CommonHealth alerts us to a Children's Hospital study that found kids infected with MRSA seemed to be especially at risk to death by flu. In some areas, up to 9% of kids now have the antibiotic-resistant bacteria living in their noses; such kids had an eightfold risk of severe and sometimes fatal H1N1 flu infections. And this, they say, is why kids need to get flu shots.
Plenty of background on the hospital's pioneering double hand transplant.
Via CommonHealth.
The Globe has a long piece on what Dr. Bohdan Pomahac had to go through to get his hospital and a New England organ-transplant board to let him do Boston's first face transplant.
The drugs, which are still a long way away from human testing, let alone the market, work by latching onto a form of RNA only generated by viruses inside living cells and signalling those cells to kill themselves, MIT reports:
"In theory, it should work against all viruses," says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory's Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group who invented the new technology.
WBUR reports on possible effects of research cuts on teaching hospitals in Massachusetts, which bring in more federal science funds per capita than any other state - some $2.4 billion just from the National Institutes of Health last year.
Turns out you can now rent researchers and labs for designing new drugs, and a new breed of small-scale entrepreneurs are doing just that, WBUR reports:
Dennis Goldberg runs a drug company out of one corner of his living room.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that the state constitution does not automatically give legal aliens the right to state-subsidized health insurance.
Immigrants had originally been covered by Commonwealth Care, but the state moved to strike them from coverage to save money. The state's highest court said that while the state constitution protects people against discrimination based on "national origin," it does not necessarily protect "aliens" against discrimination. The court drew the distinction between the two:
WBUR reports on an AARP list of 14 state reps who signed a pledge last year to retain the state's ban on gifts to doctors by drug companies - then voted this week to end the ban. Among them: Ed Coppinger.
Globe: House votes to restrict unions: Measure would curb bargaining on health care.
However, the Outraged Liberal says not so fast with the Walker comparisons; the real issue, he says, is that Mass. AFL-CIO honcho Robert Haynes has become a blowhard liability to the labor movement he purports to lead:
CommonHealth reports on the fine for the "potential violation" of a federal patient-privacy law caused when an employee lost 40 to 50 patient records on the T in 2009.
Dr. Meghan MacLean Weir, a local pediatrician, reports:
I saw twenty-seven patients during a shift earlier this week and fifteen or so were throwing up and having diarrhea. So please, consider this your public service announcement to WASH YOUR HANDS. Repeatedly.
Blue Mass. Group posts some details of the plan to create new "accountable care organizations" of hospitals and doctors that would manage the overall care of groups of patients, in theory bringing down health-care prices - just like HMOs were supposed to do by managing the overall care of groups of patients.
The City Council today considers a proposal by Council President Steve Murphy to set up a special committee on asthma, "which shall concern itself with the causes, treatments and rates of asthma in the city, particularly environmental issues exacerbating asthma symptoms, methods of treating asthma, and work being done to reduce asthma rates."
WBUR reports and analyzes the implications to businesses and individual consumers.
No word yet on the new name; if they can't figure out which comes first, they could compromise and call it Brandeis Health Care.
The Globe reports on Paul Levy's $1.6-million severance from Beth Israel Deaconess.
Joanne Chang-Myers tweets:
Heath ins prems went up 32% for Flour w this renewal. Weighing alternatives-offering 2K deductible plan feels incred unfair to staff.
Via Adam Castiglioni.
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