From the monthly archives:

April 2007

Appendectomy via the mouth

April 30, 2007

First, a cholecystectomy via the vagina, now surgeons are looking at the other end:
Transgastric surgery, or natural orifice translumenal endosurgery (NOTES), as it is officially known, involves passing flexible surgical tools and a camera in through the patient’s mouth to reach the abdominal cavity via an incision made in the stomach lining. Once the operation [...]

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Googling your adversary

April 30, 2007

Flea Googles the plaintiff’s lawyer in his upcoming trial and this is what he found.

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Aging

April 30, 2007

Atul Gawande on aging and the fate of the elderly:
Despite a rapidly growing elderly population, the number of certified geriatricians fell by a third between 1998 and 2004. Applications to training programs in adult primary-care medicine are plummeting, while fields like plastic surgery and radiology receive applications in record numbers. Partly, this has to do [...]

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Maine’s universal health plan a failure

April 30, 2007

Not mandating people to buy insurance was their mortal downfall:
And while some people have benefited from the subsidized insurance, which provides unusually comprehensive coverage, others have found it too expensive. And premiums have increased, not become more affordable, because some of those who signed up needed significant medical care, and there are not enough enrollees, [...]

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The next malpractice burden: Payouts for grief

April 30, 2007

More ways for lawyers to make money?
The flashpoint is a proposal that would allow family members of someone who has died to seek damages specifically for “grief, sorrow and mental anguish” “” in addition to other economic and noneconomic damages “” in any wrongful death lawsuit. The bill goes to the state Senate this week; [...]

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Declining reimbursements and you

April 30, 2007

How inappropriate reimbursement is affecting Vermont:
For years, Medicaid’s rates haven’t covered the cost of the care (not the prices, but the actual cost of providing care) provided to Vermont’s Medicaid beneficiaries. Recently, Medicaid rates to most providers have been cut dramatically or have not included even inflationary increases.
The consequences of these chronic underpayments are being [...]

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New Orleans: "It’s a dangerous place to live for unhealthy people"

April 30, 2007

Healthcare workers are not returning at the same pace as the residents:
Residents are returning to New Orleans faster than healthcare workers. The shortage of doctors “” on top of fewer and overcrowded hospitals, lost or destroyed medical records, and delays in everything from getting an appointment to lab test results “” has contributed to a [...]

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Fixing doctor rating sites

April 30, 2007

This sounds promising:
. . . some very good efforts (honestly) have been made by ratemds.com and vimo and even Yelp. The problem is that these ratings are typically based upon a single instance of a person who purposely decides to go find their doc info and then rate THAT physician”¦ once. They rarely, if [...]

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Medical wikis

April 30, 2007

AMNews with an article today:
As more medical wikis launch, experts say the creators will need to break away from the traditional wiki model to ensure that the information accessed is accurate. That is what many medical wikis are doing, which makes adding content slower but allows time for fact-checking.
Isn’t that defeating the purpose?
David Rothman [...]

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Dealing with consultants 101

April 30, 2007

Written from an ER perspective, some of these tips come in handy when you’re also calling specialists from the medicine floor.

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Hurwitz verdict: "The jurors were confused by the law"

April 30, 2007

Pain management suffers a setback when physician William Hurwitz was convicted. John Tierney looks at the verdict:
I can’t blame the jurors for being confused, because that’s the norm in trials of pain-management doctors. The standard prosecution strategy is to charge the doctor on so many counts and introduce so much evidence that the jurors [...]

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"The international language of Viagra"

April 29, 2007

Only shown in Canada, I saw this TV spot a few times last week when I was in Toronto. It was a gibberish ad that didn’t make sense at the time. Now, the NY Times with an explanation:
Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, offers an answer in a new campaign for Viagra, so [...]

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Do non-English speakers cost practices money?

April 29, 2007

Yes, according to a survey, to the tune of $19,000 annually.

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Laceration porn

April 29, 2007

Courtesy of Shadowfax and Scalpel.

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Gourmand syndrome

April 29, 2007

I think I may have this newly discovered neurological disorder:
We present a new benign eating disorder associated with lesions involving parts of the right anterior cerebral hemisphere. This “gourmand” syndrome describes a preoccupation with food and a preference for fine eating.
There is a blog dedicated to this as well. (via Medpundit)

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