How health care could benefit if a company followed Apple

Health Technology
October 30, 2010

Health care workers throughout the country daily face the growing pains of the transition from paper charts to electronic medical systems. Not only are there frustrations within each system, every hospital seems to have selected a different EMR.  When I was a medical student at UCSD, I was exposed to 4 separate EMR’s (Epic, PCIS, CPRS, Centricity, etc) during my rotations at various San Diego hospitals.

In this Wild West era …

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How health care could benefit if a company followed Apple

If there’s a doctor on board, please ring your call button!

Patient
October 29, 2010

Well, it happened again. Recently, I was somewhere over Saskatchewan, returning from a lovely Mediterranean cruise, in that uncomfortable semi-conscious state that passes for sleep when you’re flying coach, when the airplane’s PA system rang out:

“If there’s a doctor on board, please ring your call button!”

If you’re old enough to remember the show “To Tell the Truth,” you know what happened next. In the show, four B-list celebrity …

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If there’s a doctor on board, please ring your call button!

10 things you need to know before surgery and during the hospital stay

Physician
October 29, 2010

by Winston F. Mitchell

I’m a 53 year-old male with no history of hypertension, no cholesterol problems and glucose count normal.

I was overweight but still in great physical shape. But over a period of weeks, walking to work, I started experiencing a shortness of breath.  Finally I went to my doctor, he informed me he was going to admit me to the hospital immediately because a …

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10 things you need to know before surgery and during the hospital stay

Deceptive marketing is widespread in health care

Health Policy
October 29, 2010

Recently, reports about deceptive marketing and other questionable practices used by the growing for-profit higher education industry in the US appeared in the news.  For example, per Bloomberg:

Recruiters at U.S. for-profit colleges lied to entice students and encouraged them to commit fraud to qualify for aid, a report by the Government Accountability Office found.

Recruiters at all 15 colleges studied by the GAO, Congress’s investigational arm, misled potential students about the …

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Deceptive marketing is widespread in health care

Physician email implementation inertia

Physician
October 29, 2010

by Jon Meyer

Looking at the industry response to the recent study released by the Center for Studying Health System Change, Physicians Slow to E-mail Routinely with Patients – Issue Brief No. 134, it appears that a piece of the puzzle is missing. Both the study, and the analysis, put the physician at the center of the email debate. In reality, about 30% of a medical practice’s communication is from the …

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Physician email implementation inertia

Why physicians should care about online reputation management

Social Media in Medicine
October 29, 2010

I am going to explain a bit about why physicians should care about online reputation management (ORM).

As the online world becomes more pervasive, reputations are increasingly built and managed on the Internet. Online Reputation Management is the process of monitoring, addressing or mitigating SERPs (search engine result pages) or mentions in online and …

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Why physicians should care about online reputation management

US News hospital rankings too subjective and encourage self-promotion

Physician
October 28, 2010

Every year US News & World Report publishes its rankings of the nation’s top 50 hospitals. Hospital administrators await this top 50 report with a tension and fervor that rivals the NFL first-draft pick.

As soon as the report is released, snippets rocket their way into donor appeals, local hospital signage, and highway billboards. “Ranked X by US News & World Report” becomes a descriptor that is supposed to …

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US News hospital rankings too subjective and encourage self-promotion

Comparative effectiveness research needs to be taught to doctors and patients

Physician
October 28, 2010

Oncology is the area where the health care cost conundrum is coming into sharpest focus. Theoretically, who wouldn’t spend whatever it takes to cure a life-threatening disease? And yet practically the costs of new treatments are so high, and the improvements usually modest enough, that when it comes right down to it costs are becoming a real issue for patients and doctors.

An interesting article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology …

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Comparative effectiveness research needs to be taught to doctors and patients

Sick doctors who work are doing more harm to their patients than good

KevinMD
October 28, 2010

Doctors: if you’re sick, don’t go to work.

The stereotype of doctors is that they go to work, despite whatever symptoms ail them. Calling in sick places strain on colleagues. Especially in residency, where team members are expected to pick up the slack.

In a recent column, the New York Times’ Pauline Chen discusses the image of self-sacrifice that a sick doctor going to work portrays:

Hacking, febrile or racked with the …

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Sick doctors who work are doing more harm to their patients than good

How healthcare marketers can connect with patients

Patient
October 28, 2010

by Daphne Swancutt

Call it a silly, useless curse. I get sucked in to trying to find patterns and connections anywhere I can. Most of them are silly and useless. Occasionally I find ones that actually make some sense, if only to me.

