May 2006

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A family holds vigil for wrong patient

in Uncategorized | 8 responses

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.

Stories from a single payer world

in Uncategorized | 3 responses

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 new patients and no walk-in clinics in the city.

Flights are introducing on-board telemedicine

in Uncategorized | no responses

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 the crew on the next course of action, enabling crew to use their medical ...

Using Google to beat bird flu

in Uncategorized | one response

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 years ago we had to drive around the countryside and find the ...

When normal people become patients

in Uncategorized | one response

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 healthy people feel like they're sick," Schwartz said.

Problems at Medlogs?

in Uncategorized | one response

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 about throughout the day. Contact me if you want your blog ...

EMRs: Where more is less

in Tech | one response

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 own, even including "consult cardiology in AM" in his recommendations. Perhaps he meant ...

Is the food police going too far?

in Uncategorized | 10 responses

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 feelings caused by "inequities": if everyone can't have extra helpings, no one can.

Chris Rangel wonders about fast-food outpatient medicine

in Uncategorized | one response

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 "McDonaldized" burger. The problem is that the amount of money that the restaurant gets ...

A doctor sues his own hospital

in Uncategorized | 4 responses

This must put him in an awkward position:

According to the lawsuit, Patty Phillips went to the hospital's emergency room March 19 with extreme abdominal pain. Her husband said he was certain it indicated a serious intestinal problem that required immediate surgery.

Instead, he asserted in the lawsuit, she spent hours in a bed without standard monitoring machines in a storage area outside the hospital's radiology unit before she ...

The baby with three arms

in Uncategorized | no responses

The baby with three arms

Having such as fully-developed third arm is rare:

Neither of the boy's two left arms is fully functional and tests have so far been unable to determine which was more developed, said Dr. Chen Bochang, head of the orthopedics department at Shanghai Children's Medical Center.

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