The same technology you would find in a grocery store check-out line is coming to a hospital near you!  Bar codes are linking patients to their prescribed medications, cutting down on the number of preventable medical errors.

When nurses roll into patient rooms at West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital, they are rolling right along with their electronic nursing station on wheels.

Every patient now gets an arm band with a unique bar code – specific to them and their personal medical information.  “Every wristband is tied with a bar code and that bar code stays with the patient throughout their entire visit,” said WCCH Chief Information Officer, Trey Rion. (more…)

Sometimes all you need is a little information – a nudge, as it were, to help make decisions about exercise, health and how to keep your family strong and happy. Here’s some general titbits from around the interwebz… And don’t forget, if anyone in the family suffers from an allergy, make sure they can get help fast with a Mediband – so medical assistance can access your history quickly.

1. Comfort food that’s good for you! Buying the groceries and cooking daily is a chore we could all do without, but unless you have an ‘Alice’ on the job, there’s no avoiding it. You can enjoy comfort foods though like mashed potatoes, roast lamb and lemon stir fry without jumping through hoops, spending up large and counting the calorie cost. Here’s how.

2. Watch those knocks. Are any of your children involved in contact sports? Then these guys say young, developing, brains are at greater risk than adult brains. They have a couple of tips to increase safety, such as better training, the warning signs of concussion, and get your child off the field.

3. Flu season coming up.  Consider the vaccination shot; for you, the kids and your partner. Yes, ‘it’s only a cold’ but consider the upside; relatively healthy through it all, no sick days for you or the kids and the ability to go into a crowded movie theatre without shuddering.   (more…)

Throughout the decade in which I cared for my father, who had Alzheimer’s disease, he was hospitalized several times. Each and every stay was a complete nightmare. I could easily name several reasons for these trials but the one I would like to focus on here is this: it’s impossible to simply look at someone and tell they have cognitive disabilities. Due to this fact, my father was regularly mistaken for “just another patient.” (more…)

No one expects an accident;  but it happens. You’re driving down the road and come upon a traffic crash. You’re walking back from the supermarket and (more…)

By Joe Rosen

What’s New What’s Hot is Travel Weekly’s look at (more…)