Exercise is good for you. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Stop smoking. Drink less alcohol. Such messages abound in public health campaigns and there is a firm belief that they will ultimately change behavior. This is based on the assumption that individuals are motivated to change behaviors to reduce their individual health risks.
While healthy individuals may understandably ignore such messages, one would certainly assume that people who already have conditions ...
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In the business of medicine, one of the brightest hopes is the potential for re-optimizing our spend around what patients want. That’s important because decades of research in the field of shared decision making have shown that when there’s a range of options to treat a condition, informed patients choose less spending and less invasive treatment.
That’s a good thing.
Unfortunately, the University of Chicago press release ...
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One reason is to apply an extra “facility fee” to patients’ bills.
Another reason is that primary care docs generate a ton of money for the hospital. A new survey was sent to hospital chief financial officers across the nation and based on data submitted by 102 facilities, it found that PCPs generate more annual revenue than specialists do.
PCPs (defined in the survey as family physicians, general internists, and pediatricians) generated a ...
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For most of our patients, the student run homeless clinic is the last stop in a long, fruitless search for healthcare in the city of New Orleans. Recently, an insulin-dependent diabetic came in who had his insulin pump stolen, an unfortunate side-effect of homelessness. The physician prescribed a 150 dollar-per-month supply of insulin—far out of our price range—not knowing how much insulin costs. This was in addition to a sixty-dollar ...
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A few months ago marked the 20th anniversary of the launch of evidence based medicine (EBM). Now seems a good time for a retrospective. After twenty years what does EBM mean? Where has it taken us? What are the distortions and unintended consequences? You might be surprised.
What I intend to do is start with a little of the history of EBM, talk about the essential notion as originally conceived by ...
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As a third-year med student, I was doing an ER shift when the call came through our dispatch: 56-year-old man, status epilepticus, being flown in from Yosemite, 10 minutes out. I watched the residents snap into a semi-ordered chaos. Ten crucial minutes. Prepping the trauma bay. Anticipating acute management, who was going to do it, half-tying the yellow paper gowns. Anyone who had looked tired didn’t anymore.
We raced in the ...
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During my ambulatory care rotation, I got the opportunity to tag along with my attending on a house call to a geriatric couple. The husband, “Joe,” had recently been in the hospital for severe respiratory illness. His wife, “Sally,” had recently fallen and broken her hip and was recovering from a hip replacement.
While my attending checked on Sally, he advised me to talk to Joe. We chatted a while about ...
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It is near impossible to escape the commanding news headlines: The horrific details that are emerging about the years of violent captivity of three women in a home in Ohio; The fifteen year old Californian teenager who was allegedly sexually assaulted by three boys and then committed suicide last September.
And, internationally, the tragic case of a 23 year old woman who was gang raped and beaten to ...
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You get to know people after a few days in paradise, sitting on lawn chairs in front of the pool. You talk about where you're from and your kids (if you have them). You might spout off about your job or friends. These are the pleasant conversations exchanged between vacationing strangers.
You may learn that one of them has taken ill: woken up perchance on a beautiful idyllic ...
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The Atlantic this week published a provocative article entitled “The Robot Will See You Now.” Using the supercomputer Watson as a starting point, the author explored the mind-bending possibilities of e-care. In this near future, so many aspects of medicine will be captured by automated technology that the magazine asked if “your doctor is becoming obsolete?”
The IT version of health includes continuous medical monitoring (i.e. your watch will ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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Past 6 Months
What I’ve learned from saving physicians from suicide
Pamela Wible, MD | PhysicianDear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today
Matthew Moeller, MD | PhysicianIf I’m wrong about guns, can you please explain why?
Claire McCarthy, MD | PhysicianIs Chris Christie too obese to run for president?
Jeffrey Parks, MD | PhysicianPrimary care doctors may no longer be needed
Doug Olson, MD | PhysicianWalgreens moves into primary care, and it’s our own damn fault
Kevin Pho, MD | Kevin's Take