A recent White House report noted that there is no evidence that state-by-state licensing improves quality or safety. And yet we have a 50-state system for doctors and for most other health care professionals. Is broad reform possible?
Patient Safety and Ethics
Strict professional licensing rules don't necessarily translate into higher-quality work, as a recent report from the White House made clear. Might there be a smarter way? One option: directly regulate the companies that employ the people who are being subject to licensure.
I’d been going to the same woman to cut my hair for five years, and she was always the picture of calm. Until the day she looked at the front door as it was opening and said to me, “I have to run.” Then, her face the picture of panic, she ran.
A troubled California database that allows doctors to check which patients are already receiving potentially addictive prescriptions is currently being relaunched. But one doctor argues that the state needs to do far more to stem prescription drug deaths than simply revamp CURES.
As a new series in Consumer Reports makes clear, antibiotic-resistant infections are becoming more prevalent. The report should be a wake-up call for prescribers and patients to be more thoughtful about how they use antibiotics.
The privilege that has allowed parents to refuse immunizations for their kids stems not from economic or educational status — it springs from the privilege of not having seen the horrific diseases that ravaged U.S. children just two generations ago, and continue to do so worldwide.
New research offers some much-need recommendations on how to curb MRSA infections among nursing home residents. As it turns out, the activities that pose the greatest risk of infection aren't always what you might think they'd be.
California is taking another run at requiring doctors to check a patient’s prescription history before prescribing potentially addictive drugs, with legislation passing the state senate yesterday. But will California legislators make the same kinds of compromises with providers that Oklahoma did?
Oklahoma is one of only a handful of states that require physicians to check a patient’s prescription history before prescribing potentially addictive drugs. How did Oklahoma enact this requirement when so many other states, such as California, have tried and failed?
In April, the governor of Oklahoma signed a bill that requires doctors to check a state-run database of patients and prescriptions before writing a new prescription for addictive medications. That makes the state a national leader in efforts to track such prescriptions and curtail abuse.