From the monthly archives:

May 2006

A family holds vigil for wrong patient

May 31, 2006

Tragic:
An American family stood vigil for weeks at the hospital bedside of a severely injured woman they thought was their daughter before realising she was really the girl’s classmate and that their own child was dead and already buried.

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What’s the average length of stay in the ER?

May 31, 2006

3.7 hours, according the a recent survey.

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Duke closes its family practice residency

May 31, 2006

This may be start of a trend as medical students, heavily in debt, realize that family medicine is a dead end.

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Stories from a single payer world

May 31, 2006

The next in a continuing series:
A herniated disc kept Thomas Dobson flat on his back all winter and now he can’t find a doctor to sign his application for disability benefits.
“The problem is I need a doctor,” said Dobson. “I’ve called every number in the book.”
Dobson had no success because there are no physicians taking [...]

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Flights are introducing on-board telemedicine

May 31, 2006

I wonder if this will catch on:
Tempus uses the satellite technology that operates Virgin Atlantic’s onboard telephone system to transmit medical information such as pulse rate and blood pressure readings as well as video images to medical experts at the MedAire Centre in Phoenix, Arizona. The ground-based doctors can then diagnose the problem and advise [...]

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Using Google to beat bird flu

May 31, 2006

US poultry experts are using Google Earth:
Since the beginning of the year, experts have also been using Google Earth , which combines satellite imagery, maps and the company’s search engine to span the globe. It gives extra details including the location of buildings, schools and roads near large chicken and turkey farms and production facilities.
“Twenty [...]

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How a blood draw can lead to debilitating injury

May 31, 2006

The NY Times profiles an unusual case.

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Some interesting data about the uninsured

May 31, 2006

Here’s one tidbit:
Nearly 60 percent of uninsured hospital stays originated in the emergency department, compared with 31.8 percent for the privately insured and 39.3 percent for Medicaid patients.

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When normal people become patients

May 31, 2006

The Washington Post looks at disease-mongering:
Shy people have “social phobia,” requiring psychotropic drugs. High-strung boys have attention deficit disorder and need amphetamines. Baby boomers with slightly elevated blood pressure have “pre-hypertension” and line up for beta blockers. A few nights of restlessness calls for sleeping pills.
“The ordinary experiences of life become a diagnosis, which makes [...]

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The controversies of pill splitting

May 31, 2006

Expect drug companies to adjust pricing as this practice becomes widespread.

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How does a baby grow three arms?

May 31, 2006

ABC News takes a look.

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Problems at Medlogs?

May 30, 2006

GruntDoc and others can’t get their feed published at Medlogs. As it gets fixed, one option to stay up to date would be to use the feeds page here.
I’d like to keep it as updated as possible (i.e. including only regularly updated blogs), since I use it to steal find the links I blog [...]

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EMRs: Where more is less

May 30, 2006

Doctor comments on JAMA’s recent EMR commentary:
Moreover, EMR encourages everyone to copy-and-paste the notes of everyone else so that notes become the same from author to author as well as from day to day. Even consultants are assimilated into the oneness of the EMR Borg. A cardiology consultant recently copied-and-pasted the intern’s note into his [...]

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Is the food police going too far?

May 30, 2006

This NY Times article thinks so:
I fear there’s something else at work -— a fear borne out by a flier my fifth grader brought home saying that at the monthly pizza hot lunch, no child would be allowed to buy a second slice of pizza. The district says the new ruling is to avoid bad [...]

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Brilliant anti-smoking marketing

May 30, 2006

From the Singapore Cancer Society.

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Chris Rangel wonders about fast-food outpatient medicine

May 30, 2006

Welcome to primary care in the USA:
To use the same fast food analogy, imagine a situation where price was no longer an issue (because of insurance) and the hungry masses started demanding the best burgers in the world . . . . but they wanted to wait no longer than they did for the regular [...]

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