Category: U.S. Healthcare

Healthcare

Ways the U.S. Healthcare System Lets Patients Down—And How to Push Back

LauraLeave a Comment on Ways the U.S. Healthcare System Lets Patients Down—And How to Push Back

The United States healthcare system operates with major difficulties, which create problems for patients who do not receive adequate service. High healthcare prices function as a significant obstacle that makes Americans avoid necessary medical care because of unaffordable costs. Access to quality healthcare services remains uneven which intensifies healthcare disparities mainly because rural areas experience […]

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Nursing Homes for People of Color: Still Segregated, Still Unequal

LauraLeave a Comment on Nursing Homes for People of Color: Still Segregated, Still Unequal

If Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive today, he would be 86. If he was like many elderly black Americans, he might well end up in a nursing home ranked lower in quality and with less well-trained nursing staff than a nursing home that many white Americans reside in. The facility would likely house a […]

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Are Dense-Breast, Right-to-Know Laws Helpful?

LauraLeave a Comment on Are Dense-Breast, Right-to-Know Laws Helpful?

In a victory for the dense-breast patient movement, Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed legislation last week requiring that doctors who discover that women have dense breasts on mammography must inform women that: dense breasts are a risk factor for breast cancer; mammography sees cancer less well in dense breasts than in normal breasts; and women […]

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Is the Bar High Enough for Screening Breast Ultrasounds for Dense Breasts?

LauraLeave a Comment on Is the Bar High Enough for Screening Breast Ultrasounds for Dense Breasts?

In a unanimous decision yesterday, FDA approved the first breast ultrasound imaging system for dense breast tissue “for use in combination with a standard mammography in women with dense breast tissue who have a negative mammogram and no symptoms of breast cancer.” Patients should not interpret FDA’s approval of the somo-v Automated Breast Ultrasound System […]

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Terminology Matters: Let’s Not Call It “Prostate Cancer”

LauraLeave a Comment on Terminology Matters: Let’s Not Call It “Prostate Cancer”

If ever there was a bombshell at a National Institutes of Health Consensus Development meeting, it happened today at the panel on active surveillance for prostate cancer.  The Panel said that terminology matters and that men who have PSA screening results that read 10 ngs or less with a Gleason Score of 6 or less […]

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