Clinical information technology systems – especially those known in the health care industry as computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems – promise to improve health outcomes, reduce medical errors and increase cost efficiency, but hospitals adopting them must plan for “immense” workflow issues and a host of other unanticipated consequences that come with them or face potentially crippling problems, concluded a study led by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University.

Over the past two decades, spending for mental health treatment shifted sharply from inpatient care to prescription medications, and Medicaid picked up a growing share of the cost, according to a study published today in Psychiatric Services.

A research abstract that will be presented Monday at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) finds that the health care costs of patients with insomnia are higher than for those without insomnia.

Concerns about the high perceived costs of eradicating the relatively low number of polio cases worldwide have led to recent suggestions that it is time to shift from a goal of eradication to control-abandoning eradication and allowing wild poliovirus to continue to circulate, which proponents of control believe can sustain the low number of cases.