March 2010

All Stories

How doctors allow bias to affect patient care

by | in Physician | 3 responses

Part three of a series. See also parts one and two.Previously, I have suggested that patients should do their best to get their doctors as free from the influences of their biases as possible. In order to do that, patients (and doctors) need to recognize what forces are working against them.Here's what negatively influences a doctor’s decision making:1. They fall behind in clinic. Your doctor may be naturally ...

Becoming vegetarian can help fight high cholesterol

by | in Physician | 13 responses

I made a New Year’s resolution to become a vegetarian. Or a mostly vegetarian.I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but with young children who love meat and don’t have the broadest palates, I think it’s important to feed them protein any way I can get it in them.Having passed 40, I’ve finally realized that I can no longer eat what I want with impunity. Further, as a ...

Young doctors gathered around the beer machine

in Education | 20 responses

Originally published in MedPage Todayby Charles BankheadFrom time to time, I hear a "mature" person lament the sad state of affairs of the "next generation." Sometimes I wonder whether the same concern should apply to the next generation of doctors.Young doctors gathered around the beer machine I was at a cardiology meeting, and my schedule included a breakfast program. As I headed toward the meeting, I ...

Primary care doctors need financial independence

in Physician | 7 responses

I've often given doctors too little credit when it comes to business decisions.But, in an op-ed published at Reuters, physician Ford Vox argues otherwise.He notes that doctors, indeed, have tremendous business sense:

How can anybody say that doctors don’t have business sense, when not only do most American physicians forge their way in small private practices, but new doctors lay their cards on the table every year? The competitiveness of ...

C Diff and antibiotic resistance in kids

by | in Meds | 3 responses

A recent story from the UK reported a school child who developed diarrhea and tested positive for C difficile.The alarming thing is that there did not seem to be any explicit risk factors for this. The appalling thing is the mis-information by the story that, "children rarely become ill with C diff, which normally strikes elderly people in hospital."This is how things used to be, before the BI/NAP1/027 bug ...

Obesity treatment in family members should be contagious

by | in Patient | no responses

The Framingham Heart Study is perhaps the most famous long-term medical study. As every medical student learns, starting in 1948, the lifestyle habits of thousands of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts were followed to determine important risk factors for cardiovascular disease.It is because of this study that your physician can, with a few keystrokes, predict with great accuracy your risk of having a heart attack within the next 10 years ...

Hospitals can deliver low cost, high quality care

in Physician | no responses

Originally published in MedPage Todayby John Gever, MedPage Today Senior EditorMany hospitals that spend relatively little per patient deliver good-quality care, researchers said.Hospitals can deliver low cost, high quality care Medicare data indicated that hospitals in the highest quartile of per-patient cost for initial treatment of pneumonia or congestive heart failure (CHF) did not have markedly lower readmission or risk-adjusted mortality rates than hospitals in the lowest ...

Virtual colonoscopy and the message President Obama sent

in Conditions | 21 responses

President Obama had a well-publicized routine health exam last week.One of the more controversial issues was the virtual colonoscopy he received. It's been well covered here that virtual colonoscopy doesn't have the same diagnostic accuracy as a traditional colonoscopy, and in fact, is not covered by Medicare or most third party payers.With the President obtaining one, does that send out the wrong message?Of course, radiologists -- who stand ...

Free iPhone medical apps that every doctor can use

in Tech | 7 responses

by Iltifat Husain, Yousif Alkadhi, MD, and Satish MisraIf you’re a physician, medical student, or in any other health care related field, trying to find the best free medical apps for the iPhone is a hassle.Apps such as “Dream Meanings”, “Relax Ocean waves”, and “Stool Scanner Lite” dominate the Top Free Medical Apps list in the App Store. Our top 10 iPhone medical apps list contains no such ...

Health reform needs to end fee for service medicine

by | in Policy | 19 responses

As the health reform debate rages on, the central issue of how to improve care while reducing costs remains unaddressed.Fee-for-service has reduced doctors to assembly line pieceworkers, paid by the office visit and procedure rather than by effectiveness of treatment. The result is an inefficient, costly and dangerous system. It is not unusual for a five minute office visit, which excludes clinical examination or note taking. Many patients/consumers can be ...

