League of Women Voters: Congress should not miss this historic opportunity to enact comprehensive health care reform legislation.

Patients’ familiarity with brand-name drugs suggests that direct to consumer advertising works. What patients don’t realize is that generic drugs may work just as well, and at a lower cost.

National Nurses United says Ohio Hospital Compare is missing important information about patient safety. The union wants people to know how many patients nurses are caring for at one time.

Conflicting reports show that higher hospital costs may or may not result in better outcomes for patients. Sometimes, cost depends on the kinds of patients a hospital services. Sometimes it all depends on how data is construed and interpreted.

Dr. Romona Bates reviews a new iPhone app for surgeons called i-Surgery Notebook.

The Happy Hospitalist suggests a small alteration in hourly rounding by nurses could help improve nursing and physician satisfaction by “99.99999999999 percent.”

Health-care investor Albert Waxman says the need to substantially trim the crippling U.S. health care inflation rate is getting lost in the shuffle and offers six steps to cut costs. He writes: “We can still cover the uninsured if we refocus reform on creating true value for health care spending and align patient, provider and payer incentives around good medicine.”

Happy Hospitalist thinks that stickers encourage kids to go to the emergency room. “Perhaps instead of a hospital sticker, children in the emergency room would all get a saline injection in their shoulder,” he writes.

The number of lecture hours in medical school are shrinking, points out third-year student George L. Anesi. The good professor will adjust by teaching the framework — not just listing the causes — of a disease. “One of the more challenging feats is for physicians and researchers who have understood anemia or cancer or heart failure for decades to figure out what was it that made them understand in the first place,” he writes.

The Happy Hospitalist was determined not to be bullied into ordering an unreasonable therapy for something that wasn’t medically indicated. As a result, the patient asked for his name – and he doesn’t think it’s going to be for a Christmas card.