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Rep. Pitts To Offer Amendment Excluding Abortion Coverage From House Health Care Bill
Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) said he plans to introduce an amendment to the House health care overhaul bill (HR 3200) that would prohibit insurers from being required to cover abortion, unless the woman"s life is at risk or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, CQ Today reports. Pitts said he will offer the amendment Thursday at the first House Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up session.The House bill would authorize the Obama administration to craft minimum benefit standards for health insurance plans, CQ Today reports. President Obama has said that he considers reproductive health care an essential service. Democrats say Republicans are trying to expand the Hyde amendment"s exclusion on using federal Medicaid funding to cover abortion to all health care services. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), vice chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said, "I think that if anti-choice Republicans or others see this as an opportunity to expand prohibitions on a legally allowed and medically appropriate practice, then they are wrong." She added, "We are not going to use the health care bill to expand prohibitions on a legal medical practice, period." Pitts, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) and other supporters of the amendment say it is necessary to block the administration from requiring abortion coverage. The committee has blocked three of Smith"s abortion-related amendments so far this year (Wayne, CQ Today, 7/15).

In Human-Dog Communication, Breed Is As Important As Species
Dog breeds selected to work in visual contact with humans, such as sheep dogs and gun dogs, are better able to comprehend a pointing gesture than those breeds that usually work without direct supervision. A series of tests, described in BioMed Central"s open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions, should caution researchers against making simple generalizations about the effects of domestication and on dog-wolf differences in the utilization of human visual signals.
News of the day
Migraine And Increased Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease: Migraine Frequency Plays A Role
Women who have migraines with aura may be more likely to have a stroke or heart attack than women who don"t have the condition, and the association varies by migraine frequency, according to research published in the June 24, 2009, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. An aura is a visual or other sensory disturbance that occurs before the migraine starts, such as seeing bright lights.
Endocrinology

Quality Data Made Accessible To Clinical Teams

NHS clinical teams will have access to data showing their performance against a set of more than 200 indicators of high quality care in the NHS in one place. It is the next phase in the drive to help NHS professionals improve the quality of care they deliver to patients, and will also support providers and commissioners of NHS services. The Department of Health and The NHS Information Centre have made the data available to allow NHS professionals to use it as a basis to assess local quality improvement. They form an easily accessible menu for NHS staff to carry out local analysis and comparisons between NHS organisations. The Indicators for Quality Improvement (IQI) have been selected in conjunction with the Royal Colleges, following extensive consultation with the NHS, and are currently based on existing national indicator sets and data collections. Over the next three to five years, the coverage of these will be expanded to more comprehensively address the wide range of NHS and Social Care services NHS professionals provide. Health Minister, Lord Darzi said: "These quality indicators have been developed in partnership with frontline staff. This initial list is just the start of a NHS wide re that will challenge and stimulate NHS staff to drive up the quality of care they deliver to patients. Throughout my career as a surgeon I have seen the value of having reliable data which allows clinical teams to asses the quality of the service they provide and to constantly challenge themselves to improve. I would encourage all clinicians to visit this site and to begin to use the data to drive up the quality of the services they provide." Some of the data for the indicators in the IQI is already available to the public on the NHS Choices website. Over the coming year, the intention is to also make the majority of the remainder available on the NHS Choices website. The NHS Information Centre website, targeted at NHS professionals, will today make the data available for more than 75% of the indicators, with the remainder to follow shortly. The indicators can be found at http://www.ic.nhs.uk/mqi Department of Health, UK


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