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Dale Carlsen was about 24 years old and had been merely selling mattresses, but finally Dale got frustrated and went into the biz for himself. He was coming up on having to make a payment on the loan for his new, tiny mattress company. He didn't have much money, and this loan was at over 20% interest, ok? Worse was that Dale had chosen the location of his first mattress store in gritty South Sacramento, near Sac State, alongside some train tracks, next to a flea market. He'd thought the flea market foot traffic would bring customers, but in fact...

RUDD should invest in a voucher scheme instead of taking over hospitals. IT'S a quarter of a century since Medicare was established, but no one is celebrating. No wonder, considering the critical condition of the public hospital system throughout Australia. Instead we have a 300-page reform blueprint from the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. At least the report has identified the main problem. The reality is that Australia's dangerously overcrowded public hospitals don't have enough beds to provide a safe and timely standard of care even for emergency patients. Unfortunately, the commission has strongly supported a range of non-solutions....

A good night's sleep may be just what your arteries need. So finds a new five-year study in which middle-aged people who had an extra hour of sleep each night were less likely to have artery-stiffening calcium deposits. Lauderdale and her colleagues have been following a group of young adults for years, studying their heart arteries from a number of angles. The latest report linked the sleeping habits of 495 participants, ages 35 to 47, with the incidence of artery calcification, measured by CT scans. Calcium deposits can make the coronary arteries less flexible and ultimately lead to heart disease....

Corrections officials said Friday that they have reached agreement with a private prison company to transfer another 3,600 inmates to an out-of-state facility. The contract with Correctional Corp. of America will bring the total number of prisoners sent out of state to the nearly 8,000 allowed under a state law approved this year to ease prison crowding. Correctional Corp. of America will add space for the 3,060 inmates at its new La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona under the contract with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The new contract will cost California taxpayers $48 million this fiscal...

Running out of places to care for patients, London's busiest hospital emergency room shut its doors to all but the most severe injuries from outside the city for the first time in its history last week. Two trauma patients had to be diverted during the shutdown, with one patient sent to a hospital in Toronto and the other to Hamilton. The situation hit amid recent reports some London patients have had to wait as long as three days for a hospital bed to become available. "We were in a crisis situation," said Dr. Gary Joubert, chief of emergency medicine for...

Failing to make your bed in the morning may actually help keep you healthy, scientists believe. Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies. A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed. The average bed could be home to up to 1.5 million house dust mites. The bugs, which are less than a millimetre long, feed on scales of human skin and produce allergens which are easily inhaled during sleep. The warm,...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. - A woman who swapped beds with another patient in their hospital room so she could be nearer the window died after receiving the wrong type of blood during surgery. In preparation for the surgery last month, a technician at Inova Fairfax Hospital mistakenly took a blood sample from the woman's roommate, hospital officials said. Hospital spokeswoman Beth Visioli said Friday that the woman had switched beds, but said the death was the result of human error by a hospital employee. The technician did not follow the hospital's established procedures for identifying patients, which requires examining each...

Military beds for French heat victims Hospitals are overwhelmed with heat victims French military hospitals are to be used to help care for the heatwave casualties who are swamping the health system. More than 150 people are estimated to have died across France, most of them in Paris where temperatures have reached more than 40C (104F). The French Red Cross is also preparing to help caring for the victims as wards fill to overflowing. Refrigerated tents are being prepared as overflow mortuaries, Le Figaro newspaper reported, as existing facilities are stretched to breaking point. "We are in an extremely difficult...

POLK COUNTY, Fla. -- A 35-year-old Polk County woman admits she chained her sons to their beds at night to keep them out of trouble, according to a Local 6 News report. Karen Abe, 35, said her sons would break into and steal cars while she was at work so she tethered her 13- and 15-year-old sons to their beds with heavy chains and padlocks. Even though her ex-husband was reportedly inside the home at night, the boys were chained from 9:30 p.m. until 6 a.m. "When I left, I just put them on the chain," Karen Abe said. "They...