Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of government data.

Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic fatalities have dropped by more than a third since the early 1970s to 36,284 in 2009.

Public health experts have used the comparison to draw attention to the nation’s growing prescription drug problem, which they characterize as an epidemic. This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.

Fueling the surge in deaths are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol. Among the most commonly abused are OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma. Such drugs now cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.

The most commonly abused prescription drug, Vicodin or hydrocodone, also is the most widely prescribed in America, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Drug deaths outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

A large study in older veterans raises fresh concern about mild brain injuries that hundreds of thousands of troops have suffered from explosions in recent wars. Even concussions seem to raise the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia later in life, researchers found in a study paid for by the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health. Other research reported at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in France found a possibly high rate of mild cognitive impairment, or “pre-Alzheimer’s,” in some retired pro-football players, who take many hits to the head in their careers.

Studies of mild brain injuries raise alarms is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Hands-free electronic faucets can save water, and because they don’t have to be touched, to be turned on, it has been assumed that they help fight the spread of germs, too.

But a team at the Johns Hopkins Hospital` in Baltimore has discovered that at their facility, electronic faucets were more likely to be contaminated with Legionella bacteria than the old-fashioned manual type.

So much more likely that the hospital actually ripped out the new-fangled plumbing in patient care areas and elected to purchase traditional fixtures for new clinical buildings that are set to open in 2012.

“Newer is not necessarily better when it comes to infection control in hospitals,” said Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Maragakis in a statement. Maragakis was the senior investigator on the research.

Initially, the team planned to test new faucets only to see how often they needed to be cleaned. But when it became apparent that the automatic faucets harbored far higher levels of Legionella than the manual ones, the investigators switched gears.

It is thought the bacteria counts.are higher in the electronic faucets because they have a complicated system of valves that is difficult to clean, researchers said.

Hospital study finds hands-free faucets harbor germs is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

The Texas Medical Board was among 33 similar boards nationally that did not discipline many doctors who either lost their hospital privileges or were restricted in their hospital practices, a national report released Tuesday said.

“This is a serious failing on the part of state medical boards,” Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and overseer of the study, said in an interview. Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader.

Hospitals report sanctions against doctors to the National Practitioner Data Bank, which the health research
group viewed over a 20-year period, from 1990 to 2009.

It found that state boards did not discipline 55 percent of the 10,672 physicians who had been listed in the national data bank, including 3,218 doctors who permanently lost their hospital practice privileges. The report said that in Texas, 60.4 percent of 725 doctors during the two decades escaped medical board action.

One unnamed doctor who did not receive discipline by the state board in Texas had 22 medical malpractice payments totaling $2.6 million between 1996 and 2008 that included claims that he operated on the wrong part of the body and injured three patients permanently, the report said.

“Either state medical boards are receiving this disturbing information from hospitals but not acting upon it, or much less likely, they are not receiving the information at all,” Wolfe said in a written statement. “Something is broken and needs to be fixed.”

Texas Medical Board spokeswoman Leigh Hopper said that under board rules, hospitals are required to tell the board when they discipline a doctor whose continued practice is a threat to the public welfare but that not all of them do.
Further, the national data bank does not notify the board of hospital disciplinary reports, and the board would have to look up individual doctors by name to see whether any were taken. That would not be practical with 49,397 instate doctors, Hopper said.

Not all doctors disciplined by a hospital merit board action, she added. A substance abuser, for example, might be referred to a confidential treatment program, with no public action taken.

Wolfe said that for a nominal fee, medical boards can pay the data bank to be notified of hospital actions against physicians in their state. Hopper said she was not aware of that service or the cost.

For $3.25 per doctor per year, the national data bank would provide notice of any actions against the doctor within 24 hours, data bank spokesman David Bowman said.

For Texas, that cost would be about $160,540 a year — an amount that Hopper said equals the salaries of four investigators at the agency.

Report: Texas not punishing enough doctors is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Federal law protects pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits by parents who claim that vaccines harmed their children, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The court ruled 6-2 that a special tribunal set up by Congress is the only way parents can be compensated for the negative side effects that sometimes accompany vaccinations.

The majority said that Congress found such a system necessary to ensure that vaccines remain readily available and that federal regulators are in the best position to decide whether vaccines are safe and properly designed.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 “reflects a sensible choice to leave complex epidemiological judgments about vaccine design to the FDA and the National Vaccine Program rather than juries,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, saying the threat of lawsuits provides an incentive for vaccine manufacturers to constantly monitor and improve their products.

The decision is a victory for vaccine-makers such as Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline. Kathleen Sullivan, who represented Wyeth in the case before the court, told justices that ruling against the company could lead to thousands of lawsuits in which parents claim, for instance, that the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine played a role in their children’s autism.

The Obama administration backed the vaccine-makers. Justice Elena Kagan was recused because of her work on the case as solicitor general.

