Weekend Wrap-Up / Miscellany

• Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess this week. The Congressional leadership is sending the SCHIP reauthorization bill to the White House for a likely second veto after bipartisan negotiations failed. The Congressional leadership also is working to send the President the remaining appropriations bills either individually or as an omnibus bill before the current continuing resolution funding the federal government expires on December 14.
  
• The Gallup Organization released its annual poll on public attitudes toward health and healthcare in the United States -- while the public views the health care system to be in crisis, they are quite satisfied with the health care that they personally receive. "The new poll reconfirms this perennial duality in healthcare attitudes - that Americans are much more concerned about the healthcare problems "out there" than about the healthcare issues they face in their personal lives."
• The American Health Information Community recommended this week that HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt "should seek authority from Congress to mandate electronic prescribing as a condition of participation in Medicare Part B, pursuant to standards defined by the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) for e-prescribing" subject to certain prerequisites.
  
• The Massachusetts Hospital Association announced that beginning in early 2008 "all Massachusetts hospitals will adopt a uniform policy to not charge patients or insurers for certain serious adverse events as defined by the National Quality Forum (NQF), including wrong site surgeries and serious medication errors." Minnesota hospitals adopted a similar policy in September 2007.