KevinMD.com

November 25, 2012Nov 25, 20125

To catch you up, I received short term disability payments through my employer over the summer. After an initial denial of my claim, I appealed the decision and eventually was approved based on a suspected diagnosis (and the pulling of strings of top executives in the company). With long term disability, I have not been so lucky. My initial claim was denied because they did not see sufficient evidence in …

Medical education

When comparing teaching hospitals, context matters

Joanne Conroy, MD

November 24, 2012Nov 24, 2012

The Dartmouth Atlas Project released a study on October 30, 2012, entitled, “What Kind of Physician Will You Be? Variation in Health Care and Its Importance for Residency Training.” The data, and the conclusions of the report’s authors, bear closer…

The data set focuses on the differences in the intensity of services that Medicare patients receive, and highlights the academic medical centers rated by U.S. News and World Report as …

Patient voices

What would your personal health checklist look like?

Alexandra Yperifanos & Barbara Bronson Gray, RN

November 24, 2012Nov 24, 20124

Think of a time when you’ve felt very sick, maybe a case of pneumonia, a bad bout of the flu, or a more serious illness. You probably didn’t feel much like “engaging” with people. That’s the term health advocates use…

Think of a time when you’ve felt very sick, maybe a case of pneumonia, a bad bout of the flu, or a more serious illness.

You probably didn’t feel much like “engaging” with people. That’s the term health advocates use to describe what patients need to do to be effective in managing their health care.

It’s very hard to act like the CEO of your own body when you’re unbelievably tired, or …

Real physician voices, twice a week

Free, and one click to unsubscribe.

Conditions and diseases

It is possible to both have and not have Alzheimer’s disease

Jason Karlawish, MD

November 24, 2012Nov 24, 2012

It is possible to both have and not have Alzheimer's disease. Contradictory as this statement is, a study reported from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) supports it. In a paper published in the October issue of the Annals of…

It is possible to both have and not have Alzheimer’s disease. Contradictory as this statement is, a study reported from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) supports it.

In a paper published in the October issue of the Annals of Neurology investigators reported the results of biomarker studies of 53 patients with dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease. They found a notable proportion of these patients lacked one of the signature pathologies: …

Health policy

What Groupon has to do with severe chest pain

Brian Manning

November 24, 2012Nov 24, 2012

It was unfortunate – but not very surprising – to see the news recently that Groupon laid off a portion of their 10,000 employees. If ever there was a predictable bubble, it was daily deals. But it was fun while…

It was unfortunate – but not very surprising – to see the news recently that Groupon laid off a portion of their 10,000 employees. If ever there was a predictable bubble, it was daily deals.

But it was fun while it lasted, and you can see why there was so much overinvestment in the space. Groupon’s pitch to merchants was to ask them to take a loss by making a super compelling offer …

Health policy

Why doctors need to care about price transparency

Kathy Nieder, MD

November 24, 2012Nov 24, 201213

As healthcare costs become a bigger and bigger chuck of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), price transparency is a subject that insurance companies and patients are talking about. The idea of knowing how much something costs, be it canned black beans in the grocery store or replacing the leaking faucet in your kitchen, seems obvious but it will be an uphill battle to enact change within the healthcare system.

The concept …

Physician voices

Society must come to a conclusion on how important human suffering is

Pinak S. Joshi

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 20122

The art and practice of medicine is built around lessening the suffering of our fellow man. The method of doing this however, has changed dramatically throughout human history. Western medicine had its beginnings in the restoring balance to the body that was not in sync with the environment. As scientific reasoning found its way into medical practice after the dark ages, the benefits of medicine quickly became a cornerstone of …

Patient voices

There are no small jobs in any organization

Karen Hickman

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 20122

I believe that when people are in a crisis situation small things can become magnified; good and bad, and especially in the healthcare field. A perceived small rudeness may just be the tipping point that causes a patient to leave a practice or go to another hospital. On the other hand, a smile, a kind word or gesture can impact someone more than you will ever know and leave a …

Physician voices

A spectrum of medical talent to solve the primary care shortage

Anthony Brenneman, PA-C

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 201215

We’ve all seen the data projecting a shortage of physicians in the United States, expected to reach a shortfall of more than 90,000 by 2020. The lack of nurses is equally well documented. These trends raise concern for all medical…

More and more Americans are expected to need these services in the coming years, at a time when fewer and fewer students are committing to …

Health technology

Why the VCs aren’t the bad guys

Halle Tecco & Malay Gandhi

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 20128

Venture capitalists (VCs) ... are a combination of professional gamblers and loan sharks. The secret to success is pure luck and ruthlessness, and when the combination works and the ball lands on the exact number on the spinning roulette, venture…

Venture capitalists (VCs) … are a combination of professional gamblers and loan sharks. The secret to success is pure luck and ruthlessness, and when the combination works and the ball lands on the exact number on the spinning roulette, venture capitalists make lots of money.
-Margalit Gur-Arie, via KevinMD.com

The tone of this article, Why venture capitalists shouldn’t try to solve health care, exemplifies what is wrong with healthcare. In …

Read more…

Why the VCs aren’t the bad guys

Health technology

We need a functional health information exchange

Allen L. Gee, MD, PhD

November 23, 2012Nov 23, 2012

Imagine this scenario: A CEO stands in front of the board at a crucial juncture in corporate history, and says: Members of the board, as you can see from the financial statements before you, we have had a reasonably good…