The case was brought by Russell and Robalee Bruesewitz on behalf of their daughter Hannah, 18. Hannah began to have seizures as an infant after receiving the third of five scheduled doses of Wyeth’s Tri-Immunol diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine. The company, now owned by Pfizer, has taken the drug off the market.

The 1986 federal law said that all such claims must, first go to a special tribunal commonly called the Vaccine Court. The program has awarded nearly $2 billion for vaccine-injury claims in nearly 2,500 cases since 1989. It is funded by a tax on immunizations.

But the tribunal ruled against the Bruesewitzes, saying they had not proved that the vaccine harmed Hannah, who will need lifelong care.

Ruling protects vaccine-makers from lawsuits is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

About eight years ago, at the age of 78, a vascular surgeon in California operated on a woman who then developed a pulmonary embolism. The surgeon did not respond to urgent calls from the nurses, and the woman died.

Even after the hospital reported the doctor to the Medical Board of California, he continued to perform operations for four years until the board finally referred him for a competency assessment at the University of California, San Diego.

“We did a neuropsychological exam, and it was very abnormal,” said Dr. William Norcross, director of the physician assessment program there. “This surgeon had visual-spatial abnormalities, could not do fine motor movements, could not retain information, and his verbal IQ was much lower than you’d expect.”

Yet “no one knew he had a cognitive deficit, and he did not think he had a problem” Norcross continued. The surgeon was asked to surrender his medical license.

One-third of the nation’s physicians are older than 65, and that proportion is expected to rise. Many doctors, of course, retain their skills and sharpness of mind into their 70s and beyond. But physicians aren’t immune to dementia, Parkinson’s disease, strokes and other ills of aging. And some experts warn that there are too few safeguards for patients.

“My guess is that John Q. Public thinks there is some fail-safe mechanism to protect him from incompetent physicians,” Norcross said. “There is not.”

Often the mechanism does not kick in until a state medical board has found it necessary to discipline a physician. A 2005 study found that the rate of disciplinary action was 6.6 percent for doctors out of medical school 40 years, compared with 1.3 percent for those out only 10 years.

If you are injured by a doctor in Texas, it gets even worse because tort reform not only caps your damages, but, by deterring lawsuits, makes it harder for negligent doctors to be removed.

Aging doctors bring fears of incompetence is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Efforts to make hospitals safer for patients are falling short, researchers report in the first large study in a decade to analyze harm, from medical care and to track it over time.

The study, conducted from 2002 to 2007 in 10 North Carolina hospitals, found that harm to patients was common and that the number of incidents didn’t decrease over time. The most common problems were complications from procedures or drugs and hospital-acquired infections.

“It is unlikely that other regions of the country have fared better,” said Dr. Christopher Landrigan, lead author of the study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

It is one of the most, rigorous efforts to collect data about patient safety since a landmark report in 1999 found that medical mistakes caused as many as 98,000 deaths and more than 1 million injuries a year in the U.S. That Institute of Medicine report led to a national movement to reduce errors.

But instead of improvements, Landrigan’s team found a high rate of problems. About 18 percent of patients were harmed by their medical care, some more than once, and 63.1 percent of the injuries were judged to be preventable. Most of the problems were temporary and treatable, but some were serious, and a few — 2.4 percent — caused or contributed to a patient’s death, the study found.

Mistakes still common in hospital care, study finds is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

The fees doctors and hospitals charge us for copies of our clients’ medical records are sometimes very reasonable, but often they are outrageous.  There are laws that cover the amount of money doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers can charge a patient (or their attorney or law firm) for copies of their medical records.

Federal Law

Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) a covered entity can only charge “reasonable” cost-based fees for providing the medical records to patients. See 45 CFR 164.524(c). Arguably, fees that are not cost-based, even if permitted by a state statute, may be contrary to the HIPAA regulation and therefore preempted by this federal regulation.

Texas Law

Hospitals:

Texas Health and Safety Code §241.154:

A basic retrieval or processing fee not to exceed $42.54 for first 10 pages of records; then,

• $1.43 per page for pages 11-60
• $.71 per page for pages 61-400
• $.37 per page for any remaining pages
• Plus actual cost of mailing or shipping
• If the requested records are stored on any microform or other electronic medium, a retrieval or processing fee, which must include the fee for providing the first 10 pages of the copies and which may not exceed $64.81, and:
  • $1.43 per page thereafter
  • Actual cost of mailing, shipping, or otherwise delivering the provided copies

Doctors:

Title 22 Part 9 Chapter 165 Rule 165.2

No more than $25.00 for the first 20 pages; then,

• $.50 per page for every copy thereafter
• In addition, actual cost of mailing or shipping
• Also, a reasonable fee not to exceed $15.00 for executing affidavit.

