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Chicago Tribune Examines Use Of Urgent Care Centers
More people have begun using urgent care centers as a means of avoiding waiting for care in emergency departments or for a doctor"s appointment, the Chicago Tribune reports. Urgent care centers provide medical services with no appointment and offer extended hours to customers seeking care for a wide range of non-life-threatening issues. Staff physicians, assisted by nurses, administer the care and generally have access to X-ray and laboratory services. Most services provided at the centers are covered by insurance, the Tribune reports.The centers are experiencing more business as hospitals and private firms begin building new centers, in part to compete with retail clinics in Walgreen, CVS and Wal-Mart stores, according to the Tribune. Many insurers have begun asking members to use urgent care centers rather than EDs at times when their doctors" offices are closed. The Tribune reports that many patients prefer urgent care centers because procedures frequently cost only a portion of what they cost in EDs. In most states, urgent care centers are not subject to oversight by health agencies, according to the Tribune. However, some have sought to obtain accreditation (Graham et al., Chicago Tribune, 5/13).
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Liver Disease "shrunk" By Blood-pressure Drug
A blood-pressure medicine has been shown to reverse the effects of early-stage liver failure in some patients.
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Insured Immigrants Have Lower Medical Costs Than U.S.-Born Citizens, Study Finds
Insured immigrants have lower medical expenses than insured U.S.-born citizens after taking into account their health status and other characteristics, according to a study released on Thursday and published in the American Journal of Public Health, Reuters Health reports. For the study, Leighton Ku, a health policy researcher at George Washington University, and colleagues examined data on adults ages 19 to 64 from the 2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and found that about 44% of recent immigrants and 63% of established immigrants were insured.After controlling for possible contributing factors, researchers found that medical costs averaged about 14% to 20% less than those who were born in the U.S. The finding was the same even after taking into account lower insurance levels among immigrants. Ku said, "When you control for their health status and all sorts of characteristics like age, they actually have medical expenditures that are far below those of U.S. citizens." According to the study, "Being a recent immigrant or an established immigrant was independently associated with both a reduced likelihood of using any medical care in the year and with lower total medical expenditure levels, compared with U.S.-born adults" (Reuters Health, 5/14).
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Countries Address Financial Crisis, Burden On Developing Nations At U.N. Financial Summit

At the opening of a three-day U.N. financial summit on Wednesday, developing countries joined U.N. officials in "calling for more money and a greater role in regulating the world economy in the wake of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression, which has taken a disproportionate toll on poor nations," AP/Google.com reports (Astor, AP/Google.com, 6/25). "Developing countries, which make up the vast majority of the 192-member assembly, argue that they are paying the price for a crisis that was created by the developed world," according to AFP/Google.com (Aziaku, AFP/Google.com, 6/24). U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D"Escoto Brockmann, the event"s organizer, said the goal of the conference is to identify emergency and long-term responses to ease the impact of the financial crisis, especially on vulnerable populations. "Brockmann also said the conference aims to start a dialogue on the transformation of the international financial architecture, taking into account the needs and concerns of all member states," Deutsche Welle reports (Deutsche Welle, 6/24). U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice told the summit that the U.S. believes "we should use every instrument at our disposal to tackle different dimensions of the crisis." According to AP/Google.com, "Rice also said the U.S. was "committed to substantially increasing our own official development assistance" despite the "challenging times."" An agreement among developing and developed countries prior to the conference "calls for the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other lending institutions to be flexible in imposing conditions on developing countries so they can take action to deal with the economic crisis, including adopting stimulus packages. The draft also calls for measures to avoid a new debt crisis and new approaches to restructuring debt," AP/Google.com writes. World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said an additional 200,000 infants could die from malnutrition and other diseases each year between now and 2015, if the crisis continues (AP/Google.com, 6/25). In an address to the conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the international community should look at the development issue from a broader perspective and seek to resolve the development issue as a key part of the effort to tackle the financial crisis. "To this end, we should deepen global development partnership, strengthen development institutions, increase input in development and ensure unimpeded progress towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals," he said (Xinhua, 6/26). This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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