Medical tourism may be defined as seeking healthcare outside one’s own country. This is becoming more common as people search for affordable healthcare. In the U.S., patients travel to countries that perform the procedure they need for a fraction of the cost of the same procedure done domestically. In Canada, where healthcare is essentially free [...]

There has been much written and spoken recently about antibiotic resistant organisms, nosocomial infections, and the rise in the incidence of these. MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus), VRE (Vancomycin Resistant Enterrococcus) and other infections like Clostridium Difficile have been increasing in alarming numbers, leading to rising costs in caring for the patients infected by these [...]

The use of electronic medical records has been touted as an enormous economic benefit in terms of cost savings as well as a boon to increasing patient safety. So why aren’t more doctors using them?
Although many doctors employed by larger medical entities are making use of EMRs because the costs of implementing the system [...]

As the recent campaign for the Democratic nomination has shown, there is always much debate surrounding the issue of delivery of healthcare; specifically, what is the best way to deliver healthcare to citizens in the most cost-efficient manner? The U.S. healthcare system has provoked criticism due to its high cost and the fact that there [...]

Multi-national food chains are cropping up in poor countries, but no one is buying.
It sounds like a good idea in theory. Poor people require cheap food, and giant food chains can provide them. So why aren’t the poor lined up outside the doors to buy the goods?
In developed countries, consumers flock to these chains to [...]

There has been much debate over the past several years regarding the current nursing shortage. The statistics are grim: the current shortage is projected to double to around 12% by 2010 and to quadruple to 20% by 2015. By 2020, it is expected that the shortage will amount to 800,000 nurses.
One of the suggested [...]

It seems that, by 2009, doctors may be able to bill Medicare for electronic consults, a practice that has been discussed in the past but has not been reimbursed by insurers (except in a few remote instances) to date.
Under this new provision, consumers of healthcare will be able to log on to the Internet and [...]

The cost of healthcare is always a major concern in the U.S. With approximately 47 million uninsured people and soaring costs, the already-beleaguered healthcare system has been a major topic of debate in this, an election year.
In “Options for Slowing the Growth of Health Care Costs” from the April 2008 issue of the New England [...]

At the UN summit in Rome, which ended June 5, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA) appealed to governments to step up to the plate and provide at least $20 billion per year to help feed the world’s hungry.
On the agenda (at least for U.S. Agricultural Secretary Ed Schafer) was promoting the use of [...]

A recent poll by the California HealthCare Foundation found that even though a substantial amount of patients use the Internet to obtain their health information, few patients make use of the physician rating sites, and fewer still (2%) used the information available to change their physician. However, this could change as more people become aware [...]