Title 22 Texas Administrative Code §165.3

• Maximum charge for x-rays and diagnostic imaging studies $8.00 per copy

Medical Records Copying Charges is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Doctors working in Texas emergency rooms told the Texas Medical Board a few weeks ago that a year in-the-making rule restricting the claims that doctors can make about their credentials would seriously hurt hem and patients across the state.

The board disagreed and approved the rule, which says doctors credentialed after Sept. 1 cannot advertise that they are “board certified” in their field — an indication of a high level of expertise — unless they have successfully completed requirements that include several years of supervised training or a residency, in their specialty area.

A three-year residency has been the common standard in emergency medicine since 1988, when the nation’s largest board that credentials specialty doctors made the change.

Emergency room doctors who testified before the board said the new rule would make them less attractive to hospitals and ultimately reduce the supply of ER doctors, especially in rural areas.

But supporters said the rule elevates emergency medicine certification to the gold
standard of other specialties. And most board members who spoke in favor of it agreed as they tried to assure skeptical opponents that the rule only affects how doctors advertise themselves — and won’t affect their jobs.

As a marketing tool, many hospitals tout that all of their ER doctors are board-certified, but that might not mean what some people think. Some doctors might have had a residency in family practice, not emergency medicine, but can still claim to be board-certified in Texas.

Consequently, “the public can be misled regarding a physician’s credentials,” said Dr. John Becher Jr., past president of the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians in Chicago.

The new rule changes that. The American Board of Physician Specialties has certified 170 emergency medicine doctors in Texas without requiring a residency in that field.

Regardless, any doctors certified under the board’s old rule would be grandfathered in and could advertise they are board-certified under the new rule.

Most representatives of national emergency physician organizations said they favored the rule — except for the grandfather provision. At the very least, they said, it confuses the public.

New standards for physicians’ certified status is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

There are very many massage techniques in existence today; some of them stemming from the far Eastern World of antiquity while others originated in the more recent years of the Western world. Although they were born out of very different philosophical and cultural persuasions, each of these obtainable massage techniques provides some aspects of relaxation but none does it as thoroughly as does the one which was born in Austin, Texas and christened as the Zen Massage. Zen, by the way, is an ancient Chinese discipline which means �meditation� and it focuses on the meditative portion of the dharma practice and the experiential wisdom which is also called the zazen or the path of enlightenment. It, therefore, steers away from theoretical knowledge and theology.

By reaching into the very heart of hearts of every cell of the body, the Zen Massage epitomizes what utter and unequivocal calm, peace and a relaxed state of being feels. Combining an assortment of highly sophisticated and time tested and proven techniques, the Zen Massage affords its subjects a spontaneous soothing and an energy balanced experience of picture perfect enormity. The various features which are part and parcel of the entirely therapeutic Zen Massage treatment are as follows:

* The Heated Stones. This is a curative procedure which makes use of hot stones which are moved along the subject�s muscles in smooth gliding motions and well calculated pressure.

* The Hot Towel Pore Cleanse. This purifying treatment involves the use of freshly steamed towels applied to the entire body. The heat of the towels opens the pores to cleanse and revitalize the outer skin (epidermis) while also reaching into the lower layers, the dermis and the hypodermis.

* The Bio Mat. The Bio Mat calms down and relaxes tight and sore muscles while it quiets and soothes irritated nerves. The Bio Mat transports the subject into the realm of a complete state of wellbeing on the physical as well as on the psychological levels.

* The Aromatherapy. Pure essential oils are used for this aromatherapy treatment to help the subject relax as stress is melted away and complete balance and wellness overcome him or her.

* The Peppermint Bliss Foot Massage. The peppermint bliss foot massage smoothes and softens tired and aching feet for a feeling of harmony and peace which radiate from the tips of the toes to the crown of the head.

The Zen Massage therapy is a noninvasive and natural massage treatment which has been clinically proven to be completely safe while being highly effective in relieving stress which has also been proven to be the leading cause of countless physiological and mental health problems. Some of the most significant benefits that have been attributed to the effectiveness of the Zen Massage therapy are:

* The lowering of high blood pressure which in medical terms is referred to as hypertension and has been often spoken about as the �silent killer.�

* The improvement of the REM sleep. The REM stands for rapid eye movement and it is characterized by, you guessed it, rapid eye movements. It also includes rapid low voltage EEG which is commonly spoken of as brain waves. On the average, a healthy adult spends approximately 20 to 25 percent of a total night�s sleep in the REM phase and it is essential to good health.

* The decrease of fatigue of the body and the mind which naturally leads to enhanced concentration and improved motor skills.

In conclusion, the Zen Massage therapy helps its subjects to release their worries, unwind their bodies, relax their tensions, quiet their minds and ease their senses.

THE ZEN MASSAGE is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas