His tumor was diagnosed by a physician watching him on TV.
January 2007
All Stories
GruntDoc PSA
Please don't drink Purell.
A 93 pound ovarian cyst
A woman wondered why she wasn't losing any weight.
Newsflash: PCPs juggle multiple problems during office visits
More studies of the obvious:
"We documented that on average there are six topics that were discussed, and there is not a lot of time allocated to these topics," said lead study author Ming Tai-Seale, Ph.D.
During the doctor-patient interactions, the topic that received the most talk time was typically discussed for about five minutes. The remaining issues typically received about a minute of discussion each, found the ...
Healthcare Diseasecare
Precisely the problem today:
Ironically, providers incentives to undertreat due to health plan reimbursement rules and structures coexist with incentives to overtreat, compounding the problems for patient value. Incentives to overtreat have four sources. First, physicians and hospitals get paid to treat, not for keeping patients healthy. Second, when reimbursements are squeezed, the incentive to treat more becomes stronger. Third, the phenomenon of "supply driven demand" (more specialist = ...
Sid Schwab talks personally about surgical complications
On injuring the common bile duct:
There are two cardinal sins, in my estimation, for the general surgeon. The first, the sine qua non of a surgical screw-up, is injuring the common bile duct. Nailing the bowel with a suture while closing an abdominal incision is the other. Each tends to bespeak carelessness, and I'm sorry to say I've done both. Only once each, thank God, in what I'd ...
More brain-dead ideas from the ivory tower
Thanks Graham for pointing out this NY Times article. Academic physicians suggest this tact to better communicate with patients:
Doctors should use plain language, not medical jargon, vague terms and words that may have different meanings to a lay person. They should say . . . "You don't have HIV" instead of "Your HIV test was negative."Two completely different things. Saying the first can land ...
IBD on health care reform: "Don’t believe a word of it"
Investor's Business Daily goes against the grain on health care reform:
But is [health care] really a crisis in desperate need of a government solution? The short answer: No.
Unless, of course, you also think that we have a recreation crisis, or a fitness club crisis, or a computer crisis. After all, spending on these and other things went up just as fast, if not faster, than spending on ...
West Virginia editorial: "Tort reform saved health care"
Follow-up from yesterday's story. You can't argue with the numbers.
"Smokable" medications
A drug company is looking for new ways to absorb medication. First up, "smokable" Compazine for migraines.
The regulation of medicine
Some troubling thoughts for the future of American medicine:
With these decreasing payments and increasing regulation, I think that there will be an increasing number of physicians opting out of Medicare in the next several years. Indeed, it would not surprise me if it becomes difficult to find a decent physician who will be willing to accept any Medicare-eligible patient, even with the world's most generous secondary insurance. This ...
Plaintiff lawyer: "He has the power to be 100 percent certain"
Herein lies the fundamental disagreement between lawyers and physicians. 100% certainty is an impossibility in medicine, a concept that the legal community has yet to grasp and continues to exploit through malpractice cases.
What happens when you leave your contact lenses in for a year?
Well, don't do what this guy did:
A Chinese man had to have his contact lenses surgically removed after he did not take them out for a year.
Liu, 40, started to wear contact lenses a year ago and never took them out because he found it difficult.
"I only have some eye drops for when they feel uncomfortable," he told Chutian City News.
Liu recently felt ...
What works for a cold?
A comprehensive chart evaluating all of the common remedies.
Behold the pharmaceutical rep Barbie
It's real.
(via PharmaGossip)
Sweden has banned the practice of women patients requesting female gynecologists
They don't want to discriminate against male GYNs.
Long wait forces a cancer patient to buy the operation in land he fled
A patient goes back to Yugoslavia for a procedure he had to wait for in single-payer Canada:
". . . in a time of need for somebody in my dad's situation, Yugoslavia offered better and faster treatment. They could not understand that they would make you wait that long to treat a disease of such seriousness in a country such as Canada and neither could we."
ER doc to angry patient
The more patients complain, the longer they'll wait:
Yes, we know you have (and are) a pain in the butt. Coming out to the nurse's station every five minutes to yell at the staff does not encourage me to see you any sooner. In fact, the opposite is true. When I noticed that you were able to walk and talk (loudly), I was then able to put you lower ...
A GYN nurse misses Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
And loses the subsequent lawsuit. I'm thinking this must have been a nurse practitioner working in a GYN's office. Here's hoping she has good malpractice insurance. A physician comments on the chilling effects of the verdict:
$2,450,000 is approximately the life savings of a general practice MD after tax and life's expenses.
As a Greenville county physician the prospect of losing an entire life's savings for one ...
Vaccines "un-Islamic"?
Orac looks at the recent stance from the head of the Islamic Medical Association:
A MUSLIM doctors' leader has provoked an outcry by urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella because it is "un-Islamic".
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, is telling Muslims that almost all vaccines contain products derived from animal and human ...
Kevin Pho, MD
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How I approach ovarian cancer screening with patients
Ovarian cancer screening clearly touches a nerve. No one doubts that ovarian cancer is a devastating diagnosis, often found when the disease...
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Why more primary care doctors are referring patients to specialists
According to a recent study from the Archives of Internal Medicine, primary care physicians are referring more patients to specialists than ever...
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Should Google censor anti-vaccine claims?
One of the reasons there is such a movement against vaccines is the democratization of information, perpetuated by search engines like Google....
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Radiologists who cheat on their board exams: Who’s to blame?
In a widely circulated CNN article, many radiologists have been found to cheat on their board exams: "Doctors around the country taking an...
Physician
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Why an anesthesiologist would be needed for organ donation
I've only had to declare death a couple of times. Once in a three-year-old and once in an adult. In each case...
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5 ways to avoid a misdiagnosis
Billionaire Teddy Forstmann had been diagnosed with a serious form of brain cancer. There’s a tragic twist to the story: according to...
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Benefits of the Medicare Adult Wellness Visit
One of the things I love about family medicine is that I get to care for people of all ages. I almost...
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Cancer has a way of teaching us poignant life lessons
I just finished reading George’s recent post on Evelyn Lauder, who recently passed away from ovarian cancer, and am still stirred by...
Patient
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In love there is a life giving force
Here is a toast to the miracle of love. Not to the romantic, chocolate, dance club nightlife type of love. Not warm...
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How to get ready for death
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet...
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The long term cost of a pain in the neck
One morning this May, I woke up with a stiff neck. I applied hot and cold therapy all day and took an...
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Preparing for your visit with someone in hospice care
Visiting someone who is dying or critically ill is an experience many of us will have in the course of our lives....
Policy
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AMA: Advocating for Medicare, military and fiscal responsibility
A guest column by the American Medical Association, exclusive to KevinMD.com. This week, I’m joining hundreds of physicians and medical students in Washington, DC...
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A critical look at value driven health care
Everyone in the world is talking about “value-driven health care.” Or so it might seem if you pick up a medical journal...
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Surviving the new landscape of physician reimbursement
CNN recently posted an article titled "Doctors Going Broke." It described several cases of independent physicians who are near bankruptcy although they once...
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Doctors lobby Congress to repeal the SGR
One of the things that I like most about my job is engaging with ACP’s physician leadership—the internal medicine doctors who dedicate...
Tech
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There is a patient attached to that implantable defibrillator
As a follow-up to my post on why patients with implantable defibrillators should have access to their device’s data, I am going...
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The pitfalls of email communication with patients
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reviewed the emerging role of email in healthcare, arguing that doctors should more aggressively...
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Why adoption of EHRs is a transformational event for physicians
Paul Conslato, MD, director of clinical affairs for Lancaster General Medical Group, recently was quoted in the PAMED Better Health Network eZine...
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Why EMR is a dirty word to many doctors
Don’t get me wrong, EMRs (electronic medical records) are inevitable. Over the long-run they are almost certainly good for physicians, patients and...
Social Media
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Using Twitter to deliver health improvement messages
I have decided to spam for public health. Phone calls, text messaging, and even apps have been shown to help improve health...
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Addressing comments on your medical practice’s Facebook page
Does your medical practice allow anybody to post links and comments on your Facebook page? The short answer is yes. We do....
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The Internet is where patients go for pre-visit consultations
As a physician, technology cannot replace you, but it can make you more efficient and effective. This was the message from Richard...
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5 ways doctors can benefit from professional connections
Looking ahead to the next several months, I’ve found myself frequently wondering how many physicians will make this their year to take...
