Medicine is at risk from a technology takeover.Consider hospital rounds, for instance. Records are electronic, and doctors have to sort through data from an increasing number of diagnostic tests, like laboratory values and imaging results. Even before stepping into a patient's room.Stanford's Abraham Verghese continually reminds doctors about what's most important: the patient before us. In fact, his essay published a few years back in the New ...
January 2010
All Stories
How the Apple Tablet will benefit patients, help doctors, and impact health care
A few weeks ago Apple announced an event to be scheduled on January 27th, at 10am. The invitation read, “Come see our latest creation.” Most of the tech community has all but assumed this event will be used to launch the much anticipated and hyped Apple tablet.
The hype machine has reached fever pitch, with analysts and bloggers salivating at how ...
How should patients decide which hospitals are best for them?
Johns Hopkins Hospital is consistently named one of the best in the country. I can't disagree with that; after all, I just started working there as an internist in September. Coincidentally, in the midst of the raging debate around health care reform, the past few months have seen increasing discussion of a small but crucial question: why do some of the best hospitals spend more money than others? If other ...
The National Consortium of Breast Centers (NCBC) response to the USPSTF breast cancer screening recommendations
I’ve been given permission to deliver the National Consortium of Breast Centers (NCBC) position statement. It does a far better job with a critique of the USPSTF Screening recommendations than I did when I shared my first thoughts. As the President for the NCBC, I want to acknowledge the work done on behalf of our organization by our Policy Chairpersons, Drs. John Bell and Barbara Rabinowitz, both of whom are ...
Extended military deployments to combat areas increase stress, anxiety and depression among families
Originally published in MedPage Todayby John Gever, MedPage Today Senior EditorThe longer that U.S. Army soldiers spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, the greater the likelihood that their wives would seek psychiatric treatment, researchers said. The risk that a woman would receive a new mental illness diagnosis during her husband's deployment was significantly higher when he was overseas for a year ...
10 ways United States health reform may fail
One, develop a plan that the presently privately insured Americans, estimated at 200 million, pay more in premiums, and to just make sure you succeed, immediately starting raising taxes by $400 billion over the next decade.Two, alienate those over 65, the most dependable voting bloc, by promising to cut Medicare by $500 billion over the next ten years with the false promise, which you know you cannot ...
Are doctors ready to accept remote medicine?
The robots are coming. Or that's what those who advocate for so-called "telemedicine" predict.In a recent New York Times column, Pauline Chen discusses the phenomenon of telemedicine, looking at a study of remote monitoring of intensive care patients in addition to usual care. Despite most families feeling that these "extra set of eyes" may improve patient safety, doctors and nurses physically in the ICU were apprehensive.There was so ...
10 cost effective preventive medicine services
Here are the top 10 preventive services. These items were chosen by the National Commission on Prevention Priorities, and highlight those preventive services including immunizations, screenings, preventive medications, and counseling that give “the most bang for the buck.”For an in depth discussion of methods and results, read Am J Prev Med 2006;31(1):52–61Discuss Daily Aspirin UseThis counseling does not mean everyone should take aspirin to prevent heart attack and stroke, but ...
How bad is childhood obesity in the United States?
Originally posted in InsidermedicineThe problem of childhood obesity in the United States has held fast during the past decade, according to research published in the January 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.id="play_continuous_flvs" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="385" height="239" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
Can morphine help prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?
Originally posted in MedPage Todayby Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff WriterThe use of morphine may prevent the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military personnel injured in combat, an observational study showed.Those who received the drug during resuscitation or trauma care were about half as likely to later develop PTSD (OR 0.47, P<0.001), according to Troy Lisa Holbrook, PhD, ...
Why the Mayo Clinic is refusing to see Medicare patients
Medicare, the government insurance company for everyone over age 65 (and for the disabled) pays fees to primary care physicians that guarantee bankruptcy.Additionally, 70% of hospitals in the United States lose money on Medicare patients. That's right, for every patient over age 65, it costs the hospital more to deliver care than the government reimburses. That is why Mayo Clinic has said it will not accept Medicare payments for primary ...
Poll: What should doctors do if patients give a negative online review?
Just like movies, restaurants, and hotels, doctors are being rated on the Internet. Several websites give patients the ability to post what they think of their physicians. But how useful are these sites?Patient reviews can be manipulated. It's easy for a doctor or his staff to counter negative reviews by posting numerous positive ones. And how can one be sure that the reviewer is even actually a ...
How television can shorten your life
Originally published in MedPage Todayby Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff WriterToo much television watching could be shortening lifespans, a study of Australian adults showed.Aussies who reported watching four or more hours of TV a day were 46% more likely to die during a 6.6-year period than those who watched less than two hours a day, according to David Dunstan, PhD, of Monash University in Melbourne, and colleagues.
How did David Blaine break the world record for holding his breath?
