Search results for: responding

Overview

• Australian women could soon trade two-yearly Pap smears for a more accurate test every five years, in what health experts say is one of the biggest shake-ups to cancer screening in decades.

• Drug companies will be forced to give the Federal Government full refunds in cases where their medicines do not work.

• The Centre for Personalised Immunology at the Australian National University (ANU) is the first centre of its kind in the world, that will treat rare immune disorders.

Overview

• The Assistant Minister for Health says the operational detail of the new Primary Health Networks will be announced ‘shortly’.

• Adelaide’s hospital emergency departments are failing to meet a national target to ensure patients leave within four hours, new figures from SA Health show.

• A Darwin man who allegedly worked as a nurse in Queensland despite having no qualifications also worked in the Northern Territory health system.

• A drug court in Mississippi will start offering mental health services. The services will be available in the fourth Circuit Drug Court in Washington, Sunflower and Leflore counties. The court has received a 3-year, $400,000 federal grant to cover the cost of hiring a mental health therapist, a peer support specialist and a supervising officer for drug court participants.
• The first of three industrial-sized tents to house San Diego’s homeless opened Friday as part of the city’s efforts to contain a hepatitis A outbreak. About 20 people made their way to bunk beds Friday in a tent that will house 350 single men and women. 2 other giant tents will open later this month — 1 for families and 1 for veterans. San Diego turned to tents to get people off the streets and contain a hepatitis A outbreak that has killed 20 people in the past year.
• Aetna’s board of directors approved on Sunday the U.S. health insurer’s sale to drugstore chain operator CVS Health Corp for approximately $207 per share in cash and stock. The $69 billion deal will be this year’s largest corporate acquisition. It will combine one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) and pharmacy operators with one of its oldest health insurers, whose far-reaching business ranges from employer healthcare to government plans nationwide.

• A new NHS England campaign says that parents of young children with minor illnesses should take them to pharmacies rather than GPs or A&E. It follows a survey which found just six percent of parents with under-5s would go to a pharmacist first. NHS England said visits to GPs and A&E for these “self-treatable” conditions, like stomach ache, cost cost £850m a year. A patients’ group said but parents should not be put off seeing a doctor. GPs’ leaders said parents of children with a very high temperature that doesn’t go away should still seek help from a medical expert.
• NHS figures show that the number of admissions to hospital for eating disorders has nearly doubled in six years.  Data from NHS Digital show admissions for conditions including anorexia and bulimia reached 13,885 between April 2016 and 2017 – the highest levels seen in six years. The figures show that this is almost double the 7,260 admissions seen in hospitals in England the year up to April 2011.
• The charity Age UK has said that more than one in three people in England diagnosed with dementia are not getting the follow-up care they are entitled to.  The NHS specifies that everyone diagnosed with the condition should have an individual care plan that is reviewed at least once a year. But Age UK found that as of November, out of the 458,461 people with a recorded diagnosis of dementia, only 282,573 had a new care plan or at least one care plan review on record in the previous 12 months.