Friday, June 27, 2003

Federal Rules Add Burden to Costs for Uninsured Patients
Medscape Medical News story - "Federal regulations that prevent hospitals and other health providers from charging different rates for the same service end up forcing uninsured patients to pay more than those with insurance, plunging them into medical debt they can't afford, according to a new study from the Commonwealth Fund." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free]. See also the Commonwealth Fund study, Unintended Consequences: How Federal Regulations and Hospital Policies Can Leave Patients in Debt (Adobe Acrobat format).  
  

White House Moves to Influence Urban Drug Policies
Reuters Health story at Medscape - "The White House will soon begin working directly with drug officials in large U.S. cities in an effort to influence their substance abuse programs and to lower drug addiction rates, President Bush's drug czar announced Thursday. The move is intended to expose local officials to the latest proven methods of cutting illegal drug use and to increase the efficiency with which they use federal anti-drug funds, said John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Time of Day Influences Nonattendance at Urgent Short-Term Mental Health Unit in Victoria, British Columbia
Article in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry - "To our knowledge, our findings present the first North American evidence that simply making the first appointment in the afternoon could significantly decrease FTNS and thus ensure better use of scarce health care resources."  
  

Insight and Neuropsychological Function in Patients With Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder With Psychotic Features
Article in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry - "This study investigates the pattern of association between patient unawareness of illness and neuropsychological tests of frontal lobe function in subjects with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) with psychotic features."  
  

How to avoid ethnic bias when diagnosing schizophrenia
Article in Current Psychiatry Online - "In patients with psychotic symptoms, why are African-Americans more likely than whites to be diagnosed with schizophrenia? After more than 30 years of debate, some answers—and remedies for the problem—are becoming clear. In psychiatry, where interpersonal interactions are key to eliciting diagnostic symptoms and signs, there is an intrinsic risk of misinterpretation when clinician and patient are of different cultural, ethnic, or socioeconomic backgrounds. This article analyzes four factors that contribute to misinterpretation and to ethnic misdiagnosis of schizophrenia. Culturally sensitive strategies are offered to avoid diagnostic bias in clinical practice."  
  

AHCPR And The Changing Politics Of Health Services Research
Article in Health Affairs - "The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research has had a turbulent history. Created with little opposition in 1989, it narrowly escaped being eliminated in 1995, only to be reauthorized (with a new mandate and name—the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ) with overwhelming support in 1999. In focusing on budgetary history, this paper sheds light on why health services research (HSR) has difficulty obtaining funding from a government that is willing to spend vast sums on basic biomedical research. The paper argues that three strategies—bureaucratic, marketing, and constituency building—that advocates adopted in the late 1980s made HSR more visible and consequential and were responsible for AHCPR’s budgetary successes as well as its near-demise...." Also available in Adobe Acrobat format.  
  

Measure Calls for Wider Access to Federally Financed Research
New York Times article - "A group challenging the power of established scientific journals says legislation will be introduced to make the results of all federally financed research available to the public. The group, the Public Library of Science, which includes scientists, doctors, researchers and their public supporters, plans to announce legislation on Thursday that would give taxpayers greater access to scientific data. The group's objective is an open system of scientific publishing that would bypass the current system, which centers on journals that charge, through their subscriptions, for access to results." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. See also the Public Library of Science web site.