They're responding by considering going on strike:
Like most junior doctors, he worked 12 days without a break, including 16-hour shifts. The shortest day was a busy 10 hours ending at 6pm -– scarcely enough time to get home to read his two children a bedtime story. Somehow, he also found time to study for and pass a tough exam.
"I was super-stressed out."
The death of one ...
This specialist illustrates the sad state:
"Our government is letting the misbehavior of a relatively small number of people too often trump the needs of many, many good people with complex medical problems and lots of pain," he said recently, seating behind his office desk where a chart of pain levels is prominently displayed. (1-2 is mild pain, 5-6 is distressing pain, 9-10 is excruciating pain.) "Many doctors won'Â’t prescribe ...
The LA Times looks closer at in-flight medical emergencies.
He's doing all of this just to get more Lunesta for his patient? Ridiculous:
When Tufts Health Plan cut a patient's prescription for the sleep aid Lunesta from 30 pills to 10 pills a month, her physician, Dr. Stephen A. Hoffmann, decided to circumvent state regulations by writing a second prescription in the name of her husband so she could get 10 more pills per month.
Hoffmann ...
The idea is to embed students with patients:
To create more caring doctors, the trainee medics from Melbourne University will shadow patients as they sit in GP waiting rooms, visited specialists and recuperated at home.
Under the scheme, which mirrors a pilot program at Harvard Medical School in the US, partnering a patient with a chronic illness such as diabetes or arthritis will be a compulsory part of the ...
It plays a significant role during surgery:
Music can become a subtle bone of contention among the members of the surgical team or a practical aid. Loud rock 'n' roll is good for routine operations, they say, Mozart for trickier ones. There is even a genre called "closing music": raucous sounds to suture by.
Imagine the fallout from successfully suing the world's most popular prescription medication:
Lawsuits filed this week claim that drug-maker Pfizer has failed to warn doctors and patients about serious possible side effects of the cholesterol-lowering drug.
The two lawsuits claim that Lipitor caused lasting, debilitating muscle and nerve problems -- including memory loss. Mark Jay Krum, a lawyer based in New York and Philadelphia, last Wednesday filed the ...
Check out his new digs.
Too bad that litigation worries are impeding technological advances in medicine. All the more reason why e-consults and internet communication with patients won't be embraced in the US:
For medical malpractice attorney Veronica Richards of Pittsburgh's Richards & Richards, a former nurse practitioner, the increased use of virtual house calls is cause for concern. Internet communication doesn't offer the clarity and directness of a face-to-face diagnosis, she warned, ...
The chief reason is consumers don't know what is going to be done prior to an office visit.
More news on UnitedHealth's hardball tactics going awry:
New York State has banned United Healthcare's managed care plan, an arm of the nation's second-largest health insurer, from signing up most types of new customers. State regulators say they took the rare action because the company has persistently defied state rules.
For at least three years, United Healthcare has repeatedly filed late, incomplete or inaccurate reports to the state ...
Maybe this will send UnitedHealth a message. They are clearly the worst payer in the country, while their CEO makes billions:
This time, however, local doctors say they were stunned by contracts -- offered after the merger -- that offered up to 30 percent less than they had previously received. The cuts rankled, they say, because the merger between the two insurers made many executives rich. UnitedHealthcare CEO ...
Next to a horrifying diptych of game characters strangling each other on a crude gibbet, the text claims that "20% of all gamers" can get hooked, and many "have neglected family, romance, school, and jobs" and "food and personal hygiene."
Apparently, there's going to be stiff resistance to start up public performance measures.
As the World Cup approaches, consider this interesting presentation of toxic shock syndrome:
Blisters from new football boots can do more than slow down budding soccer stars - they have the potential to kill.
A team of doctors reported two cases of toxic shock in young footballers, caused by infected blisters from new boots.
Both players, a girl aged 13 and an 11-year-old boy, were treated in ...
He claims that British midwives want mothers to suffer.
Congratulations. They have a nice collection of bloggers over there.
So very true. ER docs assume the worst, and then move on the less severe diagnoses:
The correlate of this emergency paranoia is that you, the patient, will get poked and prodded much more than you would if you just went to your outpatient doctor. Your stomach ache isn't just a stomach ache in the ED; it could be a heart attack, an aortic dissection, pancreatitis, a kidney ...
No surprise, since the barriers to obtain an EHR are so great:
U.S. doctors increasingly have access to computers to look up information on their patients, but more than half still don't have digital health records or the ability to write electronic prescriptions, a study released Wednesday found.
Twenty-two percent of doctors surveyed by the Center for Studying Health System Change last year had access to electronic prescription tools ...
VBAC (vaginal birth after Caesarean) was banned due to rising malpractice costs. This continues to be a liability risk because of the small chance of uterine rupture (0 to 7 per 1000 births).
A version of this column was published on April 24, 2012 in USA Today. There has been a recent uptick of elderly men...
The following column was published on April 1, 2012 in USA Today. I recently saw a middle-age man in my primary care clinic...
The following column was published on March 25, 2012 in the Nashua Telegraph. Medical malpractice historically has been a contentious issue. Doctors...
The following column was published on April 11, 2012 in CNN. When you visit the doctor, chances are you are given a...
As a cardiac electrophysiologist, I have had to discuss bad news with patients and families more times than I would like during...
He looked dead. The paramedics brought him down the hall toward one of my critical care beds, and for a moment I...
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I was honored to be part of a beautiful experience in late January of 2011. It was the death of my mother-in-law...
Theirs is a lonely journey; to be moving towards the separation and end of all things known and loved. Being with a...
As a patient who was asked to speak at the Association of Health Care Journalists 2012 conference, I felt a bit covert....
Nothing will force you to live life on your own terms faster than almost losing it. In 2008, I was on fire....
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The nation’s “safety net” hospitals are designed to ensure that uninsured, lower income and indigent populations receive adequate medical care – a...
Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but...
It is both conventional wisdom and factual truth that, unimpeded, American healthcare cost inflation will bankrupt the United States economically, educationally, socially,...
Every month, hundreds of thousands of people look for a doctor on Google. As an amazing practitioner, your site deserves to be...
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the physician’s office were the tall cabinets filled with manila folders, tabbed with...
This example of a disaster waiting to happen, in the form of an error-promoting CPOE, is a poster example of why the...
A guest column by the American Medical Association, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Continuing our efforts to move medicine forward while prioritizing patient care and minimizing...
Prior to 1794, farms across the world could only pick cotton as fast as humanly possible. In the late 18th century, Eli Whitney...
Social media in healthcare is all the rage these days. You can’t visit even one physician-oriented website without someone breathlessly advising you...
Want to understand social media? Physicians wanting to learn about social media must learn transparency. We must learn transparency on a personal...
It was my first ER shift in charge of the resuscitation area. Needless to say, my adrenaline and nerves were firing like...
