A law signed by President Obama on Tuesday delays the mandated national transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 medical coding scheduled to take effect October 2014 until October 2015 at the earliest. The House passed enabling legislation last week and the Senate passed the House’s Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 on Monday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a prescription treatment that can be used in emergency situations to treat a person with a known or suspected opioid overdose. The treatment, Evzio, delivers a single dose of the drug naloxone via a hand-held auto-injector that can be carried in a pocket or stored in a […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced today that it will issue a final rule to better protect electric power generation, transmission and distribution workers. The rule is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on April 11 and will become effective 90 days later, with the exception of delayed compliance deadlines for certain […]
The Ministry of Health of Guinea has notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of a rapidly evolving outbreak of deadly Ebola virus disease (EVD) in south-eastern Guinea. EVD in humans has a case fatality rate of up to 90 percent. It is spread through animal-to-human and human-to-human contact with infected blood and body fluid; no […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is holding a series of public hearings on its notice of proposed rulemaking on occupational exposure to crystalline silica through April 4. The proposed rule seeks to lower worker exposure to crystalline silica, which causes silicosis, an incurable lung disease. The proposed rule includes provisions to update inconsistent and […]
In new estimates released today, WHO reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died – one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. In particular, new […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) invites public comments on an interim final rule to establish procedures and time frames for handling retaliation complaints in the food industry. Under the Food Safety Modernization Act, employees who disclose information about possible violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act are protected from retaliation by employers […]
Understanding the relationship between industry types and occupational skills may provide important insights into workers’ ability to cope with job loss, according to Beyond the Numbers, a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index and industry quotients to measure occupational specialization by industry, the study found differences in industry staffing […]
Transportation fatalities in the United States increased by 3 percent in 2012 compared to 2011, a reminder of the need for heightened attention to highway safety, according preliminary figures from the National Transportation Safety Board. Transportation fatalities in all modes totaled 35,531 in 2012. Although marine, aviation and pipeline-related deaths declined, highway and rail fatalities […]