Doctors will soon be wagging the reform dog.Look at it this way. Expansion of insurance coverage to the 31 million more Americans, as envisioned in the current reform bill, will require more doctors to care for them. The starting entry of 78 million baby boomers in the Medicare pool, starting in 2011, will also take more doctors.As everybody knows, coverage does not equal access. This is most vividly illustrated in ...
March 2010
All Stories
Your metformin may smell like dead fish
Originally published in MedPage TodayAn immediate-release form of the antidiabetic agent metformin has a dead fish odor that may cause patients to stop taking the drug, clinicians warned.
Metformin is known to cause adverse gastrointestinal effects such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, flatulence, distention, and abdominal pain. Those side effects "often necessitate discontinuing the drug," a group of physicians and pharmacists ...
New primary care doctors are going cash only
Primary care's woes have been well documented, especially on this blog.Pressure on reimbursement, combined with rising bureaucratic impediments to the doctor-patient relationship, are both causing primary care physicians to retire early, or seek another career path.But what about on the other side of the spectrum, namely, newly graduated primary care doctors?Well, they're no dummies, as it's obvious to them how difficult it is to practice primary care in a traditional ...
Kevin Pho, MD
-
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...
-
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...
-
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....
-
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
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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
-
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...
-
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...
-
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....
-
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
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
