New Legislation Aimed at Reducing Physician Shortages

From the Minnesota Hospital Association “Advocate” mailing:

President Bush recently signed legislation extending through March 6 the Conrad J-1 visa program, which allows foreign physicians to practice in the United States.

The program had expired in June. It allows state health departments to request visa waivers for up to 30 foreign physicians per year, American Hospital Association materials said. Those doctors must work in federally designated health professions shortage areas or in medically underserved areas.

The legislation also doubled to 10 the number of physicians per state who may serve in facilities outside medically underserved areas but that treat patients from those areas. These waivers are commonly referred to as “flex” waivers.

In Minnesota, the J-1 visa program is administered by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). In the last federal fiscal year, from Oct. 1, 2007- Sept. 30, 2008, Minnesota requested and received 23 such visa waivers. Five of the 23 were flex waivers.

In the past, Minnesota has routinely not used all 30 J-1 visa spots available to it. As a result, the Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) has developed an initiative in collaboration with MDH in which the health department will send the association names of applicable foreign doctors — and their medical specialties and dates of availability.

The association will then make such information available to interested member hospitals. For details, contact Richard Kreyer, MHA vice president of work-force development.

“At MHA, we are working to make the J-1 visa process easier for hospitals,” Kreyer said. “We want to make sure we aren’t leaving any spots unused, especially when member hospitals are looking for physicians to meet the needs of their communities.”

Conventional Wisdom on Uninsured Use of the ED Is Only Half True

From MedPage Today:

Three of the six most common assumptions about emergency department use by uninsured patients are false, and three are supported by fact but are true for all ED users, insured and uninsured, according to researchers here.

The single most common assumption — that uninsured patients present to the ED for non-urgent, inappropriate care — is one of the three not clearly supported by current data, Manya F. Newton, M.P.H., M.S., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues reported in the October 22/29 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers pinpointed the six most frequent assumptions from the literature and culled current peer reviewed studies and national data to back them up — or refute them.

The other five most common assumptions about uninsured patients, in order, were that they:

• lack access to primary care
• were using ED facilities more frequently
• cause overcrowding
• present more often than insured patients
• were more expensive to treat in the ED than elsewhere

Portable Hematoma Detector

From Medgadget:

The Infrascanner brain hematoma detector is the first hand-held device of its kind designed to assist first responders and emergency room personnel in identifying life threatening brain hematomas, allowing expedient assessment of patients and potentially facilitating crucial treatment. Intracranial hematomas resulting from a traumatic brain injury are life-threatening and patient outcomes can improve significantly if treated within an hour after an injury – known as the “golden hour”. While most hospitals have a Computer Aided Tomography (CAT) scanner, which is viewed as the state-of-the-art technology for diagnosing a brain hematoma, many facilities lack the neurosurgical capabilities to treat the condition. The early identification of a brain hematoma can play a significant role in facilitating transportation of critically injured patients to facilities, which can both verify Infrascanner’s early diagnosis and offer surgical intervention.