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While job growth continued in June, the employment gains reported today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics were lower than anticipated. Economists had forecast an increase of 250,000 new jobs in June, but the actual number was 112,000. Payrolls in April and May also were revised down slightly from the gains previously reported. But June's payroll increase was the 10th straight month of employment gains. Total U.S. nonfarm payroll employment has grown by 1.5 million (seasonally adjusted) since August 2003, according to the Labor Department. There were 8.2 million unemployed people actively seeking work in June, essentially unchanged from May, according to the BLS household survey. An additional 1.5 million persons, about the same number as a year ago, said they were available for work and had looked for a job some time in the previous 12 months. There were 478,000 discouraged workers in June, also the same as a year earlier. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.6% for a third straight month. Professional and business services experienced the most growth, for the third consecutive month, adding 39,000 new jobs in June. Within the sector, professional and technical services showed the greatest increase, adding 23,100 employees. Computer systems design increased by 6,300 jobs, management and consulting added 4,700 jobs, and legal services added 4,100 positions in June. Temporary help services added 12,100 new jobs. The temporary help sector has added 306,000 jobs since its recent low in April 2003. Healthcare and social assistance also reported continued growth, with 29,500 jobs added in June. Ambulatory health care services experienced the largest increase in the sector, adding 10,900 jobs, 5,600 of which were in home healthcare services. Hospitals added 5,700 employees in June. Employment in the healthcare and social assistance sector has increased by 279,000 over the past year. Transportation and warehousing added 19,200 workers to June payrolls, with truck transportation accounting for 5,800 jobs. Retail employment rose only slightly in June (6,700), with clothing and clothing accessory stores also gaining (8,100). There were small loses in building material and garden supply stores (-2,100) and in motor vehicle and parts dealers (-2,900). The leisure and hospitality industry added 8,000 jobs in June. The manufacturing sector lost 11,000 jobs in June, following a four-month increase of 75,000 jobs. Employment rose slightly within durable goods manufacturing, adding 3,000 workers, while nondurable goods manufacturing lost 14,000 jobs. Construction employment was flat in June. The manufacturing workweek fell by 0.3 hour to 40.8 hours in June, while
factory overtime was unchanged at 4.6 hours. Average hourly earnings for
production workers rose 2 cents to $15.65 (seasonally adjusted); over the
last 12 months, earnings grew by 2.0%. The average workweek for all hourly
employees was decreased by 0.2 hour in June to 33.6 hours, seasonally
adjusted. More Americans now surviving cancer
than in 1970s An estimated 64% of adults diagnosed with cancer between 1995 and 2000 could expect to be alive five years later, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. Five-year survival was expected in 50% of adults diagnosed between 1974 and 1976. The five-year survival rates -- considered a key marker for cancer patients -- excluded non-cancer-related deaths. Young teens and children also had higher cancer survival rates, according to the study, which was released by the CDC. Seventy-nine percent of children under the age of 15 were expected to live five years after a diagnosis between 1991 and 2000. The five-year survival rate for this group was only 56% during the 1974-1976 period. U.S. health officials said improving cancer survival rates indicated a need to focus more attention on the long-term health as well as social and economic well-being of cancer patients. An estimated 9.8 million Americans, or 3.5% of the population, were living with cancer in 2001, compared to 3 million, or 1.5% of the population, three decades earlier, according to the study. "Issues faced by cancer survivors include maintaining optimal physical and mental health, preventing disability and late effects related to cancer and its treatment, and ensuring social and economic well-being for themselves and their family," said Dr. Julia Rowland, an National Cancer Institute official and one of the study's authors. Breast cancer was the most common primary cancer reported by survivors in 2001, followed by prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and gynecologic cancer. An estimated 60% of all newly diagnosed cancers in 2001 were among those 65 and older. By Paul Simao Last Updated: 2004-06-24 16:12:23 -0400 (Reuters Health)
Healthcare staffing in
transition While the long-term prognosis is good, right now
the U.S. healthcare staffing industry is in flux. So said many of the
attendees of Staffing Industry Analysts Inc.'s Healthcare Staffing Summit
held last week. More than 300 owners, executives and vendors gathered to
ponder the next steps third-party providers need to take to reinvigorate a
sector stalled by misperceptions and real budget cutbacks. Overtime Pay Ruling Decided in Favor of RTs
In its fact sheet, the Department of Labor
noted, “Technologists and technicians do not meet these requirements for the
learned professional exemption because they do not work in occupations that
have attained recognized professional status, which requires that an
advanced specialized academic degree is a standard prerequisite for entrance
into the profession.”
