WEDNESDAY, Sept. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Physicians could dramatically reduce the number of suicides by restricting at-risk patients' access to guns and other highly lethal ways of killing themselves, say Harvard School of Public Health researchers.

"The temporary nature and fleeting sway of many suicidal crises is evident by the fact that more than 90 percent of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide. A suicide attempt with a firearm rarely affords a second chance," the researchers said in an article in the Sept. 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Monday it is freezing a scheduled 10 percent fee cut for doctors who treat Medicare patients, giving Congress time to act to prevent the cuts when lawmakers return from a July 4 recess.

Physicians have been running ads hinting that as a result of the cuts, patients may find doctors less willing to treat them. The administration's delay in implementing the cuts spares lawmakers from having to use the recess to explain to seniors why they didn't do the job before leaving town.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ricki Lake is firing back at physicians groups that have singled her out for bringing attention to at-home childbirth.

The 39-year-old former talk-show host is named in a recent statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that says the home is not the safest setting for having a baby.

In her film "The Business of Being Born," a documentary about the maternity care system that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Lake is shown giving birth in the bathtub of her Manhattan apartment to her second son Owen, who turns 7 on Wednesday.

Friday, June 6, 2008
Time To Talk About CAM:
Health Care Providers and Patients Need To Ask and Tell
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