BREAKING NEWS

Health system reform: Abstract debate inside Supreme Court as protest signs dominate outside

■ Justices appeared split on the central constitutional issue as demonstrators, including dozens of physicians, framed the arguments in more personal terms. Opponents of the law decried it as federal overreach, but as one physician put it, “This is not about politics; this is about people.”

• » Slideshow: The scene outside the Supreme Court
• » The four questions before the court
• » High court strikes down diagnostic test patents

TOP NEWS

Stage 2 meaningful use rules sharply criticized by physicians

■ The American Medical Association and state and specialty societies call for less aggressive criteria in the Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record incentive program. Organized medicine wants more physician input into rules and more exclusions for specialties, and argued against backdating penalties.

Celebrities make pitch for patient safety panel

■ An independent entity modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board that would investigate cases of medical harm and report deidentified findings could transform patient safety, proponents argue. Skeptics say the agency would be redundant.

Editor's Pick

Influencing physician prescribing patterns

Often doctors get pressure from patients to prescribe certain drugs, sometimes for financial reasons and sometimes because patients think they will work best. We have examined how that pressure affects physicians in how they write prescriptions.

• » Doctors pressured to write prescriptions for OTC drugs
• » Do you practice in an antibiotic-prescribing hot spot?
• » Physicians advised to adopt conservative prescribing habits