Oct 2010 04:08 AM PDT Press Release Source: National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) On Wednesday October 13, 2010, 7:00 am EDT WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The new State of Health Care Quality report from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has two new findings about the nation's health care:
The State of Health Care Quality is NCQA's annual analysis of the overall quality of American health care. Relative Resource Use (RRU): Insight into Value News that high-spending health plans don't always deliver the best care comes from findings on relative resource use (RRU) – documented for the first time in the report across five common, costly and chronic diseases. RRU indicates how intensively health plans use health care resources (such as physician visits and hospital stays), compared with other plans in the same region, serving similar members. When used alongside quality measures, RRU makes it possible to talk about quality and cost simultaneously. Given the definition of value as the intersection of health plans' spending (resource use) and their results, RRU reveals the value that plans offer. RRU analysis shows that many plans that deliver below-average quality use above-average levels of resources. More care is not always linked to better results, confirming that the saying "you get what you pay for" does not apply to health care. New Trends in Use of Vaccines Childhood vaccination rates in 2009 declined by almost four percentage points in commercial plans. A possible cause of this drop is commercial plan parents may refuse vaccines for their children based on the unproven, but increasingly popular, notion that vaccines cause autism. Celebrity activists are outspoken advocates of this view. Interestingly, we see vaccination rates in Medicaid – the program serving the poor – continuing to steadily improve. "The drop in childhood vaccinations is disturbing because parents are rejecting valuable treatment based on misinformation," said NCQA President Margaret E. O'Kane. "All of us in health care need to work together to get better information to the public." The State of Health Care Quality Report examined quality data from over 1,000 health plans that collectively cover 118 million Americans. About NCQA Celebrating its 20th anniversary, NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA's Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information for consumers, purchasers, health care providers and researchers. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Closing In to an MRI Diagnose for Autism - Softpedia Posted: 13 Oct 2010 02:35 AM PDT This new step could help health care providers identify autism much earlier in children, and also lead to a better treatment for those who already have the disorder. The researchers were led by neuroradiologist Jeffery S. Anderson, MD, PhD, U of U assistant professor of radiology, and identified areas within both hemispheres of autistic people, that do not communicate correctly with one another, by using MRI. These brain areas are called 'hot spots' as they are responsible for motor skills, attention, face recognition and social behavior – all these elements being abnormal in autism, and on the MRIs of people without this disorder, there are no such deficits. Anderson said that "we know the two hemispheres must work together for many brain functions, [so] we used MRI to look at the strength of these connections from one side to the other in autism patients." The study focused on nearly 80 autism patients, aged 10 to 35 years old, and lasted for a year and a half before completion. These results will be added to an existing autism study which follows 100 patients over time. Lainhart said that "the longitudinal imaging data and associated knowledge gathered forms a unique resource that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world." The only major structural difference between the brains of healthy people and those suffering from autism is the increased size of the brains of young children with autism, being about the only thing that can be seen in a routine brain MRI scan. The new study proves that if studying the communication between regions of the brain, more differences can be identified. Along with other research going on at U of U, involving the use of diffusion tensor imaging – measuring the microstructure of white matter connecting brain regions, scientists are gathering important data on autism. We now know that MRI is a potential tool for diagnosing the disability, so patients could be screen objectively, rapidly and early on, making interventions more successful. Janet Lainhart, MD, U of U associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and the study's principal investigator, said that "we still don't know precisely what's going on in the brain in autism. "This work adds an important piece of information to the autism puzzle, [because] it adds evidence of functional impairment in brain connectivity in autism and brings us a step closer to a better understanding of this disorder. "When you understand it at a biological level, you can envision how the disorder develops, what are the factors that cause it, and how can we change it." As science and technology evolve, researchers hope that one day they will be able to use data from the MRI to biologically identify several types of autism. "This is a complex disorder that doesn't just fall into one category," Lainhart says. "We hope the information can lead us to characterizing different types of autism that may have different symptoms or prognoses that will allow us to identify the best treatment for each affected individual." The team of scientists uses research from the departments of psychiatry, radiology, and pediatrics, the Neurosciences Program, the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, and The Brain Institute at the U of U, as well as collaborators at Brigham Young University, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University. The study will be published on October 15, 2010 in Cerebral Cortex online. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Autism and Jaundice: Connected? - Transworld News Posted: 11 Oct 2010 12:10 PM PDT The results of a Danish study released on Health Day, October 11th, show that jaundice in neonates may lead to increase in risk of autism in later stages. Other experts say that this is a very preliminary study and further studies have to be conducted before the cause and effect relationship can be clarified. The study was done using information from all the children born in Denmark spanning 10 years between 1994 and 2004. The gathered data showed that neonatal jaundice increased the chance of developing autism and other psychological disorder by almost 67%. Jaundice is a very common condition occurring among the newly born when the liver is not mature enough to breakdown the waste product, bilirubin, and excrete it. When the bilirubin collects in the blood without getting excreted, it gives the skin and the sclera of the eyes a yellowish tinge. Autism alludes to a huge spectrum of communicative and behavioral disorders ranging in symptoms and severity. Autism spectrum disorders are assumed to have both genetic and environmental factors contributing to it. Dr. Gary Goldstein, a professor of pediatrics and neurology at Johns Hopkins University and president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, feels that the neurotoxin, bilirubin is capable of damaging the speech, hearing and language pathways of the brain. If the child has a genetic predisposition to autism, the increased bilirubin might act as triggering factor. This is the only explanation the researchers can find to explain why jaundice might increase the chances of autism. The study has its limitations since the researchers do not have the exact measure of the bilirubin in the infant's blood. They used only a questionnaire from the parent to deduce that the child had autism. Therefore, they have nothing to pinpoint that higher the bilirubin levels in the blood, higher the chances of autism. They also do not have anything to say about whether treatment of jaundice had any role to play in reducing the chances of developing autism.This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Add Images to any RSS Feed To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment