AllHealthcare

OSCEOLA, Mo. - Electronic medical records are a life-or-death issue at Sac-Osage Hospital - not necessarily just for the patients, but for the hospital itself. Facing a budget shortfall, the 47-bed hospital in rural western Missouri is borrowing nearly $1 million to pitch its paper medical charts and purchase a state-of-the-art electronic health records system. The hospital is hinging its survival ...

The number of Americans using antidepressants doubled in only a decade, while the number seeing psychiatrists continued to fall, a study shows. About 10% of Americans -- or 27 million people -- were taking antidepressants in 2005, the last year for which data were available at the time the study was written. That's about twice the number in 1996, according to ...

Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, has been studying the roots of pain in the brain, applying last year for a grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue his imaging studies in the field. But the grant was held up by a shortage of cash at the federal agency. Now, thanks to the national economic stimulus program, Mackey, an associate professor ...

Confusing claims and outright distortions have animated the national debate over changes in the health care system. Opponents of proposals by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats falsely claim that government agents will force elderly people to discuss end-of-life wishes. Obama has played down the possibility that a health care overhaul would cause large numbers of people to change doctors ...

WASHINGTON - Scientists say they may have tracked down the origins of the deadly disease malaria - chimpanzees. In recent years diseases like HIV-AIDS and Ebola have been traced to chimpanzees, and a study being released Tuesday shows that this is nothing new, according to Dr. Nathan D. Wolfe, an author of the report in Proceedings of the National Academy of ...

BEIJING - China locked down a remote farming town after two people died and 10 more were sickened with pneumonic plague, a lung infection that can kill a human in 24 hours if left untreated. Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan in northwestern Qinghai province, where townspeople reached by The Associated Press by phone Monday said the streets were largely deserted ...

WASHINGTON -- The number of Army medical centers and clinics that provide timely access to routine medical care has hit a five-year low, Army records show, often forcing soldiers and their families to seek treatment off base. About 16% of Army patients, particularly family members, can't get appointments with their primary physicians and are sent to doctors off the installation, according ...

WASHINGTON - The House has passed a far-reaching food safety bill requiring more government inspections and imposing new penalties on those who violate the law, reacting strongly to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people. The legislation would require greater oversight of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls. ...

ROME - Italy has approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, capping years of debate and defying opposition from the Vatican, which warned of immediate excommunication for doctors prescribing the pill and for women who use it. The pill is already available in a number of other European countries. Its approval by Italy's drug regulation authorities was praised by women's ...

LONDON - The British government said Friday that it plans to ban private organ transplants from dead donors to allay fears that prospective recipients can buy their way to the front of the line. A government-commissioned report recommended that organs donated within the state-run National Health Service should stay within the public health system, which provides universal care to everyone who ...

For those who can't imagine starting the day without an energy drink, RightHealth, the Guide to Health on the Web, is providing a wake up call. Although energy drinks can make all-night cram sessions easier to stay awake for, they may not receive a passing grade when it comes to health. While energy drinks may temporarily improve cognitive performance and alertness, ...

ATLANTA - Americans spend about $34 billion annually on alternative medicine, according to the first national estimate of such out-of-pocket spending in more than a decade. Chiropractors, acupuncturists and herbal remedies are commanding more consumer dollars as people seek high-touch care in a high-tech society, the report released Thursday by the government shows. "We are talking about a very wide range ...

LONDON - International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category deeming both to be definite causes of cancer. For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as "probable carcinogens." A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning ...

The Food and Drug Administration isn't doing enough to help speed potentially lifesaving cancer drugs from the lab to patients, a new study says. Cancer therapies in the FDA's "accelerated approval" program -- created in 1992 to help patients with life-threatening diseases such as AIDS -- get to market no more quickly than other drugs, says a study funded by the ...

Divorce and widowhood have a lingering, detrimental impact on health -- even among those who remarry, U.S. researchers found. Researchers at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University said the study involved 8,652 people ages 51-61. [widget:1074] University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite said based on genetics and other factors, people enter adulthood with a particular "stock" of health, other ...

One of the medical breakthroughs with the greatest promise is stem cells. Stem cell research is frowned on by many because it is most often associated with stem cells from aborted fetuses. However, great strides in stem cell research using stem cells for the patient's own body are being made. The new stem cell research takes stem cells from the patient ...

WASHINGTON - Obesity's not just dangerous, it's expensive. New research shows medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person than for someone who's normal weight. Overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion, double what it was nearly a decade ago, says the study published Monday by the journal Health Affairs. The higher expense reflects the costs of treating ...

They have tended their patients under bridges, in tent cities, and in the starkest of homes. Their patients are often those nobody wants to hear about but whose lives depend on the constant care of the nurses who work for the Visiting Nurse Association of Tulsa. "These are people who have no Medicare, no Medicaid, no resources. Nobody else wants to ...

The grandparents of a four-year-old girl who died after being turned away from a northwest Queensland, Australia hospital say racism is to blame for the girl's death. The girl, from Doomadgee, had been ill for days and was turned away from the Doomadgee Hospital several times in the past week before being admitted on Wednesday. She died on Thursday before her ...

WASHINGTON - The House voted Friday to lift a ban on using taxpayer dollars for needle exchange programs for intravenous drug users intended to prevent the spread of HIV and other diseases. The vote to lift a longstanding ban on federal aid for such programs came after a brief but passionate debate on an amendment by Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., to ...