U.S. GAO chief urges
major health care overhaul Health-care costs are rapidly adding to the federal debt, plus straining employers and workers who pay parts of the bills, warned David Walker, the U.S. comptroller general and head of Congress' General Accounting Office. While medical advances have improved people's health, not all patients receive the best care recommended by experts. And studies show an unacceptably high number of medical errors, Walker said. "This is a comprehensive health-care challenge that ultimately requires fundamental and comprehensive health-care reform, although in installments," Walker said during remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. As an example of the nation's enormous health-care costs, Walker estimated the new Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost at least $8.1 trillion over the next 75 years, a number greater than the government's current debt. Walker suggested a piece-by-piece approach to prevent major disruptions and to help build political consensus. Politicians should reexamine tax policies and consider rescinding a provision that allows taxpayers and businesses to deduct health care expenses, he said. The public also needs to answer questions such as how the health-care burden should be split among the government, companies and individuals, he said. Deciding which health-care expenses are "individual wants" and which are "societal needs" is key, he said. Needs could include vaccines and protection from financial ruin from a catastrophic illness, he suggested. "Tough choices are going to need to be made...It's going to take a number of years," he said. Last Updated: 2004-04-16 16:02:03 -0400 (Reuters Health) Survey says health care
firms plan tech spending The 15th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey of more than 30 executives found that increasing patient safety and reducing medical errors was the main priority that will affect the hospital business in the next two years and that it was a top priority in information technology spending. "Technologies that exist can make the health care system safer for patients," said Steve Lieber, president and chief executive of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Hospitals and other health care providers have made technology investments in recent years covering the millennium bug or Y2K glitch in computer systems, and then another round to comply with the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which deals with patient record privacy. Trying to make all of those health care information technology investments in one swoop would strain the budgets at many hospitals, Lieber said. About one third of nearly 5,000 U.S. hospitals are unprofitable, industry analysts said. "The (hospital) system that we have today is one that results in haves and have nots," Lieber said. "The ones that are profitable have the capital to invest in new facilities. That is an issue that we need to focus our federal officials on. That's not an acceptable situation." Even with the HIPAA standards and investments, 65 percent of hospital executives surveyed said it was a concern, an increase of 10 percent from the 2003 survey. Nearly 70 percent of executives are using at least six varieties of security tools to protect patient records, the survey said. Over the next two years, 65 percent of respondents that do not offer patient scheduling on Web sites plan to do so; nearly 55 percent say their organizations will use personal digital assistants to record patient information; 54 percent plan to implement medication bar-coding to ensure patients receive the proper drugs; and 53 percent of health care organizations surveyed will use speech recognition systems to allow physicians to dictate notes about patients. Last Updated: 2004-02-24 12:44:08 -0400 (Reuters Health)
Cancer deaths
falling in U.S., annual report shows But more U.S. women are dying from lung cancer, the annual report shows, and more people are dying of some types of liver and esophageal cancers. The report is posted on the Internet (click here). It estimates that 1.368 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2004, and 563,700 will die of it. This works out to 1,500 Americans a day. Colon cancer death rates fell to 20.8 per 100,000 people per year in the latest year available, 2000. That compares to 20.9 per 100,000 in 1999 and 22.6 in 1995. Breast cancer deaths fell from 30.6 per 100,000 in 1995 to 26.7 in 2000, the group said. Cancer has long been the second leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease, accounting for about a quarter of all deaths. The statistics show it is possible to avoid many cancers, said Dr. Michael Thun, the Society's vice president of epidemiological and surveillance research. "Cancer is not an inescapable fact of life," Thun told reporters in a telephone briefing. The report estimates that tobacco use will cause 180,000 cancer deaths in 2004 - 160,000 of them from lung cancer. In women, the epidemic of deaths from lung cancer trails that of men by about 25 years. This matches the decrease in smoking rates -- women started smoking later than men did and took up smoking even as men started to kick the habit. A third of cancers will be caused by lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise, poor nutrition including a