Dan Frith

An article published (May 21, 2007) in the New England Journal of Medicine has doctors and diabetes patients scrambling to learn more about the link between Avandia (a drug for Type II diabetes) to a potentially increased risk of heart attacks. The analysis of the drug was conducted by Dr.…

A recent report suggests that higher workloads for hospital staff on a patient’s admission day increase the length of stay, mortality risk (risk of dieing) and total costs. The study was based upon a retrospective study of 5742 adults admitted to an academic (medical school affiliated) hospital. Maybe hospital administrators…

I reported last year (11-26-06) on an Illinois nursing home under investigation. The inquiry focused on possible morphine overdoses at the Woodstock Residence Nursing Home. Investigators interviewed a former employee of Woodstock Residence and believe the deaths suspicious but are not calling them homicides.The Chicago Tribune now reports a third…

Impossible! Outrageous! Unreasonable! Those are the types of responses I would expect to hear from administrators of our local hospital (Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital) if asked the above question. Well, it appears that at least one hospital is willing to give it a try.Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania has overhauled…

It takes a lot for a nursing home to lose certification from Medicare and Medicaid but it looks like a nursing home in Fredericksburg, Virginia has done just that. On May 1, 2007 a resident of Carriage Hill Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Fredericksburg strangled to death on a nurse…

The front page of today’s Roanoke Times (5-8-07) contains an excellent article about a serious problem right here in Roanoke. For starters, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital lost most of their radiologists several months ago. That group of doctors, Radiology Associates, moved most of their practice to another hospital, Lewis-Gale Hospital…

A Cleveland, Tenn., nursing home company has settled a lawsuit that accused it of neglecting its patients and allowing an elderly woman to lie in her own feces for hours at a time after back surgery.The woman, Betty Mae Hanzel of Hastings, developed an infection in her wound during her…

Senior citizens who do not have children to help care for them are less likely to have to go into a nursing home if they live in a state that spends more on home- and community- based services, researchers have found. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago report…