Placebo effect ethics in medical treatment

in Conditions | one response

Originally published in MedPage Todayby John Gever, MedPage Today Senior EditorThe placebo effect is a real and therapeutic psychological phenomenon that, with more research, could be exploited more systematically in medical practice, said Australian researchers.Placebo effect ethics in medical treatment "There is not one placebo effect, but many," wrote Damien Finniss, MSc, of the University of Sydney in Australia, and colleagues in the Feb. 20 ...

Medical decision making is influenced by patients, lawsuits, and money

in Patient | 14 responses

Ideally, the medical decisions doctors make for their patients should be free of any outside influence.But for regular readers of this blog, we know that's not always the case.A 2010 HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey identifies some factors that may influence a physician's medical decision. Here are some of the results.Pressure from patients was a significant influence, with only 17.9% of doctors saying it wasn't a factor. Doctors ...

Quit smoking by using Facebook

by | in Social media | 3 responses

At 3am on Jan 1st 2010 my cousin-brother stubbed his last cigarette. New Year’s resolutions to quit smoking, lose weight, or change another bad habit are certainly not uncommon. Having tried — and failed — to quit a number of times before, my cousin took a bold, new approach to quitting. Whether a cleverly devised plan, or just a whim, he decided to post his quitting on Facebook.On January 4th, ...

Transgender patients face significant challenges in prison

by | in Patient | 11 responses

Imagine that as a child you thought you had been born in the body of the wrong gender. If you were biologically male, in your mind you really thought of yourself as female. Likewise, if you were born in a girl’s body, you thought that you were actually a boy.Yes, you were probably more interested in children’s role-playing games more often associated with the opposite gender as well, but the ...

The Danny Williams surgery shouldn’t be controversial

in Policy | 9 responses

Originally published in MedPage Todayby Michael SmithThe Danny Williams surgery shouldnt be controversial OK, don't take this the wrong way, but ....Chill. Relax. Give the other guy the benefit of the doubt. Don't jump to conclusions. And most of all, think before you speak, blog, natter, comment, or otherwise pontificate on issues of the day.And when I say 'think,' I don't mean trying to find the ...

HIMSS 2010 video and live interviews by Better Health

in Social media | no responses

Better Health bloggers Val Jones, Mike Sevilla, and Nick Genes will be conducting live interviews from HIMSS 2010 in Atlanta, the largest health IT conference of the year.Here's a summary of exclusive HIMSS 2010 social media coverage during the event.Stay tuned to this post, where video will stream live.id="utv896127" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="400" height="320" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">

Television medical experts are not all created equal

in Social media | 3 responses

Every television station has their own physician pundit commenting on medical news.But with some many different fields of medicine, how can a single physician claim to be an expert on every health topic?Surgeon Jeffrey Parks takes issue with ABC News' recent coverage on the tragic death of Senator John Murtha. Richard Bessler, a pediatrician who works at the CDC, was the on camera expert commenting on the surgical ...

Medicare slashes pay to doctors, and what that really means

by | in Policy | 23 responses

What we're learning from the 21% Medicare pay cut to physicians that occurred today:* There really must be a cost-control crisis with Medicare and the only politically-acceptable way to implement those cost controls are by cutting working physicians' payments.* There’s was widespread political support for blocking the scheduled pay cuts to doctors, but central government control moves very slowly. That's because doing so is expensive. For now, doctors have been ...

Bipolar disorder and how Rebecca Riley could have been saved

by | in Meds | no responses

Carolyn Riley’s act of giving her daughter Rebecca an overdose of prescribed medication may have been the immediate cause of Rebecca’s death, the conclusion reached by the jury that convicted her of murder.Even if, as the prosecutor argued, Carolyn and her husband concocted symptoms of mental illness and the psychiatrist, who diagnosed bipolar disorder, was a gullible enabler, the real guilty party in this story is, in my opinion, ...

Page 6 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