Treat RA early, aggressively for best disease outcomes
Rheumatoid arthritis leaves a critical window of opportunity after the initial onset for internists to initiate aggressive treatment.

Making malpractice a little less scary for practitioners
Medical malpractice lawsuits are actually relatively infrequent, very few incidents got to trial and the majority end in wins for physicians.

Physicians struggle with language barriers
Nearly two-thirds of internists have patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), yet physicians are rarely reimbursed for the extra time and expense of treating these patients, a new survey of College members found.

Community-acquired MRSA moves in on hospitals
The traditional distinction between hospital- and community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection may soon become insignificant.

New diabetes care tools
ACP Members now can take advantage of a new diabetes toolkit developed by the College and the ACP Foundation as part of a three-year initiative funded by an unrestricted educational grant from Novo Nordisk. The initiative is aimed at closing the gap between current practice and accepted evidence-based standards of care. Vincenza Snow, FACP (right), ACP's director of Clinical Programs and Quality of Care, and Hilary Seligman, MD (left), assistant professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, who helped develop the tookkit, unveiled three new products Thursday. The new tools include Living with Diabetes: An Everyday Guide for You and Your Family, a self-management guide for patients; the ACP Diabetes Care Guide for physicians and practice teams; and the Diabetes Portal (http://diabetes.acponline.org), a Web-based resource for physicians and patients.

Hospitalist Coverage

Critical care course addresses acute disease management strategies
The Critical Care 2007 pre-course held earlier this week held critical care practices under the microscope with an intensive look at a number of common illnesses and issues associated with critical care medicine.

Top 10 medication errors
A professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Dr. Paauw will be the presenter later today at a session on the top 10 medication errors and how to avoid them.

Hospital medicine update: New trends in compensation, training will affect internists
The reimbursement spotlight is shifting to pay-for-performance, and this year's moderators for the hospital medicine update will discuss its impact on physicians.

New feature: Hospitalist track for inpatient physicians
If you practice in an inpatient setting, consider following the hospitalist track. Sessions cover the range of issues confronting hospital-based physicians, from general medical care in the inpatient setting to medical consultation, end-of-life care, patient safety and teaching.

General internal medicine update
The moderators at this year's update in general internal medicine will cover a broad array of studies that challenge some long-held assumptions.

Pulmonary update
At this year's pulmonary update, moderators Richard A. Helmers, MD, and Michael W. Peterson, FACP, will discuss groundbreaking data on lung cancer screening, as well as the latest studies on asthma, adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and chronic lung disease.

Diagnosing some very, very old patients
Whenever Philip A. Mackowiak, MACP, holds a clinicopathological conference, his case histories attract more than the usual clinical interest.

Psychiatry for the Internist: Interactive Session Teaches the Psychiatric Interview
Major depression is second only to hypertension as a clinical diagnosis in the United States, affecting nearly 15 million people-almost 7% of the population-in a given year.

Panelists highlight advances in pharmacogenetics, tissue engineering
Pharmacogenetics--the study of how genetic differences among patients are reflected in their responses to medications--has the potential to make individualized medicine a reality, one of the promises of the Human Genome Project.