A national ban on ambulance-chasing lawyers is needed because they are getting around laws that ban them from advertising by exploiting loopholes using ‘injury helplines’, says The Sydney Morning Herald.   

Medicare says 9500 out of some 22,500 general and specialist medical practices offer Easyclaim facilities, and 20% of patient claims are made electronically, according to The Australian.    

Lap band surgery is a "dinosaur" technique that often does not lead to long-term weight loss, says a visiting Swedish expert in The Sydney Morning Herald.     

Medicare expenditure is predicted to jump by $1.4 billion over four years because of higher than expected spending on GP consultations, says The Sydney Morning Herald.   

One in three abortions carried out at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide is carried out in Chinese students, The Advertiser reports.   

The world’s first malaria vaccine could be distributed in Africa by 2015, with results from a current final-stage trial on 5000 African children expected by next year, The Australian reports.     

GP and obstetrician Dr Maxine Percival from Moree in North-western NSW has been named Rural Doctor of the Year, the ABC says.   

All couples considering having a child as well as women in early pregnancy should be offered cystic fibrosis screening, which is not currently funded by Medicare, after a five-year study detected 80 per cent of high-risk couples, says WA Today.   

Health bureaucrats have spent $220,000 in the past three financial years travelling to conferences in exotic locations as the health system buckles under financial strain, The Daily Telegraph says.   

People who eat processed foods or food high in fat and sugar are 60% more likely to suffer depression than those with a healthy diet independent of exercise, according to the Courier Mail.   

A Kalgoorlie GP who completed an Advanced Diploma of Obstetrics and helped design a training program for rural registrars to learn specialist obstetrics skills has been named the Rural Registrar of the Year, according to the ABC.