As a healthcare marketer who also geeks out on reform, genetics and the e-patient movement, I can’t help but try to wrap healthcare up into …

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How healthcare marketers can connect with patients

Social medicine and global health should be pre-med requirement

Medical Education
October 28, 2010

We’ve started taking a course called the “Introduction to Social Medicine and Global Health” headed up by Paul Farmer and David Jones. This is a course that exposes us to a variety of issues related to the social determinants of illness and health with a different lecturer each week. Recently, we had Nicholas Christakis, this week we have Allan Brandt, and for the next few weeks we’ll have Michael Porter, …

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Social medicine and global health should be pre-med requirement

How an antidepressant can hurt your patient

Medications
October 27, 2010

Patients want a quick fix. Society wants patients to have a quick fix, so that they can quickly return to their usual performance at work and home.

Patients still have shame about seeking help from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional. So they ask help for their depression from their primary care physician. The PCP feels an emotional pressure to provide the quick fix in that 15-minute appointment – the …

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How an antidepressant can hurt your patient

Bathroom, lighting and flooring modifications that can save your life

Patient
October 27, 2010

An excerpt from Treat Me, Not My Age: A Doctor’s Guide to Getting the Best Care as You or a Loved One Gets Older.

The bathroom: This is the most dangerous place in the home, what with hard surfaces, water that makes floors slippery, nothing but your birthday suit between you and the tile and tub, and, to top it all off, poor access to a telephone should …

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Bathroom, lighting and flooring modifications that can save your life

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A physician seeing the husband and wife together

Physician
October 27, 2010

As a medical provider, while seeing a husband and wife, or a couple, regardless of gender, one comes across several situations that  may be considered difficult to handle and that require a good deal of tact and confidentiality.

This is the case with seeing a husband and wife or (couple), together, for an examination. Ultimately, it depends on the rapport that the couple shares. If they …

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A physician seeing the husband and wife together

Unintended consequences from healthcare reform

Health Policy
October 27, 2010

In early October, the New York Times published two articles that addressed a pervasive problem from slightly different perspectives. Boiled down to its essence, the problem is the unintended consequences of some provisions of the new healthcare reform legislation.

In his well crafted article, entitled “Health Care’s Uneven Road to a New Era,” David Leonhardt explored the impact caused by the introduction of new regulations into a “status quo” system.

So-called “mini-med” …

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Unintended consequences from healthcare reform

EMTALA and why this emergency physician is against it

Physician
October 26, 2010

by 911Doc, MD

American medicine will die or be reborn in the next ten years. Correction, it will either continue an accelerated slide into banal mediocrity, or be reborn. The battle is finally joined, and it has been joined by the specialists. Thank you, doctors, for drawing the line in the sand. I hope you win. Honest.

I am cheering against my own college here because they have …

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EMTALA and why this emergency physician is against it

Specialist and primary care pay per hour

KevinMD
October 26, 2010

Authors of a recent study from the Archives of Internal Medicine are unlikely to endear themselves to specialists.

As reported by Reuters, and provocatively titled, Do specialist doctors make too much money?, the study gives a per-hour breakdown of how much doctors make.

I think this is a good approach, since annual salary figures do not account for the number of hours doctors work — and in the case of primary …

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Specialist and primary care pay per hour

Technology empowered direct pay primary care

Physician
October 26, 2010

by Anar Mikailov

By now it is common knowledge that primary care is an undesirable field for newly graduating medical students.

Additionally, many current primary care physicians are closing shop and either enter early retirement or seek non-clinical professions. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, the 2010 Residency Match showed that 1,184 U.S. medical grads chose Family Medicine, less than half of the available positions …

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Technology empowered direct pay primary care

Post traumatic stress disorder after the Haitian earthquake

Patient
October 25, 2010

In the months since the Haitian earthquake, psychologists from around the world have been traveling to the island, hoping to help a population in shock and at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Many are veterans of crises such as Hurricane Katrina, and have extensive experience responding to disasters.

But Dr. Guerda Nicolas, a Haitian-born researcher who has conducted landmark studies examining how Haitians experience depression and cope with disasters, has a …

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Post traumatic stress disorder after the Haitian earthquake

How to command respect in any medical setting

Patient
October 25, 2010

It’s a simple question, but it has stirred some controversy.  It’s the word “friendly.”

Colleague and fellow passionate advocate Bart Windrum got (as my mother would say) his blood in a bubble after reading an article about engaging a patient advocate to help you navigate your healthcare, published in a Tampa newspaper.

In a list of tips about how to advocate for someone else, one tip said, “In hospitals ask, …

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How to command respect in any medical setting

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