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Kaiser Permanente says it will begin publishing on its Web site its internal guidelines for the treatment of hundreds of diseases and conditions. Patients will be able to use the information to assess the treatment they are receiving, whether from Kaiser or from other organizations or individual physicians.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to clear up some of the advertising about LASIK eye surgery.

Caps on non-economic damages have failed to prevent sharp increases in insurance premiums, even though insurers enjoyed a slowdown in their payouts, according to a Weiss Ratings white paper.

A report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) finds that lawsuits accusing doctors of medical malpractice do not appear to significantly limit access to health care.

A new study finds that more than 57,000 people die each year because they do not receive the care that medical authorities know they need.

A Lafayette, La., ophthalmologist and eye care center he owns will pay $1.1 million in civil penalties for violating federal laws related to the conduct of clinical studies. The violations involved studies of a laser system built by the ophthalmologist for LASIK treatment of nearsightedness.

Many hospitals and nursing homes are endangering patients by allowing or requiring nurses to work more than 12 hours a day, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Older Americans with health problems get the recommended medical care they need only half the time, and the problem is worse for treatment of age-related illnesses, says a study by RAND Health.

British researchers say the use of x-rays to aid diagnosis causes hundreds of extra cancers each year in the U.K. Researchers from Oxford University and Cancer Research UK said their findings indicate that about 0.6% of total cancer risk may be due to exposure to x-rays in hospitals.

Patients in the United States are receiving substandard health care about half of the time, according to a recent RAND study in the journal Health Affairs. The researchers define substandard care as lack of preventive care or wrong or unnecessary care, including tests.

An average of 195,000 Americans died annually in 2000, 2001 and 2002 because of potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors, according to a study of 37 million patient records conducted by HealthGrades, a healthcare quality company.

The risk of death among uninsured people ages 50 to 64 is 43% higher than it is for people in that age group who have insurance, according to a study in Health Affairs. That could mean that more than 105,000 U.S. residents in that age group will die prematurely in the next eight years because they lack insurance.

People getting trapped in their hospital beds is apparently a bigger problem than you might think. The Food and Drug Administration has published draft guidance for hospital bed manufacturers designed to reduce the occurrence of patient entrapment.

The 2004 Nursing Home Watch List, published this month by Consumer Reports, names seven California nursing homes currently operated by the Ensign Group, whose records "raise questions about the quality of care delivered to residents." The Ensign Group is California's fifth-largest and fastest-growing nursing home chain.

Voters in four states will decide next month whether to limit their right to recover awards for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases. Doctors and insurance companies are pushing hard for adoption of the measures in Florida, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming.

Californians will remain in the dark about whether their local hospital is failing to keep infection risks low now that Governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed SB 1487. The bill would have required public disclosure of hospital infection rates. Each year thousands of Californians die from infections they pick up in the hospital and many others suffer needlessly from infection-related illnesses.

A Miami jury awarded Emilio Lopez $507,000 in a malpractice suit against Angel F. Vidal, M.D., who allegedly failed for more than one year to diagnose a tumor that killed Lopez' wife, Elsa, in 1997.

Although an Indiana jury earlier this month awarded $1.5 million to the family of a 39-year-old woman who died after heart surgery, the family will only receive $750,000 due to a recent state law that limits malpractice damage awards.

Doctors and lawyers in Maryland have been outspoken in the state's debate over malpractice litigation, arguing over whether to curb jury awards. But victims shared the spotlight at a legislative hearing earlier this month.

A question about whether a jury in a medical malpractice case was aware of a debate concerning caps on damage awards came up when the jury awarded $825,000 to a Harrisburg, Pa. man earlier this month.