The hidden costs of an inadequate bowel preparation for colonoscopy 

Conditions
January 6, 2015

Colonoscopy is the most effective test for the detection and prevention of colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. An estimated 14 million colonoscopies are performed in the United States every year. About 20 to 40 percent of these colonoscopies have inadequate bowel preparation according to multiple studies.

Inadequate bowel preparation is costly to the patient, the health care system, and society.

In one study, poor …

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The problem with home health care communication

Physician
January 6, 2015

Home health care is in many ways a fantastic service, especially for those Medicare beneficiaries who are essentially homebound due to frailty or illness.

But it often feels surprisingly hard to synergize with home health care.

The main problem, as I see it, is that home health care agencies have set themselves up to provide only administratively required communication with the ordering doc. (There are rules governing home health care, you know!)

Now, …

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The hardest and often worst part of medicine: The waiting

Conditions
January 5, 2015

My brother wears a scar around his neck. It represents his second surgery for papillary thyroid cancer. The first started off the same way. Ugly, red and angry. Curving like an ominous smile around his neck, like a noose. That’s how it felt too — the lump in his throat growing as he sat quietly, alone in a doctor’s office. It’s interesting how physical scars are a visual manifestation of …

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A prescription to treat polyprovider syndrome

Physician
January 4, 2015

In the United States, we train health care providers on poor people. This is no secret — most medical schools and residencies are in lower income areas. If you have Medicaid or no insurance, you are more likely to find care in an office or hospital where medical students, residents, nursing students, and other trainees rotate; Blue Cross patients don’t let interns watch their childbirth. Even though my residency emphasized …

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How the kind, humble physician met his demise

Physician
December 30, 2014

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There once was a kind, humble physician who worked for years in an office building across the street from the hospital, toiling day to day to take exceptional care of his patients.  He was open and deliberate, calm and thoughtful.  He himself hired every secretary and medical assistant, every nurse, and biller.  His staff formed a protective family who fiercely advocated …

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Dear HMO, I don’t want your money

Physician
December 24, 2014

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Dear HMO,

As I prepare to #getcovered or #staycovered, I realize that as a physician, I have an advantage in that I know what specific types of insurance plans would best fit my needs.  Unfortunately, this is not the case for many Americans.  Most importantly, I know to avoid signing up for certain health maintenance organizations (HMOs).  Although I am a strong …

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Should ACLS certification be mandatory?

Physician
December 22, 2014

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I can recall, though it seems quite long ago, my first basic life support (BLS) course as a first-year medical student. The instructor dutifully demonstrated on a mannequin to eager young medical students what to do if someone is found unresponsive. Shaking the unmoving mannequin she said loudly,  “Sir, are you OK?” Then hearing no response she showed us how to …

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A day in the life of a hospitalist

Physician
December 20, 2014

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I am a young hospitalist who is 16 months into my role at an urban academic medical center. Unlike many of my more senior colleagues who found their way to hospital medicine by circumstance, luck, or as a second career path, I have been planning my career in hospital medicine since the beginning of my residency training.

The things that drew me …

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Hospital credentialing is one giant mess

Physician
December 19, 2014

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Everyone wants to be sure their physician is competent and appropriately trained. The way this is done is through credentialing. A new applicant for privileges to practice at a hospital or other health care facility fills out an application and submits a curriculum vitae that details when and where a physician trained and the certifications obtained, such as specialty boards, and a work …

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Tongue cancer in an elderly patient: Thinking of my grandmother

Conditions
December 17, 2014

Old age is no place for sissies.
-Bette Davis

“I want the surgery today!” She started to cry. “I’m ninety-four years old. I’ll accept any risk. Just take this thing out!”

She looked back and forth between the anesthesiologist and me. Her golf-ball sized tongue cancer had been growing over the past six months. It wasn’t changing from day-to-day, but it had increased over the course of the three weeks since we had …

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How to introduce palliative care to patients

Physician
December 15, 2014

Did I tell you that I was a big fan of palliative care? Palliative care started around 15 years ago at the VA where I worked. We saw the service evolve. We saw how the palliative care approach improved the quality of both life and death.

Many physicians have not yet accepted or at least understood palliative care. Many physicians use some palliative care principles and believe palliative care is superfluous. …

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Medicine is complex, but doctoring is viewed as being simple

Physician
December 14, 2014

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
– Rudyard Kipling

Medicine has become a very complex, multifaceted science, ranging from pharmacogenetics to psychoneurobiology. Doctoring, however, is increasingly viewed as so simple that you don’t actually have to be a doctor to know how it should be done.

What else could explain why IT people tell doctors what “workflows” …

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A child psychiatrist: Whether I choose to be one or not

Physician
December 14, 2014

Dr. Kenneth Azar, a mentor of mine at the old Georgia Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, told me something once that has always stuck with me.

He told me that in the early years of his practice, when he was living and working out in Idaho, that he was one of a very small handful of psychiatrists who served the whole state. If an adult with psychosis needed to be …

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A doctor goes networking, and is horrified by what she finds

Physician
December 11, 2014

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I was invited to a “networking party.” I went. I was horrified by what transpired there. And disgusted. And felt blindsided. And angry. And blown away by the prevalence of what I couldn’t decide was greed, ignorance, or an unseemly combination of the two. And what magnified the intensity of my repulsion was the fact that a large proportion of the people involved have the …

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Health care’s future: An interview with a hospital CEO

Policy
December 10, 2014

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Not long ago I interviewed Dr. Todd Sorensen, the CEO of Regional West Medical Center, a 184-bed facility serving a large swath of rural western Nebraska. I’ve known Dr. Sorensen since junior high school, and we’ve kept in touch over the years to discuss the health care system from his perspective as a physician and administrator and mine as a health …

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