KevinMD posts of the week, ending January 9, 2011

Here are the top posts from this past week, based on the number of times they were viewed.

1. Is more primary care really better? Proponents of health reform have long claimed that one of the biggest problems with our health care system is an overemphasis on expensive specialists and an underemphasis on primary care physicians.

2. Permanent makeup risks and dangers. Permanent makeup—aka micropigmentation, dermal pigmentation, permanent cosmetics, cosmetic tattooing—has gained steady popularity in recent years.

3. Your 10 minute office visit needs 8 people and 45 minutes of work. The practice, the patients and the overseers of healthcare want each visit to be non-rationed, safe, high-quality, error-free, holistic, pleasant, clean, accurate, efficient and reimbursable. It’s what we all want. And it ain’t cheap.

4. Nursing turf divisions affect patients in the hospital. I think it’s sad that we’re prone to assume that turf divisions between different nursing units are immutable facts of life. They’re arbitrary, and we can ignore them if we want. Your patient is my patient, too.

5. Doctors can reduce malpractice by being better people. You would hope that this message – that being better people, even more than being better doctors, would reduce malpractice suits – would be an easy one to implement.