Practice Management News

Analysis of nationally representative survey data found that physicians who use electronic health records that meet Meaningful Use criteria were more likely to report that EHR functions were easy to use.

University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Samsara Sciences, Inc., announced a new collaboration focused on developing new methods to isolate and characterize liver cells to assist in further research for the treatment of liver disease.

The FDA, endoscope manufacturers and hospitals share responsibility for the recent outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections associated with endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, or ERCP, duodenoscopes, according to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions’ report.

In a retrospective matched-cohort study, researchers found pregnancy to be a risk factor for developing post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis.

As part of a new streamlined regulatory approach in 2016, “The Meaningful Use program, as it has existed, will now be effectively over and replaced with something better,” Andy Slavitt, CMS acting administrator, said at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.

Intensive enteral nutrition therapy combined with corticosteroid therapy did not improve survival among patients with alcoholic hepatitis compared with treatment with corticosteroids alone, according to study data published in Gastroenterology.

As part of the budget deal made in December 2015, Congress lifted its ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs, according to a press release from the National Council for Behavioral Health.

In a retrospective cohort study, researchers found that Peruvian patients with advanced-stage hepatocellular carcinoma could undergo liver resection and maintain good outcomes, despite current management guidelines. The researchers suggest that clinicians in developing countries reconsider the guidelines to avoid section bias for treatment.  

The FDA issued a draft guidance recommending the use of FDA-licensed hepatitis B virus infection nucleic acid tests for donors of human cells, tissues and cellular and tissue-based products in an effort to reduce the transmission of infection.

Once-daily tenofovir alafenamide was noninferior to Viread and reached its primary endpoint as a single-agent for chronic hepatitis B virus infection in two phase 3 clinical trials, according to a press release.