Hospitals increasingly are mining patients' health and financial records to market specialty services such as cancer, cardiac and orthopedic care to a targeted group of individuals, Kaiser Health News/USA Today reports.

Recently, Dr. Ming Tai-Seale and her colleagues published a study in the European Journal of Pain about pain management for older adults in primary care. With the patients’ and doctors’ consent, the authors evaluated the content and time spent on pain and other topics in 385 videotapes of routine office visits. The median length of visit was 15.7 minutes and the median number of topics per visit was 6.5. The median length of time spent discussing pain was 2.3 minutes. When pain was discussed earlier in the visit, slightly more time tended to be spent on the topic.

In every pharmaceutical television commercial there's the bit at the end while a voiceover intones a litany of potential side effects and drug warnings likely to startle anyone thinking of taking it. Of course, that's when the video usually takes in an intimate hug on a
sailboat or a walk in the woods with a golden lab. And millions of people in the audience apparently are more tuned in to the pictures
than the cautionary message inserted into the promo.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation has reversed its decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood and apologized "to the American public," the Associated Press reports.

Healthcare will be a hot topic during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack Obama nearly two years ago is attacked or defended by the respective candidates and their surrogates. However, no matter who wins the White House this year, the U.S. healthcare system will be reformed, and more likely transformed, in the near future, and analytics is certain to play a leading role in that transformation.