By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA The conundrum continued behind conference doors last week at the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) conference in Tampa about the efficacy of mobile phone usage to improve patient health. Lively discussions followed about the ROI for chronic disease management through mobile health and outcomes for remote patient monitoring focusing on whether telemedicine is excluded from meaningful use and reasons why telehealth should be a key component in Accountable Care Organizations…
Read More...Time to Eliminate Dangerous Injection Practices by Clinicians
By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA Thanks to Laura Landro for shining light on unsafe injections in her WSJ blog, “Unsafe Injection Practices Persist Despite Education Efforts.” Landro writes: “A new push is underway to eliminate unsafe injection practices, which remain a persistent safety problem despite years of efforts to educate clinicians about the risks of re-using needles, syringes and drug vials. In the U.S., failure to follow safe practices in delivering intravenous medications and…
Read More...Heart Disease in Women: Ladies, Love Your Heart All Year Long
By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA Featured in USATODAY.com | Grand Rounds – Health Tips American Heart Month may be officially over, but don’t let the lack of media attention fool you into thinking heart disease isn’t a critical issue. We still need to be mindful of the fact that heart disease is the number one killer of women. There are simple lifestyle choices you can make to help prevent you from heart disease. I…
Read More...Speaking Diabetes: A Guide from an Insider
Guest post by Miriam E. Tucker Just as physicians use abbreviations and terminology that sound like a foreign language to outsiders, patients who talk to each other on the Internet (and elsewhere) have developed their own quirky code words and phrases. Here’s some of the lingo used by those with diabetes: D-anything – Placing a “d” in front of any word makes it uniquely diabetically ours. One prominent example is DLife, the weekly CNBC television…
Read More...Fill Up on Fiber to Fight Cancer
Guest post submitted by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center When you think fiber, what comes to mind? Your favorite breakfast bar or a sugar substitute with added fiber? Think again! The best source of this important nutrient is natural plant-based foods. According to the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), plant-based foods rich in dietary fiber may reduce your risk for colorectal cancer. That’s because the more fiber you consume, the less…
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