Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Medscape Journal Scan: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, June 2004
"Journal Scan is the clinician's guide to the latest clinical research findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry, The Lancet, Archives of General Psychiatry, The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, and Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Short summaries of feature articles include links to the article abstracts and full text when available. .." "med"  
  

Health care paper trail is costly route
Story in USA Today - " Technology has cut costs and increased productivity in industry after industry. But health care, a $1.6 trillion beast that wallops business and consumer pocket books more and more, still largely runs on paper. Visits to new doctors require patients to fill out forms for the same old information. Getting test results from one office to another can take days. That often leads to duplicate tests, excess costs and poor care. Based on tech's impact on other industries, John Chambers, CEO of Internet titan Cisco Systems, says technology could cut health care costs by at least 25% — and improve care. ... In the past 18 months, lawmakers introduced at least five bills pushing health care tech ideas."  
  

Governors Grapple With Aging of America
AP story reprinted at PsycPORT - "Aging poses sharp challenges to those lucky enough to face it, from mobility to mental health to independence. As tens of millions of Americans approach the age of 65, the care and costs are increasingly critical to the nation. States can take the initiative in transforming the elderly experience by reshaping health care, social services and tax codes to help the rapidly growing population of those 65 and older, governors agreed Sunday at the summer meeting of the National Governors Association. .."  
  

Methamphetamine use increasing
American Medical News story - Story focused on Dr. Mary Holley, founder of Mothers against Methamphetamine, " ...the impact of this drug's increasing popularity, particularly in rural areas. Methamphetamine was initially only available by prescription and was commonly prescribed for weight loss in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, illegal meth labs started appearing in California, and the drug has been traveling eastward ever since -- arriving with considerable impact in small towns, which had previously been spared the problems experienced in urban areas.''  See also, in the New York Times, This Is Your Brain on Meth: A 'Forest Fire' of Damage. [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Opiate Replacement Therapy Rarely Available to Inmates
Feauture article at JoinTogether - "Recognizing a huge opiate-addiction problem among inmates, New Mexico is breaking new ground by extending methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) to local prisons. Across the country, however, few prisons provide MMT to patients. In February, Bernalillo County, N.M., announced the opening of the nation's first public-health office inside a county jail, and said the program would pilot an MMT initiative as part of its patient services. One month later, the New Mexico Medical Society became the only statewide medical society to endorse prison and jail-based opioid-replacement treatment.."  
  

Scarce resources leave family in need (Oregon)
Story in the Mail Tribune focused on the experiences of one family - "Cutbacks in government funding for mental health and reductions in the Oregon Health Plan mean that many families can’t get help when mental illness strikes... "  
  

Pros and Cons: Expanding Coverage for Mental health (New York)
Article in City Limits - "When the New York State Office of Mental Health notified mental health agencies that funding for many of their vocational and rehabilitation programs would soon be replaced with Medicaid, it seemed like good news. In addition to saving the city and state thousands of dollars, agency officials say, the switch will allow them to centralize their programs, giving their consumers easier access to more comprehensive treatment. But, as local nonprofits begin the process of converting, some are finding just the opposite: programs and clients could suffer under Medicaid’s stricter standards. The new program, known as PROS (Personalized Recovery Oriented Services) requires each agency to design a single treatment plan coordinated between different providers..."  
  

L.R. Mosher, Innovator at Mental Health Institute, Dies at 70
New York Times story - "r. Loren R. Mosher, a former National Institute of Mental Health official who developed a drug-free approach to treating schizophrenia and argued that psychiatrists should rely less heavily on antipsychotic medications, died on July 10 at a clinic in Berlin. He was 70. The cause was liver disease, his wife, Judith Schreiber, said. In the 1960's and 70's, as psychiatrists were beginning to prescribe powerful new antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia, Dr. Mosher advocated using little-known alternative therapies instead. From 1968 to 1980, while chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the mental health institute, he began a long-term study that compared drug-free treatments with conventional hospitalization..." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. See also the Washington Post piece Contrarian Psychiatrist. [Viewing Washington Post stories requires registration, which is free.]  
  

Hatch Wants Single Agency To Handle Mental Health Services (Minnesota)
Brief WCCO story - "Attorney General Mike Hatch on Monday called for a single state entity to coordinate, fund and regulate mental health services, which he contended are hard to come by and carry a greater public cost if those illnesses go untreated. Hatch's idea is purely conceptual at this point. It is one of four broad recommendations he makes in a report he will send to hospital administrators, insurers and other leaders in the health care field in hopes that it will breathe new life into proposals for change. .."