Whenever I speak about social media, much of it has to do with Twitter. It has become part of my daily routine, much like checking email or going to news media sites. I will often check-in on Twitter and will respond to items of interest — whether or not tweets were sent directly to me. However, I am cognizant …
Twitter counts for this doctor. Read why.
The idea of starting over with computerized electronic health record (EHR) systems and doing them right as mentioned in a previous post has struck a resonant chord. Unfortunately designing an EHR that works may be a fantasy, due to one huge hurdle that would have to be overcome first. But it is fun to imagine an alternative universe where EHR systems were patient-centric instead of …
Dissociate EMRs from billing. Here’s how to do it.
Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation will recall that the most disturbing aliens encountered by the Federation were the Borg, a part-cyber, part human collective race that functioned as an integrated and cyber-connected whole that existed only for the good of the collective, rather than as distinct individuals with their own thoughts and personalities — much like honey bees work together as …
Assimilating independent physician practices: Is resistance futile?
You never know when something special is going to happen, as in one of those times when you just wish you had a camera rolling to capture a moment, a comment, a statement about the way the world is — and the way the world could be.
This past weekend my wife and I were attending a meeting in …
Quit smoking: It takes a community to spread the word
Ruth was problematic. Well into her seventies, her body may have dulled but her tongue was sharper than ever. And she used it to lash me with complaint after complaint. If it wasn’t her knees, it was her ankles. If it wasn’t her ankles, it was her hips. I battled the impossible month after month, year after year. Our interactions left a bitter taste in my mouth. Nothing makes a …
The lack of joy at the doctor’s office, and a reason why
Martin Seligman, PhD, in his book Authentic Happiness, references a colleague, Mike Csikszentmihalyi, when discussing the concept of “flow.” For Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, flow is that feeling one gets when fully engaged or “in the zone” with an activity during which the passage of time seems suspended. Often, the activity is aligned with one’s natural, signature strengths.
For me, flow comes when I’m mountain biking: There are moments without thoughts, it’s just …
How blogging relieved a physician from the daily grind
I don’t remember all of the details. It was the summer of 1990, sometime in the first 3 months of internship. I spent those months on the 11th floor of the VA Lakeside Medical Center (now the vacant lot just east of the hospital). The VA was familiar territory for me. I spent 3 months there as a third year student, also on the 11th Floor. 11 East, to be …
How I learned to be realistic and survive internship
An excerpt from The Spattered White Coat: Intense experiences which formed a young doctor.
I’ll never forget one of the first patients I interviewed. When I went to get him, I could see him sitting in the waiting room, looking around and scratching his arms repeatedly. He was a very large middle-aged black man from the neighborhood. He looked like he could have been a lineman for the Chicago Bears. …
Lesson learned: Not everyone is crazy
Over the past 5 to 10 years, hospitals and physician offices have been in a mad dash to implement electronic health records (EHRs) in order to meet governmental regulatory requirements. Now that most projects are either complete or well on their way, what are we doing with all of the data that EHRs promised to generate?
From my experience as a physician at a large academic medical center with one of …
Electronic medical records fail in data analytics
The best way to avoid the flu is spending the months from fall until spring in a solitary bunker, communicating with other people only electronically. The second best way is getting the flu vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the flu vaccine for everyone over 6 months who doesn’t have a specific contraindication to it.
Because of the increasing number of different flu vaccines that are now …
Which is the right flu vaccine for you?
The media has feasted on the recent release of data by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that details payments made by the pharmaceutical and device companies to hospitals and physicians in 2013. This was part of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (PPSA) — also known as section 6002 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010.
What the …
The Sunshine Act escalates the war on physicians
I had a recent conversation with an old friend about her elderly father that encapsulates a lot of what is both great and terribly wrong with health care in America today.
Here are the basic facts: the man is in his mid-80s, retired from teaching school, and is active and vigorous, living in the community; he is cognitively intact. He has a …
A case that illustrates the good, the bad and the ugly of American medicine
After listening to a lecture, third-year students at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine were surveyed about distractions by electronic devices and given a 12-question quiz. Although 65% of the students admitted to having been distracted by emails, Facebook, and/or texting during the lecture, distracted students had an average score of 9.85 correct compared to 10.444 students who said they weren’t distracted. The difference was not significant, p = 0.652.
In …
Do electronic devices distract students? Be careful with this study.
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If another case of Ebola emanates from the unfortunate Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the root cause analysts might mount their horses, the Six Sigma black belts will skydive and the safety champions will tunnel their way clandestinely to rendezvous at the sentinel place.
What might be their unique insights? What will be their prescriptions?
One never knows what pearls one will encounter from after-the-fact risk managers. I can imagine Caesar consulting a Sybil …
Ebola and the tension between bureaucracy and medical judgment
One catch phrase in health care reform is cost-effectiveness. To paraphrase, this label means that a medical treatment is worth the price. For example, influenza vaccine, or flu shot, is effective in reducing the risk of influenza infection. If the price of each vaccine were $1,000, it would still be medically effective, but it would no longer be cost-effective considering that over 100 million Americans need the vaccine.
Society could not …
Treating hepatitis C with Sovaldi: Is it worth it?
As I finish my post-operative care routine for my 9-day-old patient, I notice that the cerebral oximetry machine is not picking up a strong signal. Despite troubleshooting, I am unable to figure out how to fix the problem, and I head to the Pixus to get a new sensor. Unfortunately, this one does not work either, and we must use a smaller sensor to pick up an adequate signal on …
Nurses also have to confront to costs of care
Recently, my eldest son came home from college for a couple of days. Our home was in perfect harmony and rhythm. The duets (and quartets, if you count us parents) that had played over the prior month-and-a-half were once again trios and quintets. Five or six hands on the piano at a time. The clear brass joining in again with the bright woodwind and the deep bass. The voices in …
After a child leaves for college, the music changes
I believe we choose our parents before we are born. I hit the jackpot.
I picked an unlikely pair — a radical feminist and a guy named Ted Krouse. Mom wasn’t home much (she was finishing up her psychiatry residency) so I became head of the household. Dad always kowtowed to the strongest woman in the room. I was two at the …
Pamela Wible: A eulogy to her father
Did you know that your digestive tract contains over 400 different types of bacteria? This complex ecosystem is called intestinal microflora. The concentration of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract increases dramatically moving from the stomach towards the colon. In humans, the intestinal microflora is vital in many important functions including digestion of nutrients and prevention of infection. Disruption of the “normal flora” can lead to many problems including diarrhea, bloating, …
Should you give probiotics to your child?
Ebola is everywhere.
Turn on the television, and you will see the headlines. “Ebola in America.” Or, “Hospital worker who handled Ebola is on cruise.” And then there is the “Ebola fears prompt parents to keep children home from school.” The headlines go on.
Go onto Facebook or Twitter, and you will see Ebola as the most viewed article, or the most tweeted topic. Ebola is everywhere.
Ebola is incredibly infectious. Ebola is …
Ebola: The only thing you have to fear is the panic itself
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