With patients’ permission, relatives can play an active role in the exam room. But don’t let them take over.

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Eighty-five percent of physicians say it is important to know what patients expect from a hospital stay to ensure high-quality care, yet only one in 10 doctors asks about patient expectations.

Nurses are likelier to quiz patients about their expectations, with 20% doing so, according to a survey of more than 1,000 physicians and nurses in the U.S. and three other countries published in November’s BMJ Quality and Safety.

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The number of first-time applicants to allopathic medical schools reached an all-time high of 32,654 students, a 2.6% rise from 2010, said an Assn. of American Medical Colleges report released in October.

Enrollment in medical schools grew at its fastest rate, 3%, since the turn of the century. More than 19,000 medical students matriculated in 2011, reflecting a nationwide push for expanded enrollment and students’ interest in a career as a physician.

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A new law in Illinois is enabling use of unclaimed bodies in anatomical education to help combat a shortage of cadavers amid a growth in medical school enrollment. The move could signal a nationwide resurrection of the decades-old practice of giving medical schools first choice on unclaimed bodies before they are buried at public expense.

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Reports show that the vast majority of Americans are failing to reduce their sodium intake, are unaware of federal dietary guidelines and are largely unconcerned with their daily sodium consumption.

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Stanford University’s hospitals and clinics have saved $3.2 million in annual premiums since establishing a program to disclose and investigate adverse events and offer an apology and compensation to patients when the bad outcome has been deemed preventable.

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The hospital pay-for-performance program that is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act starts paying in October 2012 and could exacerbate racial and economic health disparities, suggests a study published in the October Health Affairs.

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Patients insured by HMOs are likelier to receive guideline-based wellness, preventive and chronic disease care from their physicians than patients covered by preferred-provider organizations, but the gap between the two types of health plans is shrinking.

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Internists, family physicians and pediatricians could help slash nearly $7 billion in annual health spending by avoiding the top-five commonly ordered, low-evidence interventions in each of their specialties.

Nearly 90% of the primary care “don’t” savings, or $5.8 billion, would come from prescribing generic, rather than brand-name, statins when starting lipid-lowering therapy, according to research published online Oct. 1 in Archives of Internal Medicine.

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The nation has improved its overall grade on providing hospital-based palliative care to a B, up from a C in 2008.

The higher grade is due to a 19% rise in the number of hospitals with palliative care teams since 2008, according to a report released in October. The number of 50-plus bed hospitals with palliative care teams has nearly tripled since 2000 to 63%, said the research conducted by the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a New York nonprofit that helps hospitals set up palliative care operations. Eighty-five percent of hospitals with 300 beds or more have such teams in place, the report said.

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The effort to reduce painkiller overdoses and deaths is moving beyond prosecuting so-called pill mills to direct regulation of any physician who prescribes opioids for patients with chronic noncancer pain.

The strictest regulation of opioid prescribing is in Washington state. In July, rules affecting osteopathic physicians and nonphysician prescribers took effect. The rules, which cover allopathic physicians starting in January 2012, include detailed instructions on how to evaluate and care for patients with chronic noncancer pain. Also required are written treatment plans known as “patient contracts” that call for mandatory, periodic urine screenings.

The rules mandate that primary care doctors consult with board-certified pain specialists before prescribing daily morphine-equivalent doses of 120 mg or greater — the first dosage threshold of its kind in the U.S.

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Hospitals struggled to lower readmission rates among Medicare patients between 2003 and 2009, according to a September report from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. The report comes as hospitals prepare for Medicare penalties for high readmission rates that start in October 2012.

Researchers affiliated with the institute’s Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care examined the records of all 10.7 million Medicare patient hospital discharges from July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2009, and found little progress.

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The number of hospitals offering complementary and alternative medical services has tripled since 2000, driven principally by patient demand for low-risk therapies such as massage, guided imagery, meditation and the “healing touch” practice known as Reiki.

Forty-two percent of the 714 hospitals surveyed said they provide unconventional therapies, and executives listed patient demand as the top criterion in choosing which therapies to offer, according to a report released in September by the American Hospital Assn.’s Health Forum and the Samueli Institute, a think tank that supports alternative medicine. In 2000, just 14% of hospitals told AHA researchers that they provided complementary therapies.

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