The Health Information Resource Database provides links to 1,400 organizations and government agencies which disseminate health information on request.  The database is provided by the National Health Information Center, which is under the auspices of the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.  The Center is a health information referral service targeted to health professionals and consumers.  You may find several agencies under a subject category; contact information is provided as well as a brief abstract.  Publications and services that the organizations/agencies have available are also supplied.

To learn about the use and structure of the thesaurus employed to index articles added to the PubMed database, take a look at the 2013 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Now Available.    Become familiar with the MeSH Browser which contains a complete record of information related to a MeSH term, including previous indexing for the concept.  Some of the new MeSH terms added for 2013 are: Biopsy, Large-Core Needle, Buschke-Lowenstein Tumor, Dermatologic Surgical Procedures, Image-Guided Biopsy, MCF-7 Cells.  For a complete list of the new terms added to the MeSH vocabulary for 2013, click here.

The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) subdivision of the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality (AHRQ), has issued a report, Cancer Hospitalizations for Adults 2009, containing data on hospital stays for cancer care for adults 18 and older, for 2009.

The report contains interesting information such as data indicating that hospitalizations for cancer decreased over the decade 2000 – 2009, while those for other reasons increased over the same time period. The top 10 most frequent cancer hospitalizations for men and for women are graphically displayed comparing data for the years 2000 and 2009. Figures are broken down by cancer diagnosis, lengths of stay and costs.