Certificate of need laws refer to a program that state legislators put in place to govern the “establishment, construction, renovation and major medical equipment acquisitions of health care facilities, such as hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies, and diagnostic and treatment centers,” according to the New York State Department of Health. Basically, this means that Continue Reading..

The Internet has granted us unprecedented access to information about all sorts of things, including common medical ailments. Earlier this year, Google revealed that roughly 1 percent of all its searches (that’s millions of searches) are symptom-related health inquiries. Sites like WebMD have made it easier than ever for people to self-diagnose ailments before visiting

We might like to think that healthcare in America is some of the best in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s a particularly efficient system. According to the latest figures released by the Bloomberg Health-Care Efficiency Index, America’s healthcare system is one of the least efficient in the world, ranking 50th out of the

When it comes to people in your life that you trust, your doctor should be on the top of that list. Unfortunately, with rising healthcare costs and changing insurance plans, it can be hard to tell which doctors are really looking out for you, and which ones are trying to make a quick buck. Ask

This year, nonprofit patient safety organization The Leapfrog Group conducted a nationwide survey of America’s hospitals that graded their safety records based on 30 different metrics including patient injuries, accidents and infections. The hospitals were assigned numerical scores which were later converted into letter grades. In total, more than 2,600 hospitals were graded in the

Did you know that the average noise level in American hospitals is about 95 decibels? That’s 10 decibels higher than the noise level at which OSHA regulations require companies to provide hearing protection for employees. We might think of hospitals as relatively quiet places, but in practice that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.