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| Current Louisiana Medical News |
Stimulus Funds Shape State's Healthcare Delivery
Louisiana plans to use $10.5 million in stimulus funds to help establish a statewide health information exchange by building on existing efforts, with organizers hoping to eventually make the exchange part of a medical home care model.
TED GRIGGS - 1 opinion posted |
EHR Help Available
As many as 20 percent of Louisiana's physician practices may not implement electronic health records despite a massive push for the technology, the chief executive officer of the state's Medicare Quality Improvement Organization said.
TED GRIGGS |
LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS
For the past few months, the Commission on Streamlining Government has been meeting in earnest to consider ways to save state monies.
The Department of Health and Hospitals has completed a 37 page document which outlines the Department's recommendations to the Streamlining Commission.
CINDY BISHOP |
| Best Business Practices Focus |
Transparency: It's Clear Pharmacists, PBM Associations Caught in Contentious Debate
On the face of it, both the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) and the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) "strongly support" the principle of transparency within the pharmaceutical industry. Scratch the surface, however, and the two associations have very different ideas about what the concept of transparency means and how it should be enacted. Both claim their viewpoint is best for the bottom line.
CINDY SANDERS |
Alzheimer’s Diagnosed Every 70 Seconds in the U.S.
There is only way to definitively diagnose Alzheimer’s disease – at autopsy. There, microscopically, the brain is a minefield of tangles of dead neurons and numerous amyloid protein plaques, the two hallmarks of the disease. These have multiplied in number and in a predictable pattern throughout the long course it takes the patient from diagnosis to death – the mean being 8.7 years, but for some, as long as 20. The tangles and the plaques change not only the physical structure but also the chemical processes of the brain, and as the cells die, the brain atrophies.
BARBARA MCCONNELL |
Dr. Brent P. Mahoney
From Sea to Shining Sea
From the Bering Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, Brent Mahoney, MD, PhD, has truly lived the bicoastal life. After graduating from Clemson University in South Carolina, Mahoney served as an Alaskan observer for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. While there, he lived at sea on a small boat studying fish and other aquatic life forms. "I spent most of my day counting, measuring, weighing, classifying and identifying pretty much everything that we drug up off the bottom of the ocean," he recalled. After serving a one-year stint in the frigid North, the Detroit, Mich. native set his sights on a warmer climate. Eventually, he ended up on the Gulf Coast, where he now practices radiation oncology.
LISA HANCHEY |
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