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Disputes over surgeons running more than one operating room have erupted at hospitals across the country in recent years, some of them long before double-booked surgeries became a divisive issue inside Massachusetts General Hospital — divisions that burst into public view after a Spotlight Team report this fall. The conflicts were, at the time, treated as local and separate events, and simultaneous surgery remained unknown to much of the public even though it is widely practiced. Now, in the wake of the Mass. General controversy — which led to the dismissal of the hospital’s leading critic of double-booking and ongoing federal and state investigations — the world’s largest surgeons’ organization is considering new guidelines for overlapping surgery, and numerous hospitals are examining their own policies. (Abelson, Saltzman and Kowalczyk, 12/20)

The practice of medicine has moved away from a paternalistic model toward one of collaboration between doctor and patient. This has happened as the information age, propelled by the Internet, has plunged us into an ocean of health information. In the past, doctors may have been happy with passive patients who followed orders and didn't ask questions, said Dr. Andrew Ellner, co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Medicine. Today the most innovative medical programs recognize that such an approach does not promote optimal health outcomes for patients. "Patients need to be empowered to speak up and be partners in figuring out what's going on and designing care plans with their physicians," he said (Sadick, 12/19)

Kaiser Health News' Anna Gorman reports: "A lack of oversight in the rapidly growing home care workforce could undermine new wage and labor gains for many of the nation’s 2 million workers, according to a report released Monday." (Gorman, 12/21)

Some 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and more than 13 million family members care for them. "There are families in every town, in every state across the country that are dealing with the realities of Alzheimer's disease at this holiday season," says Ruth Drew, who runs the national phone helpline for the Alzheimer's Association. (Rancano, 12/21)

A bold federal effort to curb prescribing of painkillers may be faltering amid stiff resistance from drugmakers, industry-funded groups and, now, even other public health officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was on track to finalize new prescribing guidelines for opioid painkillers in January. The guidelines — though not binding — would be the strongest government effort yet to reverse the rise in deadly overdoses tied to drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet. (Perrone, 12/19)

Anyone under the age of 18 would be barred from using indoor tanning equipment, under a federal proposal to help reduce skin cancer linked to the devices. The Food and Drug Administration also wants to require tanning bed users to sign consent forms acknowledging the risks of the radiation-emitting devices. Tanning salons and other businesses would have to collect the forms from customers before their first tanning session and every six months thereafter. (Perrone, 12/20)