My lede:

About 4,000 medical students are taking classes on everything from measuring quality to using technology to prevent medical errors, but the training is not happening in medical schools.

Rather, it comes courtesy of free online courses offered by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (www.ihi.org/openschool).

The whole shebang.

My lede:

State medical boards across the country took 60 more disciplinary actions against physicians in 2008 than they did in 2007. That increase — less than 1% — was not enough to silence critics who argue the boards are not doing enough to protect patients from bad doctors.

State medical board officials said staffing levels and funding affect a medical board’s ability to address complaints against physicians quickly and fairly.

The whole shebang.

My lede:

Many scientists hoped President Obama would end what they saw as the politicization of embryonic stem cell research. They thought all Bush administration funding bans would vanish, easing the way for unimpeded research that could yield interventions for physicians to use in treating everything from Parkinson’s disease to diabetes. But those hopes may be running into political reality.

The National Institutes of Health in April proposed overturning some Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research while leaving others in place. The rules would allow federal funds to go to research using stem cell lines derived from human embryos that are left over from fertility treatments and otherwise would be discarded. But techniques that scientists say hold promise and should be funded would be ineligible for NIH money.

The whole shebang.