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Federal Program Cracks Down On Medicare Fraud In Houston
A federal program targets Medicare fraud in the Houston area as news of three cases representing at least $35 million in false claims emerged within the past week. The Houston Chronicle reports on the three cases, noting: "These Houston-area scams alleged in two FBI complaints and one Montgomery County indictment were among six reported nationally in a single week - representing at least $285 million in false billings, records showed. "This is an astounding amount," said Houston"s FBI spokeswoman Pat Villafranca. The $285 million is more than four times the amount stolen during robberies of U.S. banks during all of 2008, she said. This month, Houston became the fourth metropolitan area - joining Miami, Los Angeles and Detroit - to create a ramped-up fraud strike force. It goes by the acronym "HEAT," Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team."
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Flu Shot May Be Less Effective After Transplant
Kidney transplant patients have a weaker response to influenza immunization than healthy individuals, especially in the first six months after receiving a transplant, according to a study published in the July issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the official journal of the National Kidney Foundation.
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Rendell Administration Officials To Participate In National Flu Summit
Governor Edward G. Rendell announced that representatives of his office, the departments of Health and Education, and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency will participate in a federally sponsored H1N1 Influenza Preparedness Summit in Maryland on July 9.
Medical Devices

Study Reports Early Diagnosis Of Mental Disorders From New Computer Test

A group of doctors in Pittsburgh have developed the Computer Assessment of Mild Cognitive Impairment (CAMCI) to identify cognitive difficulties easily and reliably. In an article in the March issue of Postgraduate Medicine entitled "Computer Assessment of Mild Cognitive Impairment," the program creators detail the procedures and the benefits of the new test, which they claim is sensitive enough to notice the smallest amount of forgetfulness. By conducting a controlled study with 524 people >60 years old, they were able to demonstrate the ease and effectiveness of the testing system. The program, which uses a variety of tests that analyze everything from attention and verbal memory to incidental recall and executive function, was administered in primary care physician"s offices, a local community center, and in the subjects" homes. The doctors believe this is a testament to the ease of the program: it can be conducted in many places, ensuring that its effect is wide reaching. They also demonstrated that the test is very accurate. The article states that CAMCI correctly identified >85% of subjects with mild cognitive impairment. It also correctly identified those patients with normal cognitive function 94% of the time, showing that it was effective at recognizing healthy and unhealthy mental processes alike. The doctors did not develop this program to diagnose the early signs of Alzheimer"s disease, but rather as a tool that other primary care physicians can use to identify mild cognitive impairment that is both easy to use and statistically effective. By using the current criteria for mild cognitive impairment, they were able to create this self-administered test that is both user-friendly and automatically scored. They hope that with the advent of this program, testing for mental disorders in the elderly will become as easy and as common as testing for heart disease or metabolic disease. The full article can be accessed on Postgraduate Medicine"s website at http://www.postgradmed.com Postgraduate Medicine


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