They don’t make protocols for patients like me

Physician
December 11, 2011

The instruments were indicating to the two co-pilots at the controls of the Airbus that they needed to pull back on the stick.

They held back on the stick for 54 seconds.

This is the position they were in when the Air France jet plunged into the cold water of the Atlantic killing everyone on board.

The fix?

Recognizing that a protocol or guideline might be giving them wrong instructions, seeing that there …

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They don’t make protocols for patients like me

Are our privacy rules robust enough to protect our patients?

Tech
August 12, 2011

Ok, imagine this.

You take a video of your little girl’s soccer practice with your iPhone. Within moments it’s posted on YouTube for the grandparents to see.

Minutes later search engines called spiders begin to crawl across the data set of images on your upload. Face recognition technology identifies a face on the video and, with some assistance from the geo-tagging of the built in GPS metadata that accompanied the upload, …

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Are our privacy rules robust enough to protect our patients?

End of life care requires individual family decisions

Physician
May 21, 2011

When anyone brings up the idea of end of life care, you are thrown a political football. Yet, the failure to have these discussions with your loved ones creates an expensive and emotional mess.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been sitting at a table with friends and this issue has surfaced with almost unanimous consent: they all want to …

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End of life care requires individual family decisions

Is Medicare the biggest challenge to seeing the doctor of your choice?

Policy
March 8, 2011

Medicare was touted as the social entitlement program that would forever change health care access for our seniors.

But is it becoming the biggest challenge to seeing the doctor of your choice?

For the first time in the almost 50 years of the program more and more Medicare recipients are facing the challenge of finding a doctor who will take their government sponsored insurance.

Sure, there have recently been …

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Is Medicare the biggest challenge to seeing the doctor of your choice?

Will health care melt down, like the mortgage industry?

Policy
January 6, 2011

Clearly, one issue dominated the election this past fall: the economy, and more specifically the lack of jobs.

So I would like to pose a few questions and ideas on just how government actually performs in creating economic growth and in kick starting job growth. I don’t necessarily have the answers, but I’m real good at asking questions.

Did government assisted mortgages help the economy? …

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Will health care melt down, like the mortgage industry?

Will the new Congress allow the physician Medicare cuts to pass?

Policy
November 10, 2010

Well it’s that time of year again.

No, not Thanksgiving or Christmas, or even the venerable Interim Meeting of the AMA. It’s the time that physicians nationwide anticipate another mandatory cut in Medicare reimbursement rates.

This time the recurrent temporary fix will result in a cut of 23.6 percent on December 1st. Assuming political gridlock the rate will fall another fraction of 6.5 percent on …

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Will the new Congress allow the physician Medicare cuts to pass?