Daily Rounds: Free Birth Control; Allergies Lower Cancer Rates; Full Pregnancy Pushed; Data Breach At The BI?

Birth Control Without Copays Could Become Mandatory | WBUR & NPR "The latest battle is set to come to a head Wednesday, when the independent Institute of Medicine is expected to make recommendations about preventive health care services for women. And one service that's drawing a lot of the attentions is contraception. Depending on the group's recommendation, contraception could become part of a package of preventive benefits that every health plan would have to cover without patient cost-sharing. In other words, it would become effectively free." (WBUR | 90.9 FM)

Really? The Claim: Allergies Reduce the Risk of Cancer - NYTimes.com "In a study published online this month in the journal BMJ Open, Danish researchers tracked nearly 17,000 adults who were tested from 1984 to 2008 for contact allergies — that is, contact with metals, poison ivy, hair dyes or other chemicals caused them to develop skin irritation. After monitoring the subjects’ long-term health and cross-checking their records against a cancer registry, the scientists found that people with contact skin allergies had lower rates of breast and skin cancer." (well.blogs.nytimes.com)

Doctors To Pregnant Women: Wait At Least 39 Weeks : NPR "A full-term pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, but elective deliveries are often planned for two or three weeks earlier. And even though 37 weeks is also still considered full term, studies show that babies born even a few weeks too early are at greater risk for health problems than those who are born later. That has some doctors campaigning to curb the trend of scheduled labor and delivery. "It's now really well-documented in national studies that the risk of the baby having to require intensive care in a neonatal intensive care unit — even the risk of infant death — is increased when the baby is born as little as two weeks before the due date," says Donovan." (npr.org)

"Beth Israel reports potential data breach from Business Updates Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is notifying more than 2,000 of its patients that some of their personal information may have been stolen from a hospital computer." (boston.com)