A big one for me is coming back and seeing my catatonia patient I was giving IV meals to and changing the sheets out from under a week ago now up in the dayroom participating in a few rounds of spades while munching on cookies and soda. I have to shove down that exact excited squeal from the video sometimes.

What've y'all got?

Highlights

• This study investigates why specialist physician fees vary.
• We consider variation between patients, physicians, specialties, and other factors.
• We find variation between physicians dominates other sources.
• Contrary to common beliefs, patient factors account for little of the variation.
• Our results inform policy to improve price transparency in specialist care market.

More context:

Although Australia has a publicly funded health system that provides universal health coverage, about 44 % of the population holds private health insurance. Specialist physician fees in the private sector are unregulated; physicians can charge any price they want, subject to market forces.

We find that patient risk factors account for a small portion of the variance in fees and out-of-pocket payments

Physician-specific variation, responsible for much of the variation in total fees and OOP payments, could include physician characteristics that patients value, such as bedside manner, experience or reputation, or factors related to physicians’ circumstances or preferences. A key physician-level factor that may drive the variation is the perception of quality or skill differences between physicians. This perception can come from either consumers or physicians themselves about their quality or skill levels in comparison to other physicians in the physician's local market. [...] which can lead to large price variation and non-transparency of fees.

Recommendations

The government, private health insurers and physicians themselves could all play a more active role than they currently do. The government, for example, could mandate the disclosure of price and quality information for all procedures that receive government subsidies, insurers could provide incentives for the disclosure of such information, and physicians could change their referral practice to give preferences to other physicians who are willing to be transparent about their prices and quality.

A British Columbia provincial policy that forced people with chronic illnesses such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis to switch to cheaper medications saved the province more than $730-million over five years, according to a new government report.

The B.C. government said Friday that the money freed up through its biosimilar switching plan allowed the province to expand public coverage of other drugs and devices, including Trikafta, a life-changing treatment for cystic fibrosis and continuous glucose monitors for people with diabetes.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

30 April 1961 Leonid Rogozov does appendectomy on himself during his Antarctica expidition with help of driver and meteorologist.

I was incredibly strong and fit,” says Lucy Keighley. And she looks it, in the photo she is showing me, taken a few years ago. She is with her best friend, Lorna; they have just completed a 15-mile race on the North York Moors. “It was a brutal race,” she says. “But it was great. I was happy.” Today, although it’s quite dark in the room (she doesn’t get on well with bright light), I can see a tear rolling down her cheek. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to get back there.”

In the most recent findings by the Office for National Statistics, released in April, an estimated 2 million people in England and Scotland (3.3% of the population) self-reported experiencing long Covid, meaning symptoms that continued for more than four weeks after infection, although many reported their symptoms had lasted two years or longer. Of those, about 1.5 million felt their day-to-day activities were affected, while 381,000 said their day-to‑day activities were “limited a lot”. Worldwide, at least 65 million people are estimated to have long Covid.

Opal Sandy from Oxfordshire in the UK is the first patient treated in a global gene therapy trial, which shows “mind-blowing” results. She is the first British patient in the world and the youngest child to receive this type of treatment.

Opal was born completely deaf because of a rare genetic condition, auditory neuropathy, caused by the disruption of nerve impulses travelling from the inner ear to the brain.

Within four weeks of having the gene therapy infusion to her right ear, Opal responded to sound, even with the cochlear implant in her left ear switched off.

Clinicians noticed continuous improvement in Opal’s hearing in the weeks afterwards and at 24 weeks confirmed close to normal hearing levels for soft sounds, such as whispering, in her treated ear.

Now 18 months old, Opal can respond to her parents’ voices and can communicate words such as “Dada” and “bye-bye.”

"These results are spectacular and better than I expected. Gene therapy has been the future in otology and audiology for many years and I’m so excited that it is now finally here," says Professor Manohar Bance, an ear surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and chief investigator of the trial.

Professor Bance hopes that this is the start of a new era for gene therapies for the inner ear and many types of hearing loss.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.run/m/world@lemmy.world/t/410267

More than 200 people with diabetes have been injured when their insulin pumps shut down unexpectedly due to a problem with a connected mobile app, the US Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.

Hospital leaders say the health system won’t be ready if the avian flu that’s infected American dairy cattle becomes widespread among humans.

In discussing a hypothetical scenario, the hospitals have struck a different tone than the Biden administration. It says the risk is currently low to most people and that agencies are closely monitoring for any sign of danger to Americans.

Still, hospital officials told POLITICO they’re dismayed that they don’t feel better prepared, just four years after Covid-19 caught them unawares. They’re not confident that the health care system — including the government agencies that have wound down Covid responses — can avoid the missteps around tests, bed space and communication that plagued the last public health emergency, should this strain of flu, H5N1, become more of a threat.