"California public health officials have released a report highlighting how demographic disparities across the state affect physical and mental health, Payers & Providers reports.

Details of Report The 96-page report was released by the California Department of Public Health's Office of Health Equity.

Overall, OHE Deputy Director Jahmal Miller said the report demonstrates how health outcomes are affected by:

• Education;
• Employment status;
• Gender identity;
• Income;
• Race and ethnicity; and
• Sexual orientation."

Read more at California Healthline

"It’s one of the grand ideas that is supposed to revolutionize U.S. health care: reward doctors who keep patients well with fewer tests, procedures, and appointments.

That might register as barely profound to most of us, but it is a radical shift in the incentives that doctors and hospitals face. Under the Affordable Care Act, some doctor’s groups and hospitals have banded together in accountable care organizations to treat Medicare patients under this new philosophy. If the patient stays healthier with fewer appointments, the providers get a share of the cost savings.

But a new study published Monday in the Annals of Family Medicine examined how doctors have been making money in this brave new world vs. the status quo, and found pretty negligible differences."

Read more on Washington Post

"Nearly 100,000 Americans are hospitalized each day. That adds up to nearly 40 million hospitalizations per year. With so many lives at stake and so many opportunities to hone their care, hospitals could be expected to meet demanding quality standards. After all, manufacturing, commercial aviation and other major industries have achieved high degrees of consistency and safety.

But health care is different. Some hospitals excel in treating exceedingly difficult cases, while others too often fail even patients whose medical needs are relatively straightforward. As a result, health care consumers need to take care when they choose a hospital. To help patients make smart, well-informed choices, U.S. News has published annual hospital rankings for more than two and a half decades. These rankings and the quality data from which they're derived highlight hospitals that perform best in specific areas of care.

The focus of the Best Hospitals rankings has long been on meeting the needs of the most challenging and medically complex patients. These patients represent cases where the stakes are greatest – often a matter of life or death – and where, for some patients, it makes sense to venture beyond a trusted community hospital to seek care at a truly exceptional medical center. With these patients in mind, U.S. News today published its 2015-16 national rankings, which cover complex care in 16 medical and surgical specialties."

Read more on US NEWS

"If you've ever waited to see a specialist in the emergency room, you'll be happy to know that a new app, the so-called "Instagram for doctors" could put a specialist at your doctor's fingertips in minutes rather than hours.   

The app, called Figure 1, allows doctors around the world to upload anonymous photos of their most compelling (and confusing) cases to a photo sharing platform with goals of trading information and asking for advice. 

"Images and learning medicine go hand in hand," said Dr. Josh Landy, the app's creator and a doctor in an intensive care unit in Toronto. "Images have been used in medicine to teach and learn for thousands of years." "

Read more on Huffington Post

"Pager, a Manhattan-based doctor-on-demand service, has raised $14 million in Series A funding from Maryland-based New Enterprise Associates and Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures.

The funding will be used to expand to cities outside New York, including San Francisco within two months, and to upgrade the company's technology, said co-founders Gaspard de Dreuzy and Philip Eytan. Mr. de Dreuzy and Mr. Eytan founded the company in May 2014 with Oscar Salazar, a co-founder of Uber. Other investors in the round included Goodwater Capital, Lux Capital and Montage Ventures.

The service, available in all five boroughs, gives patients the option of forgoing the emergency room or an urgent-care center and summoning a doctor for a house call for treatment of, for example, common infections such as bronchitis. A home visit costs $50 for first-time users and $200 thereafter. Patients can consult a doctor by phone for $25 and exchange text messages with photos in the case of a condition such as a rash or insect bite."

Read more on Craine's New York Business

"More than half of U.S. residents want to access health information via their doctors' websites, but few currently do so, according to a survey published Wednesday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The researchers found that about 57% of survey respondents said they wanted to be able to use their physicians' sites to access medical information, but only 7% reported currently doing so."

Read more on California Healthline and Tech Times

• "American Patients Want To Chat With Their Doctors Over Facebook or Email" (Alfano, Tech Times, 6/25).