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Reducing Medical Residents' Hours Would Cost $2.5B Annually, Study Says
Implementing proposed reductions in the number of hours medical residents work could cost as much as $2.5 billion annually, according to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Baltimore Sun reports. The study follows an Institute of Medicine report that proposed reducing the maximum hours that residents can work without sleep from 30 to 16, increasing the number of days they must take off and improving their supervision (Desmon, Baltimore Sun, 5/21). In 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education reduced the number of hours residents at teaching hospitals could work weekly from more than 100 hours to 80 hours. In the recent study, which was partially funded by IOM, researchers examined post-2003 literature on resident work hours and patient harm and evaluated it against additional labor costs. The authors concluded that the IOM recommendations "would be costly, and their effectiveness is unknown" (Shishkin, Wall Street Journal, 5/21). Teryl Nuckols, the lead author of the study, said that teaching hospitals would most likely need to hire more residents and experienced physicians to take care of patients, which would likely cost each teaching hospital $3.2 million annually (Baltimore Sun, 5/21). The study was accompanied by an NEJM editorial in which the authors "strongly disagree" with the IOM recommendations, claiming that reducing resident work hours "leads to an increase in the number of handoffs in care, and this increase outweighs the potential benefits of reducing residents" fatigue." The accreditation council said that more research is needed before it decides whether to adopt the IOM recommendations. The council"s decision will be announced in February 2010 (Wall Street Journal, 5/21).
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Red Wine Ingredient Demonstrates Significant Health Benefits: Research Review
The benefits of alcohol are all about moderation. Low to moderate drinking - especially of red wine - appears to reduce causes of mortality, while too much drinking causes multiple organ damage.
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New Report: Private And Public Insurance Choices Would Help Reduce Administrative Health Care Costs By $265 Billion Over 10 Years
As lawmakers debate how to pay for an overhaul of the nation"s health care system, a new report from The Commonwealth Fund projects that including both private and public insurance choices in a new insurance exchange would save the United States as much as $265 billion in administrative costs from 2010 to 2020. Congressional leaders are attempting to keep 10-year federal budget costs of health care reform legislation under $1 trillion.
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Henry Ford Hospital Study May Hold Promise For Future Disease Therapies

Linking genetic material microRNAs with cells that regulate the immune system could one day lead to new therapies for treating cancer, infections and autoimmune diseases, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. Qing-Sheng Mi, M.D., Ph.D., the study"s senior author and director of Henry Ford"s Immunology Program, says their findings are important because it shows for the first time an association between microRNAs and a key subset of immune regulatory cells in the body, natural killer T cells (NKT), which are known to lead to autoimmune diseases and cancer. The study was published June 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "While further studies are needed, we believe this provides important insight about how microRNAs can regulate NKT cells, and signals a major step forward in biology science for looking at new therapies for treating some chronic immune disease," Dr. Mi says. MicroRNAs are short strands of genetic material that researchers believe perform a vital role in healthy development by turning off gene activity. NKT cells potent regulators of diverse immune responses in the body. By genetically modifying mice with specific deletion microRNAs in hematopoietic stem cells, Henry Ford researchers showed that the lack of microRNAs can block the development and function of normal NKT cells. If researchers are successful at identifying unique microRNA that specifically regulate NKT cells, Dr. Mi, it could lead to new treatment therapies for some chronic disease. David Olejarz Henry Ford Health System


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