Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Associated Press: "FDA Approves 3 New Psychiatric Drugs for Kids"
ADELPHI, Md. – Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that three blockbuster psychiatric drugs appear safe and effective for children and adolescents, despite side effects that can increase the risk of diabetes.
The FDA's panel of psychiatric experts voted to approve the use of drugs from AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Pfizer for treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in patients ages 10 to 17.
The FDA is not required to accept the group's advice, though it usually does.
"We'll take all of this into consideration, but I can't make any promises about when we'll take action," said Dr. Thomas Laughren, FDA's director of psychiatric drugs.
All three drugs already are approved for adults with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Their side effects include weight gain, high blood sugar and sleepiness.
A positive FDA decision will expand the use of drugs that already make up the top-selling class of prescriptions in the U.S., with 2008 sales of $14.6 billion, according to health care analysis firm IMS Health.
The panel — mainly comprised of psychiatrists — largely brushed aside concerns from patient and consumer advocates that the companies should have been required to conduct longer studies of the drugs' side effects.
The panel voted 11-4, with four abstentions, that Lilly's drug Zyprexa is safe for treating bipolar, despite evidence the drug causes significantly more weight gain than other treatments. The Indianapolis-based company is only seeking approval for the drug as a second-choice, after other drugs have been tried.
"I had concerns about the metabolic side effects but if this is going to be used as the last treatment option then I think having other treatments available to physicians is worthwhile," said Dr. Frank Greenway, of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.
On the first day of the two-day meeting, more than a half-dozen nonprofit groups complained about the short length of the studies submitted to the FDA. The studies averaged between four and six weeks in length.
"Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder last for decades, often for life, and treatment is needed during all those years," said Dr. Diana Zuckerman of the Research Center for Women and Families in Washington. "These studies provide almost no useful information about long-term adverse reactions."
Schizophrenia affects about 2.4 million Americans and is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and social withdrawal, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. About 5.7 million Americans experience bipolar disorder, which causes rapid mood swings and shifts in energy.
TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE, CLICK ON THIS LINK:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090610/ap_on_bi_ge/us_psychiatric_drugs_children_6
Friday, June 12, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Tips to Increase your Medical Practice Web Site's Exposure
From MGMA Blog
Posted by Caren Baginski on Mon, May 04, 2009
First, it's important to understand how search engines like Google work. All search engines have automatic scripts, commonly called "robots" or "spiders," that crawl the pages of your site, scanning for terms to learn what your site is about. What you write on your Web site, who links to you, whom you link to and even how your Web site is designed can affect where it's displayed on a search results page.
With so many factors, where do you start?
The Web is a big place, so make sure you're included by freely submitting your site's URL to the three biggest search engines:
If your medical practice's Web site is already in the search engines, but not showing up on the first page of results, you'll have to do a little work. You have a number of options – paid and unpaid – to get your page to appear higher. Here are some free things to get started:
- Talk to your Web site manager to ensure your site is optimized. Larger medical practices tend to have more resources to devote to their Web site, so they are most likely designed with search engines in mind. If you're the owner and maintainer of your Web site, you can use the free Website Grader by inbound marketing company HubSpot to see if your page is search-engine friendly.
- Make sure every page of your medical practice's Web site includes your organization's name in text, whether it's in the footer, at the top of the page or as part of an "alt tag" - the text behind an image on your site. To change or add alt tags, you need access to the HTML of your site.
- Sites that are made up entirely of images have a hard time ranking in search engines because search engines can't "read" them. If you use lots of images with text in them, talk to your Web site designer about converting images to text.
- On your medical practice's home page, ensure the name of your organization shows up at the top of the browser itself. This is called the "meta title," and it's one of the first things a search engine looks at when indexing your site. If you don't know how to change the meta title, this tutorial will get you started.
Once you make changes to your practice's Web site, it can take as much as three months to see a difference in search results, so be patient. While you wait, don't forget to try out these social networking techniques which also can boost your practice's visibility on the Web.
How to Get Noticed by Recruiters of Medical Group Practice Jobs
http://blog.mgma.com/blog/bid/20760/How-to-get-noticed-by-recruiters-of-medical-group-practice-jobs
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