March 2010

All Stories

Twitter habits of pharmaceutical companies

by | in Social media | one response

As more and more pharmaceutical companies dip their toes into social media, one of the issues that surfaces regularly is this: do you put someONE in charge of a blog and/or Twitter account, or do you make it more anonymous? Or something else?I’ve always advocated that pharma companies should use social networks to humanize their companies, which means employing human faces and voices – having real, authentic, and effective communicators ...

Teaching patient safety starts in medical school

by | in Physician | 4 responses

Ten years after the release of the IOM report To Err is Human, which documented the toll taken by medical errors in this country, the question remains: What can be done to reverse the trend of ever-increasing morbidity and mortality due to medical errors?Last December, a look back over the decade since the release of To Err is Human -- and a steady medical error death rate of about ...

Sex habits of older women and men

in Patient | no responses

Originally published in MedPage Todayby Kristina Fiore, MedPage Today Staff WriterThirty-somethings can expect to enjoy at least another 30 years of sex, researchers have found.Sex habits of older women and men At age 30, men will be sexually active for another 35 years, while women will be active for another 30, Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, and Natalia Gavrilova, PhD, of the University of Chicago, reported online ...

ER overuse may be a myth

in Physician | 22 responses

Overuse of the emergency department is commonly discussed during the health care conversation. Especially with the lack of primary care access shunting patients with seemingly routine symptoms to the ER.But is this a myth?That's what two emergency physicians contend in a piece from Slate.The emergency department is functioning just fine, they say: "Just 12 percent of ER visits are not urgent. People also tend to think ER visits ...

Radiology tests, and how to find their price

in Conditions | 17 responses

by Leslie Ramirez, MDI am often asked how we get the prices for the radiology imaging tests, such as MRI's and mammograms, or ultrasounds. Most people assume that my day job as a doc gives me some sort of special access to this info. But that's just not the case. Anyone can find out testing prices.However, over the last year, those of us working at LesliesList.org have gotten ...

My health reform opinion in AOL News

in Physician | 62 responses

Thanks to AOL News for publishing my latest opinion piece, Reform's Great, But We Need More Doctors.My health reform opinion in AOL News I discuss how health reform's ultimate success or failure is largely dependent on whether our primary care system can accommodate the millions of newly insured patients:

... having health insurance doesn't necessarily mean it will be easy to find a doctor. Even before reform, ...

Drug companies are using community doctors for dinner talks

in Meds | 3 responses

Originally published in MedPage Todayby John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today ReporterDrug companies are using community doctors for dinner talksWhen looking for a doctor to travel the country to promote its prescription fish oil product, a leading pharmaceutical company looked to a small-town community doctor rather than an academic heavyweight.Its choice was a Delafield, Wis., primary care physician and clinical lipidologist who entered private practice in 2001.For speaking ...

Primary care is the loss leader of medicine

in Physician | 8 responses

Medicare's sustainable growth rate, or SGR, has been the bane of doctors for years now.To encapsulate, this is the reason for Medicare's annual threat to cut doctors' fees by 20% or more, only to be staved off at the last minute.Emergency physician Shadowfax has a nice take on it, explaining why it has devastated primary care:

Primary care has many fixed expenses in addition to those we bear: they pay ...

Oxycontin should be prescribed less often by doctors

by | in Meds | 18 responses

Oxycontin is an oral pain medication that contains the single active ingredient oxycodone. Oxycodone is one of the most potent of the oral opiates, and has more euphoric effect than many other opiate analgesics.Oxycontin is the most notorious prescription drug of abuse in the US, and for good reason. Though marketed as a sustained release medication, as much as 30% of the medication is absorbed immediately and the rest absorbed ...

Why healthcare may not embrace the iPad

in Tech | 3 responses

by Satish MisraThe excitement and hype surrounding the announcement of Apple’s iPad have subsided for the time being, perhaps just a lull prior to the actual release in a few months. It's expected that the iPad could make significant contributions to healthcare, such as potentially replacing the physician’s clipboard or medical textbooks.However, we did disagree at times on the extent to which the iPad could penetrate the healthcare market, for ...

