Orshe

Last September, an HHS advisory committee recommended that all newborns be screened for critical congenital heart disease — a leading cause of death in infants younger than one year of age. The head of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, hasn’t yet adopted the recommendation, requesting input on how to actually implement screening.

At first blush, Washington’s tough talk about fiscal austerity doesn’t look good for drug makers. Government programs including Medicare and Medicaid spend $99 billion each year on prescription medicines, according to Washington consulting firm Avalere Health, making for a ripe cost-cutting target.

Ask anyone who’s spent time in the hospital — patients get a lot of blood taken over the course of their stay.

A few weeks back, the Institute of Medicine recommended that contraception and seven other women’s preventive health services be covered by insurers with no out-of-pocket costs.

Today the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services signed off on those recommendations, saying the requirements would apply to new plans starting  starting on or after Aug. 1, 2012.

Besides birth control, insurers will also have to cover the following services with no co-pay or deductible:

What does a sunburn have to do with scientific progress?

According to UK researchers, the results of recent experiments on humans and rats exposed to UVB rays — those are the burn-causing ones — may point towards potential pain treatments. And the methods used may suggest a different way of hunting for new drugs.

The findings appear in Science Translational Medicine.

Given the growing cost of malpractice suits from missed or delayed diagnoses in the emergency department, hospitals and their liability insurers are mining resolved claims for lessons on how to reduce such errors, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

A new study finds that rivaroxaban, the anti-clotting drug that developers Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG hope will become a strong rival to warfarin, can prevent certain blood clots in hospitalized patients, though it carries a higher risk of bleeding.

What if the U.S. suffered some sort of nuclear emergency?

According to a newly published study, state health departments are “poorly prepared to respond adequately to a major radiation emergency incident,” including unintentional exposures in a hospital or on a major roadway as well as intentional exposures, as with a dirty bomb or nuclear detonation. The survey doesn’t, however, cover nuclear power plant preparedness, since states with those plants are required to have specific, detailed emergency response plans.

If you’re admitted to the hospital with a heart attack, your chances of survival may depend as much on such factors as how quickly the institution cycles through CEOs as on the type of treatment you receive.

Congress is getting ready for another episode of its recurring doctor drama: Block the Medicare Payment Cuts If You Can!