high-fat diet low in fiber, fruits and vegetables and obesity. For instance, Thun said, about 20% of U.S. adults have a fatty liver from obesity, which can lead to chronic hepatitis. This in turn can lead to cancer and helps explain a rise in liver cancer incidence in the United States, he said. Obesity can also lead to stomach and bile reflux, which can irritate the lower esophagus and also eventually cause cancer, Thun said. But advances in screening technology mean more cancers are being caught early. And treatments, including surgical techniques, drug and targeted radiation therapy, mean the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined has risen to 63% from 51% in 1976. Thun said it is important to look at cancer rates and not just overall numbers. And they must be adjusted for age to have any meaning. "Solid tumors are diseases of aging. The number of people who get cancer go up but when you look at the trends in the death rates ... you see that there has been a decrease in the death rate from all cancers combined in men ...and a smaller decrease in women. There's clear progress in reducing death rates." One piece of bad news is that ethnic disparities in cancer rates and survival continue to worsen, Thun said. "Since the early 1980s the differences in the death rate in colorectal cancer between black and white men has widened." He said the death rate has decreased markedly among white men, probably because of screening and early treatment, while the death rates in black men have not changed much. The same is true, on a smaller scale, for women, he added. By Maggie Fox Last Updated: 2004-01-15 14:20:45 -0400 (Reuters Health)
Almost half of U.S. physicians favor
national health insurance Nearly 50% of the physicians in the U.S. support legislation to establish national health insurance, according to results of a survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine for November 18. Until this report, co-author Dr. Aaron E. Carroll told Reuters Health, "there have been no broad, across-the-board surveys of randomly selected physicians in all specialties across the country" that addressed physician attitudes about the financing of national health care. In the belief that the success of health care reform may depend on physician support, Dr. Carroll, at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, and Dr. Ronald T. Ackermann, with the University of Washington in Seattle, surveyed physicians randomly selected from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile. They mailed questionnaires to 3188 physicians, 60% of whom returned them. The authors estimate that their sample could provide an accurate estimate of the views of U.S. physicians with a sampling error of less than 3%. Of the 1650 respondents, 49% supported legislation to establish national health insurance and 40% opposed it. Primary care providers, those with at least 20% of their patients on Medicaid, practitioners in inner cities and those in non-private practice were more likely than their counterparts to advocate this legislation. Among those endorsing national health insurance, 61% also supported a single federal payer to achieve that goal. Altogether, 26% were in support of a single payer system. "This is the highest level of support we've seen for legislation to establish national health insurance," Dr. Carroll said. "I hesitate to say if we reached a critical mass to get legislation passed, but certainly there would seem to be momentum there." Even with increases in Medicaid eligibility and the enactment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the number of Americans lacking health insurance has grown over the past 25 years, Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann notes in an accompanying editorial. Dr. Kellermann, at Emory University in Atlanta, maintains that, in addition to its deleterious effects on individuals and families, lack of insurance coverage threatens the financial viability of heath providers. "In light of the growing threat of bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases, our country's fragile health care system is not only a public health concern; it is a matter of national security," Dr. Kellermann concludes. By Karla Gale Last Updated: 2003-11-17 17:00:09 -0400 (Reuters Health) Shortage of nurses, hospital beds foreseen in U.S. From the 'burbs to 'brotherly love' As a single woman now living in Philadelphia, I have come a long way from my life as a kid in suburbia-growing up in quiet, little neighborhoods in Concord, Massachusetts, and Satellite Beach, Florida. And it's all thanks to missing a particular travel assignment.
After I received my RTT
certification, I chose to stay within my comfort zone and accept a staff
position close to home, working as a radiation therapist at Baptist Medical
Center in Jacksonville, Florida. But when I learned about the mobile
lifestyle, I thought I'd give it a try.
Study:
Job shortage eases, but not for everyone A multicenter group of researchers examined help-wanted ads in Radiology
and the American Journal of Roentgenology, analyzing both the number of
ads appearing in any given month as well as the type of positions that
were available. We're featuring their findings this month in our Imaging
Center Digital Community.
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