Imagine this scenario: A CEO stands in front of the board at a crucial juncture in corporate history, and says:

Members of the board, as you can see from the financial statements before you, we have had a reasonably good year. What!? You don’t have the financial statements in front of you? I have them here. I mean, I think I have them here. Where are they? Let me check with

…

Health technology

Without patient participation, there is no patient engagement

Mack Baniameri

November 22, 2012Nov 22, 20125

Healthcare innovation companies are just beginning to understand technology challenges that come with engaging patients with chronic diseases in care management and care transition. Many of healthcare IT vendors assumed that a simple access to portals with half-baked information and…

For the past twenty years, the HIT industry has focused on developing software solutions exclusively for healthcare providers. These companies …

Physician voices

How physician executives will drive value for hospitals

James Merritt & Michael N. Sills, MD

November 22, 2012Nov 22, 20128

“Value” is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that health care professionals everywhere are seeking, but which few can seem to find. Policy makers, hospital executives, physicians, consultants – all are looking for a means to…

“Value” is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that health care professionals everywhere are seeking, but which few can seem to find.

Policy makers, hospital executives, physicians, consultants – all are looking for a means to pivot away from a system that rewards volume of services provided to one that rewards quality and cost effectiveness (i.e., “value”).

How far we are from achieving this goal can be gauged …

Patient voices

How entertainment has altered our desire for diagnosis

Kevin R.R. Williams

November 22, 2012Nov 22, 20125

I remember, some years ago, sitting with a relative across a large wooden desk in a doctor's private office. We discussed symptoms for half an hour during an initial consultation. On a different occasion, I recall another doctor pinning an…

I remember, some years ago, sitting with a relative across a large wooden desk in a doctor’s private office. We discussed symptoms for half an hour during an initial consultation. On a different occasion, I recall another doctor pinning an MRI on the wall, circling an area and articulating exactly why the radiologist overlooked a diagnosis. There once was a doctor who stood bedside, outlining what was known, what was baffling and …

Conditions and diseases

A FAQ on the Lisfranc injury

Edward Pullen, MD

November 22, 2012Nov 22, 20122

Sports fans have heard a lot about football players with Lisfranc injuries recently. Maurice Drew-Jones, running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Santonio Holmes, receiver for the New York Jets, have been in the news. Matt Schuab, QB for the…

Many of you may know that a Lisfranc injury is a type of foot injury and that it can sometimes be very serious …

Read more…

A FAQ on the Lisfranc injury

Physician voices

More than half of my ER shift was spent on entering data

WhiteCoat, MD

November 21, 2012Nov 21, 20126

I work at several hospitals and each uses a different electronic medical record system. When I switch from hospital one to another, I obviously have my favorite EMR systems and my not so favorite EMR systems. In the previous post, I was using the EMPOWER charting system, which I liked for its simplicity, but disliked because of the layouts of the charting interface and some of the macros it contained.

After …

Conditions and diseases

How is fungal meningitis diagnosed and treated?

Manoj Jain, MD, MPH

November 21, 2012Nov 21, 2012

As the number of deaths from fungal meningitis mounts, many people want to know how fungal meningitis is diagnosed and treated. As an infectious disease doctor, it is routine for me to care for patients who come in the hospital…

As the number of deaths from fungal meningitis mounts, many people want to know how fungal meningitis is diagnosed and treated.

As an infectious disease doctor, it is routine for me to care for patients who come in the hospital with a fever. At first glance it is impossible to tell whether the patient has meningitis, pneumonia or a urine infection.

If a patient has headache, confusion or stiff neck along with …

Physician voices

Cancer makes you realize the gift of time

Don S. Dizon, MD

November 21, 2012Nov 21, 20128

When I was 16 my dad had a heart attack. I still recall studying in my room when my mom came in to tell me he wasn’t feeling well. At the time, I was a volunteer in the emergency room…

When I was 16 my dad had a heart attack. I still recall studying in my room when my mom came in to tell me he wasn’t feeling well. At the time, I was a volunteer in the emergency room at our local hospital, located in the tiny Pacific Island of Guam. I recall asking him what he was experiencing: …

Physician voices

Repeated story syndrome: Finding the right balance for patients

Ishani Ganguli, MD

November 21, 2012Nov 21, 20127

The other night, a patient gave me a piece of his mind. Mr. Q was a middle-aged man debilitated by days of nausea, vomiting and intractable belly pain. That morning, his wife finally convinced him to get medical attention and drove him to our emergency department. On arrival, he sat in a cubicle in the waiting room and explained his story to a triage doctor: how he was doing well …

Health policy

Enough with government interference in the patient-doctor relationship

Bob Doherty

November 21, 2012Nov 21, 2012

Worried about a government takeover of health care? You should be, but it isn’t the bureaucrats and politicians in Washington that you should be most concerned about. Instead, it is the growing propensity of state legislators to dictate to physicians…

Worried about a government takeover of health care?

You should be, but it isn’t the bureaucrats and politicians in Washington that you should be most concerned about. Instead, it is the growing propensity of state legislators to dictate to physicians what they can and can’t say to their patients, what tests they must provide, and what advice they must give to them—the patient’s wishes, the medical evidence, and the physician’s clinical …

Real physician voices, twice a week

The Podcast

Latest episodes

Most popular

The Podcast

Latest episodes

Most popular