Diabetes affects approximately 8 percent of people in the United States, and adults with diabetes have heart disease death rates two to four times higher than adults without diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. In this week's issue, you will discover how sugar-sweetened drinks are contributing to this problem, ...

Dianne Feeney, associate director of quality initiatives for the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC), discusses reasons for potentially preventable readmissions as well as the related costs for these readmissions.

The HSCRC has a list of the top 15 reasons for a potentially preventable readmission (PPR). The first three ...

This week's issue highlights how location and race can play a part in disease management and the link between sociodemographics and cancer screenings. Also, a CDC report outlines where hospitalizations for heart disease occur the most among the elderly.

Geography affects funding for disease prevention, too. Find out how federal ...

Although the 2010 Winter Olympics concluded more than a week ago, several athletes are still making headlines. A figure skater, a skeleton racer and a snowboarder will appear in a series of videos from first lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative to solve childhood obesity within a generation.

Also out ...

Findings published in an April 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine formalized what healthcare organizations have observed for a long time: that Medicare readmissions are frequent and costly. Given this data, it's not surprising that more than 40 percent of respondents to the Healthcare Intelligence Network Reducing ...

In response to first lady Michelle Obama's efforts to fight childhood obesity in America, this issue of the DM Update is focused on this epidemic. You will learn whether increased rates of obesity and other chronic conditions in children will improve over time and when efforts to prevent obesity among ...

Good or bad, the Jersey Shore has been getting a lot of press lately, thanks to a hugely popular reality show filmed about 10 miles south of our office. A new report issued last week offers a reality check on the health of residents at the Jersey shore and nationwide. ...

Faced with nearly irreconcilable differences after a seven-hour healthcare summit last Thursday, there's renewed talk of Democrats employing a little-used parliamentary tool known as budget reconciliation to pass their version of healthcare reform. Budget reconciliation allows legislation tied to the budgeting process to be passed with a simple majority rather ...

Dr. Barbara Walters, D.O., M.B.A., senior medical director at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, details how participation in CMS’s physician group practice demo contributed to the construction of Dartmouth’s medical home and reimbursement model.

Although it wasn’t our original intention, participation in the CMS physician group practice (PGP) demo retrospectively allowed us ...

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society, approximately 400,000 Americans and 2.5 million worldwide have MS. Every week, another 200 people are diagnosed. In this week's issue, discover the link between drinking milk while pregnant and a baby's risk of MS, as well as new research on blood flow ...