Diet Coke and the AHA red dress endorsement

in Education | one response

Originally published in MedPage Todayby Peggy Peck, MedPage Today Executive EditorA red dress jauntily displayed on cans of Diet Coke has become the latest symbol in the ongoing debate about pharmaceutical company support of research or CME.Diet Coke and the AHA red dress endorsement But whose dress is it? The American Heart Association says it's "not our red dress," even as leading pharma critic Steven Nissen, MD, ...

Doctors are not the only ones to blame for unnecessary tests

in Policy | 15 responses

One of the points of contention in health care reform is whether it will do enough to control costs.Forget about the Congressional Budget Office's optimistic outlook, as it discounts the Medicare "doc fix," which, when factored in, will erase any supposed deficit reduction.Reform doesn't do very much to change the underlying structure of our health system, which continues to pay more for quantity of medical services, rather than shift ...

Jargon dominates medicine and how doctors verbalize nouns

by | in Physician | 8 responses

One of my interns was “running the list” with me last week (giving me a thumbnail update on the plans for each of our inpatients). It was standard stuff until he got to Ms. X, a 80ish-year-old woman admitted with urosepsis who was now ready for discharge. “I stopped her antibiotics, advanced her diet, called her daughter, and YoJo’ed her.”Say whaa?I’m pretty sure that the most valuable thing I’ve done ...

Death in a hospital is not always comfortable

by | in Physician | 9 responses

In America, too many people die in the hospital.I don’t mean that they die due to medical error or incompetence, though that’s always a hot topic of discussion amongst doctors, researchers, administrators, and regulators.What I mean is that if you ask most people, they say they’d rather die at home, surrounded by their loved ones, drifting off to sleep painlessly after having had last rites administered (feel free to plug ...

Patient questions during doctor visits are uncommon

by | in Patient | 6 responses

Ask your doctor. I think most of us would agree that is good advice, at least up to the point that we find ourselves sitting half naked on an exam table in our doctor’s office. Then the doctor walks in and for some reason many of us just “clam up.”Patient question-asking during the primary care office visit was and continues to be an “index” of patient health information ...

Guilt used in a positive manner can help with parenting

by | in Patient | one response

In my pediatric practice, it is not uncommon for a mother, given the time, to move quickly away from telling me about her child’s behavior problem, to talk about herself, sharing vivid stories of emotional distress from her own life. I may suggest that this distress could make it difficult for her to deal with the challenging behavior of her child.Rather than finding this statement helpful, she might collapse back ...

Primary care access isn’t guaranteed by health insurance

by | in Physician | 41 responses

An excellent article appeared recently in the Washington Post, entitled, "Having health insurance doesn't ensure it will be easy to find a doctor," where a young, otherwise healthy and insured woman discusses her extreme difficulty in finding a doctor in Washington, DC who will see her."I was just 23, basically healthy and, most important, insured. So I pulled out my computer, looked up the UnitedHealthcare list of pre-approved doctors ...

10 salt reducing tips that can lower your blood pressure

by | in Patient | one response

It’s hard for Cassandra Mathieu to describe her mother’s cooking without mentioning the salt shaker.“I remember my mother used to cook with seasoning salt, garlic salt, every kind of salt you can imagine,” she said recently. “We grew up on salt.”Cassandra grew up fixing food the same way, adding generous amounts of salt to dishes she prepared and to her food at the table. At age 42, she discovered her ...

Page 1 of 71234567

Kevin Pho, MD

See all in: Pho

Physician

See all in: Physician

Patient

See all in: Patient

Policy

See all in: Policy

Tech

See all in: Tech

Social Media

See all in: Social media

Meds

See all in: Meds

Conditions

See all in: Conditions

Education

See all in: Education