MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Hospitals across the country are feeling the heat for potentially unwarranted patient readmissions as more than 2,000 care centers are punished with a total of $227 million in fines.
The charges reflect Medicare’s penalty program, designed to encourage hospitals to emphasize quality of care over the number of patients treated.
Of the 2,225 hospitals affected, those that treat mostly low-income patients have been hardest-hit by fines, according to Kaiser Health News.
3D imaging now shows life in full color
Infrared tomography with CT scanning is prepared to graduate from black and white to full color with the 1st technique to translate colors in the history of infrared imaging. Where some CT scans are artistically colored after the fact, this new imaging technique identifies minerals within bone and assigns colors to each. This technique can give physicians a new level of detail without needing to stain the biological material.
Read more
Third Eye gains yards with a phase II grant for its concussion device
The National Science Foundation offered some support to Third Eye Diagnostics with a $500,000 grant, which the company will use to test its concussion-detection device in athletes, soldiers and emergency room patients.
The CerePress hand-held device is designed to rapidly diagnose traumatic brain injuries. The current standard of care involves drilling an access hole into the skull, and this device would improve diagnosis by allowing more patients to be tested, according to CEO Terry Fuller’s prepared remarks.
Read more
Fixing runaway HC spending means getting docs to play by the book
The secret to reigning in rampant healthcare spending in the U.S. lies in care quality, or narrowing the wide differences in the way that care is delivered. The top reason for this variation is that doctors still reject evidence-based "cookbook" medicine, going instead their gut, according to Mark Neuman, emergency medicine doc at Boston Children’s, and Vincent Chiang, chief of Children’s Inpatient Service.
Read more
Researchers ‘see’ the eye’s surface at atomic scales
NIH-funded research identified a protein necessary the transparency in the lens of the human eye. The lens is composed of unique cells called lens fibers, proteins called crystallins, water and little else. The tight packing of these materials creates a glass-like medium that allows light through.
This research could have a huge impact in drug development, as successfully getting drugs into the eye has been one of the biggest roadblocks in fighting ocular disease.
Read more
