Guest commentary from Valerie M. Chapman, RN, MSN I am a wife, a mother of two awesome kids, a daughter, a sister and a nurse. I am also a survivor. At the age of 43 a routine screening mammogram picked up an abnormality in my left breast that turned out to be invasive lobular carcinoma. I had no family history or major risk factors, but ...

(Editor's note: This is a guest blog written by Valerie M. Chapman, RN, MSN, a pediatric nurse for 25 years. She is a 3-year breast cancer survivor and lives in Medford, NJ, with her husband and two children.) I am a wife, a mother of two awesome kids, a daughter, a sister, and a nurse. I am also a  survivor. At the age of 43 a ...

Guest commentary from Celwyn C. Evans, a senior partner at Greencastle Associates Consulting in Malvern, Pa. With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, the focus of debate has fallen squarely on the challenge of defining ''meaningful ...

The Protecting America's Workers Act of 2009, if passed by Congress, would dramatically alter the regulatory regime. Guest commentary from Eric J. Conn and Robert C. Gombar, partners in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery, LLP, based in Washington, D.C. Just weeks before his death, the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), with the help of ...

I posted a blog recently about Software Advice posting a survey on its site. Here's the results of their survey about whether stimulus money for electronic health record/electronic medical record (EHR/EMR) adoption was creating any buyers or just tire-kickers. Software Advice said that Oct. 30 marked the close of the first reporting period for ...

Guest commentary from Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance. A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates that 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to ...

Guest commentary from William F. Jessee, MD, FACMPE, president and CEO of the Medical Group Management Association The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) is pleased that the House has voted favorably on H.R. 3962 (The Affordable Health Care for America Act) and we look forward to its rapid action on the companion bill, H.R. 3961, which ...

Guest commentary from David St. Clair, founder and CEO of MEDecision, a provider of collaborative health care management solutions. I felt the health care reform news out of Washington last week was decidedly mixed. For those of us who have advocated reform for many, many years, the mere fact that legislation made it past the Senate Finance ...

As the U.S. Senate attempts to merge bills from its Finance and Health committees, considerable controversy surrounds the data being used to support -- or detract from -- proposed measures. For example, in a report prepared for America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) examined the impact of the Senate Finance ...

Being 36 years old and a journalist, I have to acknowledge a soft spot for newspapers. I remember a time when the local weekly was really the only game in town when it came to delivering news, sports scores, political commentary and the ruminations of my fellow Quakertown, Pa. residents on the ineptitude of borough council. So, on a strictly ...