Insights

<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>Lead:</strong> The investigative news startup California Watch, not content to merely report on harmful lead levels in children’s jewelry, <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/10/now-thats-engagement-cal-watch-offers-… actually test suspect items for you</a>.</p>

<p>As soon as I got the happy news that I'd received a California Health Journalism Fellowship, I did what any self-respecting writer who is faced with an ambitious, challenging, slightly terrifying project would do:</p> <p>I hid in my office.</p> <p>Or, to be exact, in my living room. Or, to be more exact, what used to be a living room, and is now a spreading archipelago of paper, computer cables, CD ROMS and files. Shades drawn and cellphone silenced, I immediately set about gathering a pile of books that I want to read over the next few months.</p>

<p>Maria Garcia’s death after a cosmetic surgery procedure at <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/shadow-practice-part-11-joint-commission-overlooks-risky-practices-led-patient-death">Anaheim Hills Surgery Center</a> has so far failed to roust the Joint Commission or the Orange County district at

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Fraud Investigation:</strong> Investigators are <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-prime-healthcare-20101012,0,151733… a Southern California hospital chain’s suspiciously high level of serious infections</a> among older patients, according to a report by CaliforniaWatch’s Lance Williams and Christina Jewett. Could it be Medicare fraud?</p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">The people of Stockton and surrounding San Joaquin County, Calif., almost 700,000 strong, continue to experience among the worst health outcomes by any measure both statewide and nationally. I've chronicled this situation for the past eight years. At times I've been able to include proposals for change that some very dedicated community professionals have put forward. But little has changed. If anything, the county finds itself in more serious decline than ever before.

<p>What are the causes of cancer? What makes us older? If lifestyle choices like smoking cigarettes or drinking cola increase our risk of cancer, what can we do to try reverse or change these decisions? Is it even possible to reverse the damage? How proven are these theories?</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Obesity: </strong>The <a href="http://www.theheart.org/article/1133025.do?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;u… Craig diet might actually work long-term</a>, new research suggests.</p>

<p>Physicians are not computers.</p> <p>One cannot expect them to retain every piece of medical knowledge that they learn over the years and apply it perfectly in every instance.</p> <p>When a physician’s bad calls and missed diagnoses start to form a pattern, though, hospital administrators and medical boards need to take action.</p> <p>Dr. Jean Francois Hibbert, an emergency room physician in Elmsford, New York, has stitched a jagged and dangerous pattern over the past two decades. After multiple run-ins with the state’s medical board, he continues to practice.</p>

<p>The world of online health communities is morphing and evolving even as we sit here at our keyboards and google "flu symptoms" then tweet that we've got a cold. So what IS emerging from the cutting edge of online health communities? How do they differ and what do they have in common? The Health 2.0 conference presented an impressive array of new online breakout health community models. You can get the run-down on them <em>all</em> here. Check it out:</p>

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Health Reform:</strong> It’s official: a federal judge finally rules that the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR20101… health reform law is constitutional</a>. The ruling was hailed as a victory for the Obama administration because it’s the first to dismiss a constitutional challenge on its merits rather than a technicality. The Washington Post’s N.C. Aizenman has the story.</p>