Medicare’s first public effort to identify hospitals with patient safety problems has pinpointed many prestigious teaching hospitals in Boston and around the nation, raising concerns about quality at these places but also bolstering objections that the government’s measurements are skewed.
In the wake of research suggesting a skin-cancer drug may have benefits in treating Alzheimer’s disease, physicians and advocacy groups are getting a flurry of calls from patients seeking to use the drug off-label. Keith Flaherty, HMS associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Reisa Sperling, HMS associate professor of neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, are quoted.
Alden Landry, HMS instructor in medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is working to recruit more African-Americans and Hispanics to be doctors.
Physician referral rates in the United States doubled between 1999 and 2009, a new study finds, an increase that likely contributes to the rising costs of health care.
Mary Ellen Avery, who died on December 4th, was the first woman to serve as physician in chief at Children’s Hospital Boston and the first woman to chair a major clinical department at HMS. She co-wrote a paper that said surfactant, a foamy coating that helps lungs expand, was missing in tiny babies who died shortly after birth of what is now called respiratory distress syndrome. The discovery led to treatments that have saved uncounted lives worldwide.
