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 …
How healthcare marketers can connect with patients
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, …
Social medicine and global health should be pre-med requirement
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 …
How an antidepressant can hurt your patient
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 …
Bathroom, lighting and flooring modifications that can save your life
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 …
A physician seeing the husband and wife together
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” …
Unintended consequences from healthcare reform
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 …
EMTALA and why this emergency physician is against it
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 …
Specialist and primary care pay per hour
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 …
Technology empowered direct pay primary care
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 …
Post traumatic stress disorder after the Haitian earthquake
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, …
How to command respect in any medical setting
Leaders often think about succession plans for their direct reports, but what about themselves?
What if I had a serious health problem or accident that impaired my ability to lead my IT organizations? Here’s my brief analysis.
Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center
My role at BIDMC is to document the strategies prioritized by our governance groups, ensure our organizational chart structure is optimized for executing the strategies, …
Senior leaders need to periodically reflect on their role
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
by John Tooker, MD, MBA, MACP
The campaigning for the mid-term elections reminds us once again of the state of civility – or lack of civility – in American politics. By civility, I mean showing regard for others. We are beset by campaign …
ACP: Doctors as leaders – the value of civility
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Magic bullets come and go in the world of health policy, but the accountable care organization (ACO) is likely to be a durable reform. Except for group practices like Geisinger, Harvard Vanguard, Kaiser Permanente, systems like the VA, and local communities in which independent practitioners have established cooperative collaborations, health care has been grotesquely uncoordinated in the U.S. ACOs speak to that structural lesion.
Title III of the Patient Protection and …
Will the accountable care organization (ACO) be a durable part of reform?
As a physician coach to doctor clients making the transition from clinical practice and seeking out new careers, I latched onto a recent article in the Los Angeles Times business section.
Titled “Revive your Resume” by Emily Hughey Quinn, it hints at the death of the traditional paper resume. In its place is the digital resume you create on sites such as LinkedIn and VisualCV.
Take special note – if you’re a …
Physicians need to consider a digital resume
At an Orlando meeting recently, Florida Medical Association (FMA) members fumed that their parent, the AMA, isn’t adequately representing Florida’s private practice doctors. After talk of secession and forming a new group, they settled for writing a stern letter urging the AMA to straighten up.
The FMA dustup began with a resolution written by Douglas Stevens MD, a Fort Myers cosmetic surgeon – you can’t make this stuff up – complaining …
Why the Florida Medical Association (FMA) is angry with the AMA
by Ali Khan, MD
“So, why didn’t I take the ROAD again?”
It’s a question that I regularly hear from many of my co-residents in internal medicine – and no, we’re not questioning our travel routes to the hospital.
We all know why we chose internal medicine: the intellectual challenges inherent in treating across organ systems, the excitement of primary scientific investigation and diagnosis and the like. As we …
Will a higher demand for generalist doctors save primary care?
Some of the toughest obstacles to EMR are the physician doubters.
These people say, “My charts are going to be on a computer. So what? All I know for sure is that it will take longer for me to finish my charts every day and we will have another component in fixed overhead. Why this is a good idea?”
The concerns are valid. When my practice chose to get EMR 6 years …
EMR ROI depends on workflow improvements
by W. Gregory Feero, MD, PhD
Recent high-profile articles in the lay press have criticized the lack of immediately tangible health benefits from genomics research investment.
Expectations for immediate clinical benefit from genomic discovery, fueled by both scientists and the media, have outstripped even the blistering pace of genomic discovery. The gap between discovery and application is particularly notable in general medical practice, where only a …
Few health benefits from genomic discovery
In downtown Los Angeles recently, two very different celebrations went on within walking distance of each other.
On West Temple Street, at the beautiful and contemporary Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels—a structure with no right angles in its adobe-colored walls—Catholic Mass was offered throughout the morning, in both English and Spanish. Five blocks south, at the stunningly refurbished Millennium Biltmore Hotel on Grand Avenue, the Council for Secular Humanism, …
Religious coping in dying patients
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