Concerns about the deleterious effects of stress on the mind and body have led to the beginnings of a stress vaccine, an injection that will reduce these effects.
The use of coded patient data for reimbursement purposes can tempt clinicians to exaggerate the severity of the patient's condition, skewing the accuracy of the data and interfering with clinical decision support and research.
Rachel O. Reid, MD, MS and Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH
An effective policy regarding retail clinics in a primary care practice should address patients' need for timely and convenient acute care and build capacity for enhanced access to acute care within the primary care clinic itself.
Patients who have been encouraged to think of themselves as consumers and a medical system that is driven by individual demands rather than big-picture planning can undermine fairness in the distribution of vaccines.
A much-anticipated attempt to rectify the many shortcomings in public health statutory law and regulations, the Turning Point Act resulted in sweeping overhauls of public health infrastructure and legislation in several states.
Use of decision-support systems can improve quality of patient care in residency training programs if the resident physician users participate in the development and routine revision of those systems.
Anne-Marie Laberge, MD, PhD and Wylie Burke, MD, PhD
Physicians and counselors must address the importance of communicating genetic test results to family members in the pre-test counseling and informed-consent processes prior to testing.