Zagaja.com

From The New York Times:

Dr. Reisman saw that the practices had helped his boss recover, but he was not convinced. “Because you’re doing yoga, everyone has to do yoga?” Dr. Reisman shot back, as recalled by Mr. Bertolini.

Mr. Bertolini appealed to Dr. Reisman as a scientist. They would measure workers’ stress levels by tracking heart rate variability and cortisol levels, common measures of anxiety. And they would team with the Integrative Medicine Program at Duke University, which does research into the efficacy of alternative treatments.

When Mr. Bertolini reviewed Aetna’s financial performance for 2012, he noticed something surprising: Health care costs had fallen. For the year, paid medical claims per employee were down 7.3 percent. That amounted to about $9 million in savings. The next year, health care costs rose 5.7 percent, but have remained about 3 percent lower than they were before yoga and meditation were introduced at the company.

I especially enjoyed Barack Obama’s data science joke at the beginning of this video:

I spent the morning watching today’s FCC meeting where they passed rules about network neutrality and community broadband. I think these are huge wins for consumers, but was especially excited by a point made by Tom Wheeler before the vote on network neutrality. He pointed out that with the 4 million comments that the FCC received on the topic it was the most open rulemaking process they had ever engaged in, and that receiving this input gave their ruling extra legitimacy. As a fan of open government, I strongly agree. Many government discussions and decisions are made quietly, and the quieter these decisions are made the less legitimate the rules can feel. The network neutrality rules, whether you agree with them or not, are the product of a vigorous public discussion about a technical issue, and an example of democracy at its best.

From the New Haven Register:

At the suggestion of a colleague who spoke at the hearing, Hwang agreed that an easy to access link on the DPH website or on each hospital website would be satisfactory and allow consumers to readily find the information.

He said he began his search by going to individual hospital websites, assuming that is what a consumer would do.

He didn’t find the information, but if a hospital wanted to point out its particular success in a given area of care, that information was easily accessed.

Finding information on hospital associated infections, by using the state Department of Public Health site, is a multi-step process.

You first go to the Department of Public Health website;then to Topics A-Z; then find Healthcare Association Infections; then go to HAI Data, Reports and Publications; then, under Acute Care Hospitals Data to the Hospital Compare link that will take you to the information gathered by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Among some of the more fasincating facts I have found includes research that Ian Ayres from Yale has done on the topic of racial bias in society. He has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times today: