As the new year starts, I'm eager for a fresh start and working on improving myself both physically and emotionally. I'm also eager for the NFL playoffs and seeing how my favorite team, the New England Patriots, fares under the leadership of Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Doctors and health care can learn much from their examples.Over the past decade, the New England Patriots have been dominant ...
Davis Liu, MD
How Steve Jobs mentored a physician and changed health care
I've been reading A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring written by famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. Wooden spends half of his book thanking the people who had a powerful influence on his life, coaching, philosophy, and outlook on life. Important people included his father, coaches, President Abraham Lincoln, and Mother Theresa.Yes, President Abraham Lincoln and Mother ...
Doctors with great bedside manner can also provide great clinical care
The New York Times recently published an article titled, Finding a Quality Doctor, Dr. Danielle Ofri an internist at NYU, laments how she was unable to perform as well as expected in the areas of patient care as it related to diabetes. From a New England Journal of Medicine article, Dr. Ofri notes that her report card showed the following - 33% of patients with diabetes have glycated hemoglobin ...
Doctors can help patients make informed decisions and prevent overtreatment
There are many tips to saving money on medical costs like asking your doctor only for generic medications, choosing an insurance plan with a high deductible and lower monthly premiums, going to an urgent care or retail clinic rather than the emergency room, and getting prescriptions mailed rather than go to a pharmacy.How about getting your old medical records and having them reviewed by a primary care doctor? It ...
Consumer driven health care will only shift costs if implemented poorly
The creation of consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs), health insurance policies with high deductibles linked to a savings option and with more financial responsibility shouldered by patients and employees and less by employers, was completely inevitable.The American public likes to have everything, whether consumer electronics or other services, as cheap as possible. With escalating health care expenses rising far more rapidly than wages or inflation, it's not surprising employers ...
The future of primary care in Accountable Care Organizations
A recent blog post in Health Affairs proclaimed The End of Internal Medicine As We Know It. What the article is really asking is the future of primary care in the world of health care reform and the creation of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).While doctors should be naturally concerned about change, I don't completely agree with this ...
Why this doctor loves electronic medical records
A recent post in the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog noted that a study found electronic medical records don't improve outpatient quality. The authors of the Archives of Internal Medicine article, Electronic Health Records and Clinical Decision Support Systems, correctly points out that we should be skeptical and "doubt [the] argument that the use of EHRs is a "magic bullet" for health care quality improvement, as some advocates ...
Is The Empowered Patient too adversarial?
I understand the frustration and anger in CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen’s new book, The Empowered Patient. I agree that all of the horrible patient stories should have never occurred. As a practicing primary care doctor who has witnessed near misses and bad medical outcomes affect family members, I too wrote a book encouraging patients to be informed and engaged about their care.The problem is that The Empowered ...
Americans will need doctors but physicians are leaving primary care
Everyone understands the need for a robust primary care workforce in making healthcare more affordable and accessible while keeping those in our care healthy. With the aging of America and healthcare reform, even more Americans will need primary care doctors at precisely the same time doctors are leaving the specialty in droves and medical students shun the career choice. So as a practicing primary care doctor, I've watched with ...
Patients will skip care with higher deductibles and copays
The Wall Street Journal reported that overall medical use fell as patients had fewer doctor office visits, lab testing, and maintenance medications possibly due to the recession or as a result of consumer driven healthcare in the way of higher deductibles and copays.This is very worrisome. Certainly patients should have some financial responsibility for their care, but skimping on care will only result in Americans not becoming healthier, but sicker. ...
