Stony Brook launching master's in public health
SUNY Stony Brook plans to being offering a master's in publichealth degree as of next fall.
The university said it hired Raymond Goldsteen as director of theprogram, which is set to launch in 2004. He worked most recently asdirector of research at the Institute for Health Policy Research atthe Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center at West VirginiaUniversity.
Goldsteen will also lead the school's Center for Health Policyand Management, which will provide educational support and researchopportunities for the program.
Dr. Norman Edelman, dean of SUNY Stony Brook's school ofmedicine, said the master's program will be designed as a 'dynamicenvironment for students and researchers who will focus on a widerange of public health issues.'
The program will tap the resources of the Health SciencesCenter's five schools, as well as the Long Island Cancer Center, theGeneral Clinical Research Center and the Centers for MolecularMedicine.
In addition, researchers throughout the campus will work with thecenter to expand its resources and breadth of studies.
Collaborations, the school said, also will include joint effortswith the departments of economics, psychology and history.
'The approach to public health must be multidisciplinary if it isto meet the challenges of the 21st century,' Goldsteen said. 'Thisis how breakthroughs will occur in our understanding of the causesof poor health and how to improve health among all populations.'
Goldsteen has taught at several universities, including theUniversity of Illinois-Urbana, the University of Oklahoma andClemson University.
Hudson Institute pushes for mandatory reporting
First, hospitals were hit by federal regulations requiring themto keep patient information private. Now, some groups are pushingfor them to be more public about reporting their own errors.
Citing what it says is unwillingness by the medical profession toopenly reveal mistakes, the Hudson Institute, a think tank based inIndianapolis, is calling for national mandatory reporting of medicalerrors.
The institute, formerly based in upstate New York, in a whitepaper issued last week, called for federal regulations requiring thereporting of medical errors by hospitals.
'Hospitals should have to report serious medical errors to statepublic health officials, with the information made readily availablein an annual hospital report card,' Betsy McCaughey, an adjunctsenior fellow at the Institute and the former lieutenant governor ofNew York, wrote in the paper.
'Let insurers, employers who purchase health care, and the publicknow which hospitals have high error rates,' she said. 'They willpressure hospitals to improve.'
The institute estimated that as many as 98,000 patients die eachyear due to mistakes at hospitals, including some that are as muchclerical as medical errors, such as improper operations andmedication.
The institute feels that the Patient Safety and QualityImprovement Act, passed by the House of Representatives in Marchwith the Senate still to vote, is not far-reaching enough. The billwould create a federal clearinghouse for hospitals to report errorsby asking hospitals to voluntarily and anonymously report mistakesto a federal body that would sort data and search for causes andpatterns of error, recommending steps hospitals could take.
The American Hospital Association has praised the bill as a 'hugestep forward for patient safety.'
But the information would not be available to the public,something McCaughey says would continue to swath errors in a veil ofsecrecy.
New York already is among 20 states that require hospitals report'adverse events,' or unexpected injury or death of patients.
But McCaughey said, even though New York, considered to haveamong the most 'extensive reporting system,' is far from completeand should be strengthened.
In 1995, the Joint Council on the Accreditation of Health CareOrganizations or JCAHO, asked hospitals to voluntarily reportserious or fatal medical errors.
From 1995 to 2002, hospitals reported a total of 17 incidents inwhich the wrong patient being operated on, McCaughey said.
She added that research indicates many more such errors weremade, although the information wasn't disclosed as part of thatreporting process.
Anti antibiotic campaign
Antibiotics can fight disease, but a new Web site is focusing onthe dangers that arise from relying too heavily on them.
The Albany-based New York Health Plan Association, a group ofhealth insurers, recently launched www.sasny.org, standing for SaveAntibiotic Strength New York.
It's part of an effort NYHPA is making to inform patients andhealth care providers of the growing problem of resistance toantibiotics arising from relying heavily and, it says,inappropriately, on them.
Strains of disease sometimes develop at least limited resistanceto antibiotics when the drugs are widely prescribed, leading to anew problem.
'We can't stop antibiotic resistance from occurring,' said Dr.Richard Petrucci, vice president of chronic care and diseasemanagement at Oxford Health Plans. 'But with vigorous educationaleffort, we can do a lot to slow it down and stop it from spreading.'
Linda Lambert, executive director of the New York State chapterof the American College of Physicians, said doctors sometimesprescribe antibiotics inappropriately, because patients ask forthem.
'It can be especially difficult to refuse to write a prescriptionwhen a patient demands one,' said Lambert.
