Complaints about doctors jumped by 69% in three years.
In the UK, the number of complaints made to the General Medical Council about doctors has risen 23% in the past year, the regulator says. The GMC report showed there were 8,781 in 2011 compared to 7,153 in 2010.
Continue reading… “Complaints in the UK about doctors has risen 23%”
If Facebook can persuade that silent majority to become more engaged in the site its future looks pretty bright.
Facebook is a pretty divisive company. One group took to the the social network, sharing their lives in updates and shifting a good portion of their social interactions onto Facebook’s sprawling social graph. The other group took the opposite direction, avoiding the site entirely, or canceling their accounts, or griping as they came to endure Facebook as a necessary evil of being online.
Continue reading… “Facebook’s silent majority holds the key to the company’s future”
On Thursday, the New York City Board of Health voted to ban the sale of sugary soft drinks larger than 16 ounces at restaurants. This is a move that has sparked intense debate between public health advocates and beverage industry lobbyists. When did sodas get so big in the first place?
(yuliang11/Photos.com)
Futurist Thomas Frey: Wouldn’t it be great if you could turn on your television and it instantly knew what show you wanted to watch?
We all dream of an easier life, so what if we got into our car and it knew where we wanted to go, or turned on a radio and it played the perfect music, or pressed “call” on our phone and we would instantly be connected to the person we most wanted to talk to.
Continue reading… “Anticipatory Computing: Unlocking the Ultra-Human in All of Us”
821,000 households opted out of the banking system from 2009 to 2011.
More Americans have limited or no interaction with banks in the aftermath of one of the worst recessions in history. Instead more people are relying on check cashers and payday lenders to manage their finances, according to a new federal report.
Continue reading… “Growing number of Americans are opting out of the banking system”
The rate of children entering private schools without all of their shots jumped by 10 percent last year.
An Associated Press analysis has found that parents who send their children to private schools in California are much more likely to opt out of immunizations than their public school counterparts, an Associated Press analysis. Even the recent re-emergence of whooping cough hasn’t halted the downward trajectory of vaccinations among these students.
Continue reading… “Vaccination opt-outs on the rise in private schools”
The Marcone company of St. Louis was implicated in a coolant smuggling scheme.
A trusted senior vice president of a century-old company from America’s heartland had been caught on a wiretap buying half a million dollars in smuggled merchandise, much of it from China. And now the chief executive of the company was on the witness stand trying to explain how the senior vice president did it.
Continue reading… “Coolant smugglers reap large profits”
Eliminating some unnecessary expenses and keeping an eye out for ways to save can help keep precious dollars at home.
The golden years of many retirees have been tarnished by low returns on investments and smaller nest eggs than they’d hoped. Meanwhile, longer life spans, increased expenses — particularly rising health care costs — plus a volatile stock market and low interest rates on savings have baby boomers facing tough choices.
Continue reading… “Cutting costs a new pasttime for retirees”
Instagram is more or less a social network.
Well intended parents have been keeping their tweens off of Facebook but they have turned to Instagram, the photo sharing app, as a seemingly innocuous social-network workaround.
Continue reading… “Instagram has become the social network for tweens”
Speaking at “Mobility Day” in Shanghai
Futurist Thomas Frey: Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at a conference on the “Future of Mobility” in Shanghai, China. The event was produced by the very forward thinking people at Lanxess, a German-based chemical company that broke ground the day before on a new facility to expand its already significant base of operation in Shanghai.
Continue reading… “Driverless Highways: Creating Cars that Talk to the Roads”
A breakdown of our biggest losses as we approach health-care system reform.
The United States spends eight times as much money on unnecessary health-care costs, every year, as the Pentagon spent for each year of its operations in Iraq.
Continue reading… “The U.S. healthcare system wastes $750 billion each year”
The New York Public Library recently embarked on a controversial plan to move two to three million books off-site.
The New York Public Library (NYPL) retired its pneumatic-tube system sometime last year. It had been used to request books for more than a century. The New York Public Library opened in 1911 and that pneumatic call system had changed little since then. You still filled out a slip, and you still turned that slip over to a clerk, who would load it into a metal cartridge. The cartridge would be driven by air pressure to a station down in the stacks, where another clerk would retrieve your book, which was then sent back up to the call desk by a dumbwaiter. In recent years, this procedure would take about 20 minutes. In decades past, I’m told, it was closer to five.
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
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