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 ...
March 2010
All Stories
Teaching patient safety starts in medical school
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
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.
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
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
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 ...
Typographical x-rays that look real
Look closely, and tell me what these "x-rays" consist of.
Find more at Katerina Orlikova's Anatomy of Typography series. (via Street Anatomy)
My health reform opinion in AOL News
Thanks to AOL News for publishing my latest opinion piece, Reform's Great, But We Need More Doctors.
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
Originally published in MedPage Todayby John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today ReporterWhen 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
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
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
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
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. 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
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 ...
Health blog posts of the week, March 19-26, 2010
Here are the top posts from this past week, based on the number of times they were viewed.1. Health reform should make conservatives very happy2. VBAC should not be a woman’s right3. Futile care has human and financial costs4. Pelvic exam simulators do medical students a disservice5. Healthcare reform is an achievement but isn’t perfect
Jargon dominates medicine and how doctors verbalize nouns
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
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
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
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
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
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 ...
Kevin Pho, MD
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Why Priscilla Chan may become the country’s most influential doctor
Who has the potential to be the most influential physician of our generation? It's Priscilla Chan, who not only recently graduated from...
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Confused about prostate cancer screening? Make a shared decision
In a widely anticipated move, the USPSTF officially recommended against prostate cancer screening in healthy men. Case closed, right? Hardly. The prostate...
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When it comes to doctors and social media, hospitals fail miserably
When it comes to medicine and social media, much of the attention is negative. Doctors losing their hospital privileges because of Facebook....
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Warren Buffett’s prostate cancer choices aren’t right for every man
A version of this column was published on April 24, 2012 in USA Today. There has been a recent uptick of elderly men...
Physician
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Why test recalls should not be considered cheating
I was appalled recently by the coverage of radiology “test recalls” by CNN, amplified by Dr. Gary Becker of the American Board...
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Why physicians are susceptible to hardball tactics
I was invited to a medical staff leadership conference sponsored by our hospital. A company specializing in training physician leaders ran the...
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How we deliver bad news is critical to how families deal with grief
As a cardiac electrophysiologist, I have had to discuss bad news with patients and families more times than I would like during...
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His father’s suffering had already been too great
He looked dead. The paramedics brought him down the hall toward one of my critical care beds, and for a moment I...
Patient
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How death can be a beautiful experience
I was honored to be part of a beautiful experience in late January of 2011. It was the death of my mother-in-law...
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What meaningful encouragement can be given to someone who is dying?
Theirs is a lonely journey; to be moving towards the separation and end of all things known and loved. Being with a...
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Health care journalists have tendencies similar to those of doctors
As a patient who was asked to speak at the Association of Health Care Journalists 2012 conference, I felt a bit covert....
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Adaptation can be painful, but it can also be a gift
Nothing will force you to live life on your own terms faster than almost losing it. In 2008, I was on fire....
Policy
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What should America’s health care vision be?
America has this paradox of excellent biomedical science, innovative drug manufacturers and entrepreneurial device developers along with outstanding providers but at the...
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Hospitals around the world aim to remain relevant to patients
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..." So begins a story called A Tale of Two...
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Repairing the tear in health care’s safety net with social media
The nation’s “safety net” hospitals are designed to ensure that uninsured, lower income and indigent populations receive adequate medical care – a...
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Look to technology to reduce health costs
Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but...
Tech
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When patient care becomes secondary to filling out the medical record
The policeman was two cars in front of me. I meandered down the road cautiously adjusting my speed a few ticks above...
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Doctors, use Google to get more patients in less than 7 minutes
Every month, hundreds of thousands of people look for a doctor on Google. As an amazing practitioner, your site deserves to be...
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The user interface for EHRs should be uniform
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the physician’s office were the tall cabinets filled with manila folders, tabbed with...
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EMR liability needs to go further than just the physician
This example of a disaster waiting to happen, in the form of an error-promoting CPOE, is a poster example of why the...
Social Media
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We need to see the potential harm of social media
Prior to 1794, farms across the world could only pick cotton as fast as humanly possible. In the late 18th century, Eli Whitney...
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Why social media may not be worth it for doctors
Social media in healthcare is all the rage these days. You can’t visit even one physician-oriented website without someone breathlessly advising you...
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Transparency defines social media success for doctors
Want to understand social media? Physicians wanting to learn about social media must learn transparency. We must learn transparency on a personal...
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How Twitter was used in a potential mass casualty scenario
It was my first ER shift in charge of the resuscitation area. Needless to say, my adrenaline and nerves were firing like...
