With use of mobile applications for smartphones growing, consumers now have easy access, on the go, to dozens of tools that search for health information, track symptoms, and log health-related actions. When Group Health designed its own free mobile app for members, launched in the summer of 2011, it consulted with James Ralston, MD, MPH—and decided to offer more.
In less than three weeks, we’ll know whether Congress’ 12-member bipartisan “Super Committee” has succeeded. If it can’t find $1.2 trillion in federal deficit reductions over the next decade, we face reductions of the same magnitude as across-the-board cuts.
Obesity and depression both dramatically increase health care costs, but they mainly act separately, according to a study published in the November 2011 Journal of General Internal Medicine by Group Health Research Institute scientists.
In a national survey of primary care physicians that the Archives of Internal Medicine published last month, nearly half agreed: Their own patients are getting too much care.
Many people taking common Alzheimer’s disease medications—cholinesterase inhibitors—are given medications with anticholinergic properties, which oppose their effects. Group Health Research Institute scientists investigated how often that happens and reported on the consequences in an “Early View” study e-published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
In 10 years of annual mammograms, more than half of women without cancer will be called back at least once for more testing. And about one in 12 will be referred for a biopsy, according to a study of national Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium data in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Yoga classes were linked to better back-related function and diminished symptoms from chronic low back pain in the largest U.S. randomized controlled trial of yoga to date.
Land Acknowledgment
Our Seattle offices sit on the occupied land of the Duwamish and by the shared waters of the Coast Salish people, who have been here thousands of years and remain. Learn about practicing land acknowledgment.