Prior to President Obama’s address to Congress on health reform, I asked myself, “What would I tell the President?”
First and foremost: go for it. All of it. Health care in America is too important, both economically and morally, to be left adrift in its current state. Its focus is wrong. It costs too much. And not everyone who needs it is able to have it.
Two rules that have served me …
Advice for President Obama’s health care reform plan
by Charles W. Patterson, MD
Health care reform has long been one of my main interests and currently, it seems to be everyone else’s. The President said he thought a single-payer system would be best, but submitted a proposal he thought could be passed. The outcome is in doubt.
Actually, the single-payer system is the second best possible solution. The government would hold the money but would remain vulnerable to political manipulation, …
Why health care savings accounts should play a larger role in reform
by Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
In Wednesday’s address to Congress and the nation, President Barack Obama made a number of statements about healthcare reform, some involving issues that would directly affect medical practice. MedPage Today examined five of Obama’s statements to add context to the sound bytes.
The Statement:
“I don’t believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, …
An analysis of Barack Obama’s health care reform speech to Congress
The following is part of a series of original guest columns by the American Medical Association.
by Nancy H. Nielsen, MD
This year’s flu season promises to be different than in years past. With the potential of both seasonal and H1N1 influenza circulating this year, it is more critical than ever that health care professionals proactively talk to their patients about influenza.
Many patients will be confused about who needs the H1N1 …
AMA: How to prepare for seasonal and H1N1 influenza
by Jerry I. Meyers, Esq.
Communication is essential between health care providers but sometimes communication fails because of the arrogance or carelessness of the persons involved in the needed medical communication.
Several years ago, a female client about to enjoy an important anniversary was admitted to a University affiliated hospital for the purpose of having a colostomy wound debrided.
This was to be a one-day inpatient hospital procedure and was associated with little …
A patient dies after doctors fail to communicate in the operating room
by Nancy Walsh, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
Almost 3% of healthy, asymptomatic people who underwent MRI brain scans showed incidental abnormalities in a recent study, leading researchers to express concern about psychological and medical fallout from these increasingly popular screenings.
In meta-analysis of MRI brain scans, the prevalence of neoplastic incidental findings was 0.70% (95% CI 0.47 to 0.98), while the …
A routine brain MRI can lead to incidental findings
Long term care is a hot topic. When people talk about long term care, they are generally talking about nursing homes. Policy makers put a lot of attention on nursing homes because they cost so much money. About half of nursing home care is paid out of public dollars. In California, in the setting of our state budget fiasco, the high cost of nursing home care to the state has …
Family caregivers are the unsung heroes of our health system
by Todd Neale, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Overweight and obese children who received counseling from a family doctor did not lose more weight or get more exercise than youngsters who did not receive counseling, Melissa Wake, MD, of Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, and colleagues reported online in the British Medical Journal.
Because the screening and counseling are so expensive, …
Does counseling kids to lose weight and increase exercise work?
Here are words any patient awaiting cancer surgery would be thrilled to hear: “We are canceling your upcoming operation! It turns out that the suspicious changes we saw on your recent biopsy are completely benign.”
This happy turn of events happened in my life recently, thanks to a second opinion from a type of physician few patients realize plays a critical role in their care: the pathologist.
Pathologists are medical doctors who …
The value of a cancer diagnosis second opinion
by Chris Emery, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
Reductions in resident physician work-hours at teaching hospitals in 2003 were associated with an increase in complications related to surgery to repair hip fractures, a new study found.
The rates of pneumonia, hematoma, renal complications, and blood transfusions associated with hip surgery rose disproportionally at teaching hospitals compared to other hospitals after resident …
Do resident work-hour restrictions increase surgical complications?
by Robert Berry, MD
In his column, David Brooks of The New York Times effectively compares our rapidly rising health care costs to “a stampede of big ugly rhinos.” What he ignores, however, is the huge elephant in the room that is largely responsible for this rhino stampede – the tax preference for employer-based health insurance.
This tax preference – enjoyed primarily by employees of large businesses and government at …
Rising health care costs and the tax preference for employer-based health insurance
by Maya Sequeira
Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death in 1791 has long been a mystery, but a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that it was, of all things, a common strep infection that killed the maestro at the age of 35.
Researchers speculate that Mozart contracted the strep infection—easily treatable today—from a fellow musician who had been hospitalized at a crowded military hospital in Vienna. It’s not …
What Mozart can teach us about superbugs and antibiotic resistance
Before telling this story, I’m going to have to lay some background for my non-medical readers.
The most obscene word in English, in my opinion, has three letters and is an acronym. It’s tPA (it stands for Tissue Plasminogen Activator).
This drug gets a lot of press as a “clotbuster.” It has the potential to break down clots and reverse a stroke. That potential, however, has a dark side. By breaking down …
The drama of using tPA in stroke within the three-hour window
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The following is a sponsored guest post by Constantine Brocoum, a radiologist in Concord, NH. I have personally used eRoentgen, and recommend the product without reservation.
by Constantine Brocoum, MD
Like most inventions, eRoentgen was developed to respond to a need. As a practicing radiologist, I take frequent calls from primary care providers who need assistance in choosing the smartest way to diagnose their patients’ illnesses. They often need help …
eRoentgen for the iPhone puts a radiologist by your side
by Paula Hartman Cohen
My husband and I live in Massachusetts, a state that already has health care reform.
On April 12, 2006, our state legislature enacted a law requiring all residents to have health insurance.
They could buy it themselves, they could buy it from their employer through a group plan or, if their income was below a certain level, they could buy it from the state at a reduced rate. This …
10 things your insured patients need to know about health care reform
by Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
A news magazine’s rankings of top-rated hospitals for heart failure care did not include many hospitals that performed at least as well as the ranked centers, according to a comparison of the magazine’s list and government data.
Hospitals that made the U.S. News & World Report list had a better 30-day mortality than …
Does being on the America’s Best Hospitals list affect patient outcomes?
Much has been made of the superior performance – on both cost and quality – of integrated health care organizations like the Mayo and Geisinger Clinics. But since the defining characteristic of these standout systems is at least 50 years of integrated history, few believe that the rest of us – namely the docs and hospitals that provide the bulk of American health care – can quickly achieve such seamless …
How hospitalists can provide high quality patient care at the lowest possible cost
by Linda Lee, MD
Bob Hebert, in his column in The New York Times, recently wrote that, “Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. But we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation’s women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female.”
As a family physician I can …
The ultrasound that saved a baby girl’s life
As an outside observer of the American health reform debate, I cannot help but notice the disparity of views, the fractured arguments, the protectionism and desperation. My country is in a similar struggle for health care reform, with the main difference being America is a rich nation, and we are poor by comparison. In both debates, however, I have looked for the humanitarian argument, and in many cases found it …
What can health reform in the United States learn from Africa?
There once was a time when all food was organic and no pesticides were used. Health problems were treated with folk wisdom and natural remedies. There was no obesity, and people got lots of exercise. And in that time gone by, the average lifespan was … 35!
That’s right. For most of human existence, according to fossil and anthropological data, the average human lifespan was 35 years. As recently as 1900, …
Is alternative health a form of fundamentalism?
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