My home state of New Hampshire is considering a medical malpractice bill which provides an "early offer" to patients injured by medical mistakes. My column supporting the measure was published in this morning's Nashua Telegraph: NH patients deserve ‘early offer’ in malpractice cases.
Under the proposal, injured patients have the option of an early settlement with ...
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And progressives should want health reform to fail.
No, you read that right.
Counter-intuitive? Let me explain. As the fate of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance in the Supreme Court, both progressive and conservative pundits have been working overtime to discern the future of health reform.
The traditional thinking is that progressives direly want health reform to move forward, ...
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The following column was published on March 26, 2012 in CNN.
With the Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of the President Obama's health care law, more patients than ever have been asking for my thoughts about health reform.
I practice primary care in southern New Hampshire near the Massachusetts border, which gives me a firsthand look at how health reform has impacted my neighboring state. Despite flaws ...
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In a bid to save money, health insurers are coming out with what's known as "focused networks," which typically exclude the highest cost hospitals.
In the Boston area, one such plan comes from health insurer Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, whose plan excludes Partner's Health Care institutions. That's significant, since Partners includes the famed Massachusetts General Hospital as well as ...
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The Patient Centered Medical Home is supposed to be the solution to our primary care woes.
Endorsed by both the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians, this new model of primary care creates a team-based approach to patient care, with a cadre of care managers and nurses assisting physicians to manage patients with chronic disease. ...
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A recent study from Health Affairs has been generating some buzz, as well as passionate rebuttals.
According to the study, doctors who used electronic medical records actually ordered more tests, compared to those who used paper records.
There was a 40% increase in ordering imaging tests, a number that increased to a whopping 70% when it came to advanced tests, ...
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A version of this op-ed was published on January 17, 2012 in USA Today.
Ask doctors about what concerns them the most, and chances are they'll say, "medical malpractice." Indeed, most physicians will be sued sometime during their careers. A recent New England Journal of Medicine study found that 75% of doctors who practice psychiatry, pediatrics or family medicine will ...
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Patient satisfaction is all the rage.
Medicare is beginning to tie patient satisfaction scores with hospital reimbursement, and doctors across the country are under pressure from administrative executives to raise patient satisfaction scores.
High scores are even used by hospitals as a powerful marketing tool.
But, in the end, are patient satisfaction scores hurting patients?
I wrote about the issue previously, saying that
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Ovarian cancer screening clearly touches a nerve.
No one doubts that ovarian cancer is a devastating diagnosis, often found when the disease is at an advanced stage. Tests to look for the disease, such as the transvaginal ultrasound or the CA-125 blood test, are not specific enough. That leads to false positive tests that necessitate more studies that may not ...
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According to a recent study from the Archives of Internal Medicine, primary care physicians are referring more patients to specialists than ever before. In fact, the rate almost doubled in the 10-year period between 1999 and 2009.
This drives up the cost of care, as specialist consults tend to be more expensive than primary care visits. Furthermore, specialists tend ...
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