by Graham Walker, MD
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel Fish was a fish you stuck in your ear that allowed you to understand any language spoken to you. We’re not far off.
Google recently released a new version of their (free!) Google Translate app for Android phones, featuring conversation mode, which allows you to have a back and forth …
Using Google Translate in medicine
by Ted Bacharach, MD
The physicians as a group have been accused of many things. We have been blamed for the high cost of medical care, the depersonalization of physicians and the discontinuity of medical care.
If there was any situation in which we have performed exceptionally well but not been realized by the public, it …
How the medical profession advanced women’s rights
by Christina Palmer
It never surprised me when my medical school classmates said they would “never do family medicine.”
I knew exactly how they felt: why would we choose to go into a field where physicians are undervalued, underpaid, buried under administrative paperwork, and where patients do not get the time or attention that they need?
Despite the warnings against it, I am pursuing family medicine as …
Family medicine is the kind of revolution we want to join
A vaccination policy statement released by the American Academy of Pediatrics has already drawn fire from a number of anti-vaccine groups, specifically for its endorsement of vaccination against HPV infection in boys.
First, let’s examine exactly what the AAP added to its guidelines regarding the HPV4 and HPV2 vaccines: “HPV4 may be administered in a 3-dose series …
Myths about the HPV vaccine for boys
An excerpt from Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, A Psychiatrist’s Own Story.
by Loren A. Olson, MD
I once cared for an aging lesbian who began to have memory problems.
She went to a neurologist who said bluntly, “Get your affairs in order. You have Alzheimer’s disease.” My patient was confused, devastated, and depressed. She asked a companion to accompany her on her return visit. This time the neurologist said, …
Isolated gay people and support from the LGBT community
Patient privacy and social media use in health care often go together when reported in mainstream media.
When physician blogs were a relatively new phenomenon several years ago, the majority of the media coverage focused on edge cases, where doctors inadvertently revealed patient information.
Only a minority of the headlines focused on the positive aspects, such as how …
Doctor reprimanded after patient privacy breached on Facebook, my take
The new healthcare reform law appears to be using the idea of improved quality to justify the enormous expense of changing the way care is delivered in the United States.
As a justification for the need for change is the reporting currently being touted as a great measure of quality. This information is gathered in many different ways and …
When quality of care becomes customer satisfaction demands
As America comes to grips with the disastrous effects of a national obesity epidemic, there’s a new feeling in the air: defeatism.
Former Carter Administration advisor Amitai Etzioni seemed to succumb to it when he wrote an article entitled “dieting gets you nowhere” for CNN recently.
In it, the liberal sociologist citied a recent nutritional study …
How obesity is a voluntary epidemic, and why we shouldn’t give up
Good primary care physicians are becoming harder and harder to find.
You may not have noticed it yet, but I predict that a year from now we’ll find it almost impossible to find primary care doctors who are willing to take on new patients – at least any primary care doctor worth seeing won’t be …
Smart patients need to establish a relationship with a primary care doctor
I’m often asked how healthcare reform will impact IT planning and implementation over the next few years.
First, some background. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590) and Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HR 4872) were passed to address several problems with healthcare in the US. We’re spending 17% of our …
Top IT implications of healthcare reform
Recently, 47 American medical specialty societies sent Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) a letter, with copies to all members of Congress, containing a detailed defense of the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC).
For 20 years, the RUC has exclusively advised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on physician procedure valuation …
Can the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) be defended?
When applying to medical school, the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) asks aspiring physicians if they would like to be considered “disadvantaged” applicants or not.
Many premedical students find themselves troubled by this question and wonder, what does it mean to be disadvantaged? How does being a disadvantaged applicant affect my medical school application? According to the information American Association of …
Does being a disadvantaged applicant affect my medical school application?
Beth wrote, “I plan on having my daughter vaccinated against HPV when she’s the right age (which is what by the way?). Recently, some friends were saying they were planning to have their sons receive the vaccine as well because although males obviously don’t get cervical cancer, they can spread HPV and put their future partners …
Should the HPV vaccine be given to boys?
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Two articles recently highlighted two very different areas of medicine that are quickly colliding and pointing to a new direction for health delivery.
The first, published in the Wall Street Journal, discusses the steady rise of personalized health records through companies like Google, Microsoft, and WebMD. The second, published in USA Today, examines genetic tests and the disconnect between what is available and what physicians understand about …
Personalized health records and genomic tests for patients
Paul Grundy is IBM’s Director of Healthcare, Technology and Strategic Initiatives for IBM’s Global Well Being Services and Health Benefits.
He has led the development of the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, which is leading the way to create a more efficient and responsive healthcare system. Before I go any further, let me be very clear by saying that his work is hugely important and I agree with 90% of what this …
Patient centered care and the family physician’s brain
Having a picky eater seems to be the norm these days. I’d almost dare to say that children between the ages of 2-7 more often than not wind up in the picky eater category.
Why the sharp jump in membership of The Picky Eaters Club during this time? Researchers believe it could be evolutionary. That way young “cave toddlers” wouldn’t walk around tasting every potentially dangerous thing in sight. Can you imagine?
Still, there …
Your child is a picky eater, and what to do about it
I took my eye off the ball for just a little while, and guess what happened? When I looked again, I discovered that familiar solo practitioner or small group physician medical practices are on the verge of disappearing. Going the way of the dinosaur.
At least, that’s what the pundits are saying.
In a recently published nifty newsletter, STAT Monthly, I read:
Primary care physicians and other specialists will continue to be the …
To sell your practice or not: The decision facing most physicians today
by W. Gregory Feero, MD, PhD
Articles in several major journals (Nature, Science, etc.) have noted that genomics research has entered an era of data measured in petabytes.
For readers who are not used to thinking on the scale of Avogadro’s number, peta refers to a number with 15 zeros tagging along. A petabyte is a lot of data—think 250,000 four-gigabyte thumb drives. Now, are you ready …
Data overload and the pace of genomic science
“See me, feel me.”
Yes, that’s right, the title of a song played at Woodstock by The Who—at sunrise of the third day, no less—is the title of my post. The song begins with those very words sung in dramatic refrain, followed by four more: Touch Me/Heal Me.
The same four imperatives succinctly describe the essence of what patients want from their doctors. But in the age of the EHR (Read more…
How an EMR emotionally disengages physicians from their patients
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 63-year-old woman is evaluated during a follow-up visit for a 4-week history of fatigue; pain in the proximal interphalangeal joints, knees, and hips; and low-grade fever.
She has not had joint swelling, chest pain, or shortness of breath. Over the past 4 years, she has …
MKSAP: 63-year-old woman with a 4 week history of fatigue
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