3M LITTMANN ELECTRONIC STETHOSCOPE (separates MDs from RNs.)

3M/Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 With Zargis Cardioscan

The scope that never misses a beat

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3M Health Care Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Dan Saelinger

Video: The Bluetooth-Enabled Cardioscan Stethoscope

The stethoscope is older than the x-ray, the ballpoint pen, Popular Science and pretty much everything else in your doctor’s office. Now, 190 years after its invention, the go-to diagnostic tool hanging around every doc’s neck has earned a modern makeover. The sound-amplifying 3M Littmann Electronic Stethoscope 3200 listens to a patient’s heartbeat—lub-DUB, lub-DUB—and beams the beats to Cardioscan software that detects abnormalities.
Even top physicians have trouble discerning the swishing sounds that result from irregular surges of blood after the lub from the ones that follow the DUB. Called murmurs, the former are harmless, but the latter can indicate ailments such as congenital heart defects, holes in the heart wall, and constricted or leaky heart valves that interrupt blood flow. If the heartbeat sounds remotely atypical, many doctors prescribe a conclusive, and expensive, echocardiogram test.
3M’s stethoscope eliminates that guesswork. It transmits heart sounds to a doctor’s PC by Bluetooth, and Cardioscan renders a near real-time graphical representation of the sounds onscreen. The software then analyzes the sound waves and highlights minute abnormalities that signal harmful murmurs. The doctor can play the sound back at half speed to diagnose a problem more confidently, save the file to the patient’s chart, and e-mail it all to a cardiologist to confirm the diagnosis. Early tests of the system suggest that it could eliminate more than eight million unnecessary echocardiograms and cardiologist visits a year, saving some $9.4 billion and, even better, catch more of the dangerous murmurs. For doctors, and anyone with a heart, this stethoscope’s upgrades are well worth the two-century-long wait.
From $765; littmann.com, zargis.com

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UK GPs' Real Estate equity as retirement fund.(Ontario MDs have no Pension fund).

Health News

The NHS paid GPs £630m in rent for their privately-owned surgeries last year Photo: ALAMY

By Heidi Blake, Holly Watt and Emma Slater

6:00AM BST 04 Jul 2011

88 Comments

Doctors are permitted to buy buildings for their surgeries which are then “rented” back to the Department of Health, often for far more than the mortgage repayments. The surgery is then sold off – either to another doctor or a developer – when the GP retires and they are allowed to keep the profits from the sale of the building.

An investigation by this newspaper and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has uncovered details of the secretive scheme, which currently costs the Government more than £630m each year.

GPs have boasted that they have made six or even seven figure windfalls from the system – the costs of which have soared by more than 70 percent in just six years.

The terms of the arrangement are even more generous than the controversial system which allowed MPs to profit from the sale of taxpayer-funded properties.

A typical surgery may have been bought for £150,000 a decade ago. The GP then could then claim tens of thousands of pounds in “notional rent” annually which is used to clear the mortgage. They could then sell the property today for more than £500,000, and often substantially more, and keep the profit.

Related Articles

• No win, no fee companies make GPs millions
  04 Jul 2011
• GP case studies
  04 Jul 2011

The disclosure is set to lead to renewed public concern over the taxpayer-funded largesse enjoyed by some GPs, amid reports that the best-paid doctors can earn far more than the Prime Minister.
Last week doctors still voted to consider striking in a row over pensions – which would be the first industrial action for more than 30 years.
The Department of Health is the only major Government department to be protected from spending cuts, although many experts believe there is a significant potential for cost savings to be made. Under reform plans, GPs are to be given even more control over health budgets.
The NHS paid GPs £630m in rent for their privately-owned surgeries last year, an increase of 70 per cent since 2004, when the figure stood at £370m.
The total cost to the Department of Health in the past five years has been £2.5bn.
Around 86 per cent of GP premises are either owned by doctors or by private companies and are paid for through the “notional rent” scheme.
The British Medical Association actively encourages its members to buy their own surgeries and promises that the investment will yield “real capital gains”.
James Wharton, a Conservative member of the Commons Public Accounts committee, accused GPs of "fiddling the system" and said he would ask the National Audit Office to open a "full and comprehensive investigation" into surgery funding.
"People are obviously going to be extremely concerned to see that taxpayers' money is being used in this way. For too long these people have profited too easily and the expense of the taxpayer and the government should look at this system and see whether it can be changed to ensure better value for money," he said.
"I will be writing to Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, to request that she asks the National Audit Office for a full and comprehensive investigation into this system."
A Department of Health spokesperson said: "This system incentivises GPs to expand and improve services so that people have proper access to modern facilities. It represents the cost to GPs of renting or owning the premises, and is a cost that would met by government direct if GPs did not."

CPSO uses KING-REED detective agency in Discipline trials.

from Torstar news service report

Ex Pres & CEO ER specialist Dr.Rocco V.GERACE used KING-REED Associates Inc (1984) secretly taken video is case against GP surgical asssistant, (Shouldice hernia hospital), David LAMBERT.(see "doctor search" in CPSO web site).

KING-REED offers courses for Investigator's licence.

TORONTO: OGRYZLO LECTURE AETIOLOGY of RA. Prof.L.KLARESKOG

"Origins and Outcomes of Rheumatoid Arthritis: Molecular  Mechanisms of a Complex Disease"

by Prof LARS KLARESKOG. Professor and Chairman of the Rheumatology Clinic and Rheumatology Research Unit, Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm
Thursday, 12th February 2009 at 6pm in the Durkan Lecture Theatre,Institute of Molecular Medicine, Trinity Centre, St James's Hospital, Dublin 8. Please view the flyer

QuickTime Podcast of Lecture (audio and powerpoint .mov 496 MB) (to download Quicktime application click here)

Podcast of Lecture (audio and powerpoint mPEG4 92 MB) (to download iTunes application click here) This file is formatted for an ipod or similar size displays and is not suitable for larger displays.

Video of the lecture (Windows Media Player 10 MB)

Brief Biography

Lars Klareskog has had a long standing interest in the Genetics and Immunology of Rheumatoid Arthritis. He is a medical graduate of Uppsala Unversity where he became Professor and Chairman of the Clinical Immunology Department in 1990. In 1993 he was appointed the Professor and Chairman of the Rheumatology Clinic and Rheumatology Research Unit, at the Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm. He is a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute since 1995 and a past member of the Nobel Committee and has acted as the Chairman of the Scientific Board of the Swedish Rheumatism Association since 1997. 
He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals including Arthritis & Rheumatism; Annals of Rheumatic Diseases; Arthritis Research and Therapy; Current Opinion in Rheumatology; Rheumatology. He has received international acclaim for his research in rheumatology including the The Dutch Rheumatology Society International Prize for Rheumatology research Jaan van Bremer medal ; Hasinger prize of the German Rheumatism Center, and the Wyeth Rheumatology Prize. Lars has a highly active research group and has published over 300 articles in leading journals including Nature Genetics, New England Journal of Medicine and Nature.

SWEDISH MOLNLYCKE WOUND DRESSINGS

http://www.molnlycke.com/

3M TEGADERM wound dressings.

http://www.3m.com/