A study by the University of Colorado estimates a 24 percent increase in maternal deaths if the United States bans #abortion federally. They predicted the increase would be even higher for Black patients, at 39 percent.
From Courtwatch News: "Denied: Cigna was hit with a class action lawsuit for allegedly using an algorithm to determine whether treatments should be denied or accepted. The lawsuit alleges that the algorithm allowed “Cigna’s doctors [to] instantly reject claims on medical grounds without ever opening patient files.”" #Cigna#automation#healthcare#lawhttps://www.courtwatch.news/p/court-watch-37-cocaine-cruises-and
Healthwatch England concludes that the continuing #NHS#strikes compounded an already severe issue of #patients waiting for treatment & its impact on wellbeing.
Indeed, while in the short-term they are right this may make things worse, lets not forget that political pressure (short of striking) has had little impact on the #Tories defunding of the NHS which is a direct cause of delays.
Hmmmm.... while I'm generally supportive of #capitalism (a mixed economy), my view is there are some areas where the profit motive is actually highly counter-productive and #healthcare is a key sector for this... we have an example of US healthcare that I think pretty much underpins that position.
The problem with profit as a motivator in health is it produces perverse incentives that are divergent from public health benefit(s)....
Reports on conditions at the #Monterey#County#Jail remain secret. It’s past time to change that.
The Monterey County Jail’s #healthcare#provider, #Wellpath, is fighting the release of some 30 reports by monitors on conditions at the facility, where #deaths have occurred, along with accusations about the state of medical care.
Senator Elizabeth Warren Probes Google’s Quest for Soldiers’ #Medical Data
Responding to a ProPublica report, the Massachusetts Democrat has begun investigating Google’s “aggressive” pursuit of a #biotechnology archive that could be used to build #AI tools.
She also faulted the #Pentagon for favoring the #tech giant.
A therapist on another list asked if anyone had experience with hipaalink.net televideo service.
This looks like a promising small company with some neat features at only $9.95 per month. See below first however. I really don’t like that Facebook Connect is being contacted from the client’s browser when they login!
I spent a lot of time fighting to sign-up (had to change my settings to see their Captcha challenges). More of a problem – there was a very basic malfunction in the password selection process. Some “special characters” (you have to have one in the password) would not work (+ and #). I eventually got “-” to work. I got an almost immediate call-back when I sent a message about trouble picking a password (bug in our system, thank you for finding it, our programmers are fixing “special characters” this evening).
Did eventually set-up a 30-day free trial. So I can further tests later if I want to.
I noticed that https://hipaalink.net/<mysite> works, but https://www.hipaalink.net/<mysite> does not – another simple thing for their programming team to fix. (Older people are very used to “www” in front of everything, so this redirect should function.)
I kinda feel like I ought to be charging for debugging services.
I have not actually tried out video sessions yet. I’ve just run Privacy Badger and Ghostery browser plug-ins in both Opera and Firefox. Results:
CLIENT LOGIN PAGE: Privacy Badger: www.googletagmanager.com – cookies blocked fonts.gstatic.com – cookies blocked
Ghostery: Facebook Connect – BLOCKED! Google Tag Manager – allowed
CLIENT IN-SESSION: Privacy Badger: www.googletagmanager.com – cookies blocked fonts.gstatic.com – cookies blocked
Ghostery: Facebook Connect – BLOCKED! Google Tag Manager – allowed
Ghostery: Google Analytics – “tracking not detected” it says Google Tag Manager – allowed Google APIs – allowed Google Static – allowed
THERAPIST IN-SESSION: (The same) Privacy Badger: www.googletagmanager.com – cookies blocked fonts.gstatic.co – cookies blocked
Ghostery:
Google Analytics – “tracking not detected” it says Google Tag Manager – allowed Google APIs – allowed Google Static – allowed
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It’s necessary for some cookies and tracking to the functioning of a website. Privacy Badger and Ghostery are both detecting some of this from Google libraries which they choose to allow. I don’t have enough security engineering knowledge to know if these are harmless or not. I do know they are very common on most websites. Yet – Privacy Badger says they are blocking some cookies…
Facebook should not be contacted on the client side! I don’t know what Ghostery is blocking from being sent to Facebook, but this should not be on a HIPAA site. The connection between therapist and client seemed at first glance to work fine with Facebook blocked. I will discuss this with Hipaalink.net before I test it with actual clients. For now I give them the benefit of the doubt. I am told by a computer engineer that Facebook supplies some code libraries (like Google) which websites can use – maybe this is not intentional tracking, just their developers needing to fix this?
There is more tracking taking place on the home page and more public sections of the website than inside the login and televideo areas. So some effort to decrease tracking has been made for actual clients. I see different trackers on the public areas of the website today than I did when I first checked on 7/24/23.
It’s a maybe… But at $9.95 per month hipaalink.net could be a nice option if they clean up minor tracking concerns. Again, I have not tested the video yet.
Patients across Ontario can now access healthcare in our new Shoppers Drug Mart "pharmacy-led care clinics" and avoid unnecessary trips to the emergency department, says #Ontario Health Minister #SylviaJones.
“This is a way to improve access to health care, which is something that is near and dear to the health minister, and to the premier,” said Shoppers Drug Mart president, Jeff Leger. 🤔
I am buying travel (medical) insurance for my MIL to come visit us. She is 81. The maximum medical benefit I can buy for a 80yo to travel to the US is... $20k. That is like... a broken finger?
I finished my nonfiction, and was looking for another to start. I picked this up, unsure if I would be in the mood, and first few pages drew me in, so this is my current nonfiction read now. I will review it on the blog when done.
Cantwell holds fentanyl roundtable as WA becomes overdose epicenter (archive.ph)
Why is Washington the epicenter of the fentanyl crisis?...