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Looking At Leisure To Promote Mental Illness Recovery
It"s well known that those who suffer from mental illness can benefit greatly from an active lifestyle. But most of the existing research focuses almost solely on physical activity, and while exercise is certainly important for mind and body, Temple researcher Yoshitaka Iwasaki says it"s not the only aspect of an active lifestyle.

London Health Service Begins Offering Rapid HIV Tests
Barts and the London NHS Trust has become the first National Health Service provider in the United Kingdom to offer rapid, oral HIV tests, BBC News reports. Officials hope that the service will increase the number of people who seek testing because requirements of giving blood and waiting for test results are eliminated with the rapid tests. Barts will offer the rapid, oral tests in non-health care settings such as outreach centers. In addition, sexual health workers hope to be able to offer the test in night clubs in the future. About 200 people in Barts clinics have received rapid tests since March, and officials hope to test 250 people monthly. Merle Symonds, the sexual health adviser at the trust, said the message that HIV is a treatable disease has not "filtered through and stigma does remain around HIV, even if it is waning." Lisa Power of the Terrence Higgins Trust -- an HIV/AIDS organization that also offers rapid, oral tests -- said that a major problem surrounding HIV/AIDS in the United Kingdom is that many people are not aware of their status. She added, "Anything we can do to increase the take-up of testing is welcome, and we think what Barts is doing is fantastic."According to BBC News, the United Kingdom has the largest number of people living with HIV in Western Europe, with men who have sex with men accounting for 41% of new cases. BBC News reports that approximately one-third of HIV-positive people in the country are not aware of their status (BBC News, 5/20).
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Cardiovascular

Four In 10 Emergency Department Visits Billed To Public Insurance

More than 40 percent of the 120 million visits that Americans made to hospital emergency departments in 2006 were billed to public insurance, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. According to the analysis by the federal agency, about 50 million emergency department visits were billed to Medicaid and Medicare. The uninsured accounted for another 18 percent of visits for emergency care, while 34 percent of the visits were billed to private insurance companies and the rest were billed to workers compensation, military health plan administrator Tricare and other payers. The agency"s study of hospital emergency department use in 2006 also found that: -- About 38 percent of the 24.2 million visits billed to Medicare ended with the patients being admitted, compared with 11 percent of the 41.5 million visits billed to private insurers, 9.5 percent of the 26 million visits billed to Medicaid and 7 percent of the 21.2 million visits by the uninsured. -- The uninsured were the most frequent users of hospital emergency departments. Their rate was 1.2 times greater than that of people with public or private insurance 452 visits per 1,000 population vs. 367 visits per 1,000 population, respectively. -- The uninsured were also the most likely to be treated and released - a possible indication of their use of hospital emergency departments as their usual of care. Their "treat-and-release" rate was 421 visits per 1,000 population vs. 301 per 1,000 population for the insured. This AHRQ News and Numbers is based on data in HCUP Statistical Brief #77: Payers of Emergency Department Care, 2006. The report uses statistics from the 2006 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, a new AHRQ database that is nationally representative of emergency department visits in all non-Federal hospitals. The Nationwide Emergency Department Sample contains 26 million records from emergency department visits from approximately 1,000 community hospitals nationwide. This represents 20 percent of all U.S. hospital emergency departments. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality


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