Physicians this week told the House Small Business Committee about the impact high medical school debt has on their professional lives and decision-making. Committee chair Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., said high student debt has kept physicians from starting their own practices and working in underserved communities, and has led them to choose more lucrative specialties than primary care.

Researchers evaluated 2008 to 2017 data from the National Health Interview Survey and found that the prevalence of meeting physical activity guidelines rose from 19.4% to 25.3% among adults in urban areas and from 13.3% to 19.6% among those in rural areas. The findings, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, showed a higher prevalence among urban residents in all demographic regions and subgroups from 2016 to 2017, compared with 2008 to 2009.

Four-year-olds with persistent and new excess weight were 2.54 times and 2.49 times more likely to develop hypertension by age 6, respectively, compared with those with healthy weight, Spanish researchers reported in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. The findings also showed a 3.42 times and 2.81 times increased likelihood of high blood pressure among those with persistent and new abdominal obesity, respectively.

Older adults who take antidepressants had a threefold increased likelihood of developing dementia, compared with those who don't take them, according to a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry. The findings were based on data involving 71,515 Israeli adults ages 60 and older followed between 2013 and 2017.

Youths who received complete rotavirus vaccination were 33% less likely to develop type 1 diabetes than those who weren't vaccinated, and there was an even lower risk among those who were given all three doses of the pentavalent vaccine, compared with those who received only two monovalent vaccine doses, according to a study in Scientific Reports. Researchers also found 94% and 31% lower rates of rotavirus infection-related and any hospitalizations, respectively, among vaccinated children during the first two months post-vaccination, compared with those who weren't vaccinated.

The CMS is developing a quality reporting tool to be known as Hospice Evaluation and Assessment Reporting Tool, or HEART, to replace the Hospice Item Set measures. According to the CMS, the tool is intended to be used as part of the hospice care planning process as well as for the evaluation of care quality.

A study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine based on EHR data from 170,332 encounters and interviews with 40 physicians found that variations in clinical documentation in EHRs could result in patient harm and clinical inefficiencies. Researchers suggest conducting user training during the implementation of EHR systems and setting up practice meetings for standardized documentation.

The House has amended a health care spending bill to remove a ban on using federal funding to create a national patient identifier. The ban traces back to security issues in the 1990s, but industry groups have supported the concept as a better way to match data to the right patient.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., introduced legislation that would require health insurance providers to pay for FDA-approved over-the-counter birth control with no cost-sharing.

Streamlining health care operation costs and boosting efficiency rank as some of the biggest concerns for today's health care executives, according to a study by market research firm Rabin. The need for efficiency was one of the top three challenges going into 2020 for a third of respondents, and executives also said they are focused on encouraging technology vendors to promote interoperability and enhancing employees' technology training to ease the transition to value-based care.

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