Magician David Blaine's lecture from TEDMED 2009, describing what it took for him to hold his breath for 17 minutes.classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="430" height="295" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
Why there needs to be a national healthcare information database
The majority of Americans have a great deal of personal health information in their physician’s medical record. Many of these physicians have an electronic healthcare record (EHR) to store this information.Unless you are in an integrated healthcare system, and most Americans are not, this information is just not available to you or any physician seeing you who does not belong to the same physician group as your primary physician. Even ...
When are stroke patients more likely to receive clot busting drugs?
Originally published in MedPage Todayby Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff WriterPatients suffering an acute ischemic stroke are about 20% more likely to receive clot-busting therapy with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) if they arrive at the hospital on the weekend, a retrospective study showed. However, there was no difference in rates of inhospital mortality based on the time of admission, Abby ...
Why touchscreen computers are the future for electronic medical records
As I explore the latest EMR offerings, and read all the blogs and media releases for and against EMRs, I am forced to wonder, “Has anybody ever asked us doctors what we either want or need?”Too often it seems the requirements of EMR’s are more suited to organizations, systems, and number-crunchers than to either doctors or our patients. I understand that the data is important, but why should the adaptation ...
Talking to a patient, without a translator, in mutual non-native languages
by Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD“Je m’a…,” I stuttered to Aristede Mezondes, the serious young man in a grey wool overcoat, standing before me with ramrod posture. “Je m’appelle Dr. Ofri.”There. I’d gotten it out.The language of Descartes, Voltaire, and Balzac had clearly vacated my cortex. Despite those years of French classes and one brief visit to Paris, “Je m’appelle” was the best I could come up with. And even that ...
Teaching doctors the art of negotiation
Originally posted in HCPLive.comby Jeff Brown, MDWhen I am in a civilian situation and someone asks me what I do, if I am feeling whimsical, I sometimes answer "I'm in sales."Think about it - almost all of our professional interchanges can be seen as: 1) trying to talk someone out of doing something, like smoking, or 2) trying to talk someone into something, like exercising. Using a broader brush, ...
iPhone medical apps for your iPod Touch
We've gotten some questions from our readers on iMedicalApps.com asking if medical applications in the App Store will work just as well on the iPod touch as they do on the iPhone. The short answer to this question is, yes, they will. The long answer is you should know some key differences.Of the approximately 60 million total iPhone and ...
Kevin Pho, MD
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How patient satisfaction can kill
Patient satisfaction is all the rage. Medicare is beginning to tie patient satisfaction scores with hospital reimbursement, and doctors across the country...
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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....
Physician
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The analogy between baseball hierarchy and medical systems
From age six through high school, I played baseball. Playing baseball ended, rather abruptly it seemed, when I went to college, but...
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Saving patients from Internet health information
Lately, I get the feeling that I’m doing something wrong. I’m supposed to form a partnership with my patients. My patients are...
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Understanding what patient centered care really means
There was nothing the professor despised more then the syrup that oozed out of his partner's lips when dealing with patients. He...
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A letter of thanks to my organ donor
I have tried to write a letter of thanks but don't know what to say or even how to begin. I don't...
Patient
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Why patient engagement is reciprocal
It is said that "turn around is fair play." So if providers (physicians, hospitals and other health care professionals) expect patients to...
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Question the price of drugs and medical procedures
Hypertension was the trigger that forced medical cost awareness to the forefront. My doctor decided that with my rise in blood pressure...
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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...
Policy
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America has a medical care system not a health care system
As Americans we believe we have the best healthcare system in the world. But think again, it’s really not the truth. We...
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Reading between the lines of breast cancer treatment studies
Between the Susan G. Komen-Planned Parenthood debate and the study on treatments released by the Journal of the American Medical Association recently,...
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Why are labor and deliveries closing?
Labor and deliveries are slowly closing across the United States: California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. In regional areas where there have been no...
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America has a health care paradox
We have a real paradox in American healthcare. On the one hand we have exceptionally well educated and well trained providers who...
Tech
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Why physicians don’t want patients to have their cardiac device data
There is a groundswell of discussion concerning patients demanding to have direct access to data derived from their implantable defibrillators and pacemakers....
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Impersonal communication on the Internet fuels cyberbullying
In the old days, bullying used to consist of name calling or physical aggression from someone in a position of power over...
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Health IT and doctors: A framework for successful partnerships
We are on the front lines of the healthcare revolution along side our patients and our colleagues in technology. We have firsthand...
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Break out of the prison of the American health care delivery system
Speaker after speaker at the recent Care Innovations Summit in Washington, DC concluded that increasing the quality and decreasing the per-capita cost...
Social Media
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Why doctors should embrace Google+
Lots of pressure out there for you to be on Facebook and Twitter, right? The ultimate question, though, is how are you...
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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...
