The lede:

The proportion of hospitals with palliative care programs has more than doubled since 2000 to 53% of all facilities with more than 50 beds, according to a study in the October Journal of Palliative Medicine.

But the prevalence of hospital-based palliative care varies widely by state, and about 310,000 seriously ill patients a year lack access to such specialized care, said R. Sean Morrison, MD, co-author of the study and an accompanying state-by-state report card.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

Oregon’s stand as the only U.S. state to provide terminally ill patients with legal access to physician-assisted suicide may come to an end Nov. 4.

Voters in Washington will consider a ballot measure, known as Initiative 1000, to enact a law similar to the one in Oregon. Under I-1000, access to doctor-ordered lethal doses of medication would be limited to adults who live in Washington and who are judged by two physicians to be mentally competent and likely to die of a terminal illness within six months.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

The next president will be faced with the question of whether to overturn President Bush’s 2001 executive order banning federal research funding for new human embryonic stem cell lines.

Sens. Barack Obama (D, Ill.) and John McCain (R, Ariz.) have pledged to overturn Bush’s restrictions. But prominent supporters of embryonic stem cell research have raised concerns about what they see as mixed signals from the McCain campaign.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

The U.S. transplantation system is approaching a tragic milestone. In late September, 99,728 people were on the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list.

One waiting patient dies every 73 minutes. Three in four waiting patients need kidneys, with the average wait more than five years.

Yet transplant professionals in Iran — which has the world’s only legal, regulated system of kidney donor compensation — claim to have nearly eliminated that country’s waiting list. If their numbers were adjusted for the U.S. population, the kidney wait list would number 1,307.

Meanwhile, in Spain — which, by law, presumes organ donation after death unless the individual said otherwise while alive — the cadaveric organ procurement rate is 35% higher than ours. If the U.S. could do what Spain does with its presumed-consent law, the U.S. would net nearly 14,000 more organs a year.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

It’s flu season. Again.

The good news is this year’s vaccine is in ample supply. But with it, comes a challenge. Physicians should not only seek to immunize as many patients as possible, but also their staff members — and themselves.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

The Medical Tourism Assn. in July launched a program to identify medical travel agencies that follow industry best practices.

But the West Palm Beach, Fla.-based trade group’s initiative has drawn fire from hospital accreditation and physician certification organizations who say it could confuse patients seeking reassurance when considering surgery outside the United States.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

Without brand-name drug samples to hand out, physicians are three times more likely to rescribe generic medications for their uninsured patients, according to a study in the Septmber Southern Medical Journal.

The study looked at prescribing habits of 70 doctors at a university-affiliated internal medicine practice in the nine months before and after an office move meant losing access to a secure place to store drug samples.

The whole shebang.