In less than three weeks, we’ll know whether Congress’ 12-member bipartisan “Super Committee” has succeeded. If it can’t find $1.2 trillion in federal deficit reductions over the next decade, we face reductions of the same magnitude as across-the-board cuts.
Obesity and depression both dramatically increase health care costs, but they mainly act separately, according to a study published in the November 2011 Journal of General Internal Medicine by Group Health Research Institute scientists.
In a national survey of primary care physicians that the Archives of Internal Medicine published last month, nearly half agreed: Their own patients are getting too much care.
Many people taking common Alzheimer’s disease medications—cholinesterase inhibitors—are given medications with anticholinergic properties, which oppose their effects. Group Health Research Institute scientists investigated how often that happens and reported on the consequences in an “Early View” study e-published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
In 10 years of annual mammograms, more than half of women without cancer will be called back at least once for more testing. And about one in 12 will be referred for a biopsy, according to a study of national Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium data in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Yoga classes were linked to better back-related function and diminished symptoms from chronic low back pain in the largest U.S. randomized controlled trial of yoga to date.
Opioids—a class of medicines commonly given for pain—were associated with a higher risk of pneumonia in a study of 3,061 adults, aged 65 to 94, e-published in advance of publication in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study from researchers at Group Health Research Institute and the University of Washington (UW) also found that benzodiazepines, which are drugs generally given for insomnia and anxiety, did not affect pneumonia risk.
Land Acknowledgment
Our Seattle offices sit on the occupied land of the Duwamish and by the shared waters of the Coast Salish people, who have been here thousands of years and remain. Learn about practicing land acknowledgment.