Health policy and public health

4,357 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 80

Will Atul Gawande succeed as a health care CEO?

July 5, 2018Jul 5, 201820

When news broke that Dr. Atul Gawande had been named CEO of the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan Chase health care partnership, industry insiders were quick to raise doubts about his credentials. Some pointed to his limited administrative experience, questioning how someone who has…

When news broke that Dr. Atul Gawande had been named CEO of the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan Chase health care partnership, industry insiders were quick to raise doubts about his credentials.

Some pointed to his limited administrative experience, questioning how someone who has never managed a hospital or health system could oversee the care of some 1 million patient-employees. They also noted that the surgeon and bestselling author doesn’t know much …

Health policy

A physician’s personal experience with gun violence

Farah Karipineni, MD, MPH

July 2, 2018Jul 2, 201821

Like many of us, I have been struggling to reconcile my love for everything good about this country with the senseless gun violence that terrorizes us today. In the wake of each shooting, I vow to do more — to speak up as a surgeon, as a former victim of gun violence and simply as a fellow human — but the words escape me. How do we make meaning out …

Physician voices

A patient is left with a choice: financial devastation or blindness

Rob Lamberts, MD

June 29, 2018Jun 29, 201811

That statement from a recent patient was a summary to me of what is bad in our health care “system.” It’s a terrible summary of what is seen all over this country with people who must make the choice between…

Here’s what happened: It was a new patient I saw, who is a veteran who owns two businesses. He went out on his own when he “kept …

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Conditions and diseases

The risks of publically reported surgical outcomes

Skeptical Scalpel, MD

June 27, 2018Jun 27, 20187

"Some data is better than no data at all." Do you believe that? I heard it frequently when the infamous ProPublica's Surgeon Scorecard first appeared three years ago. Back then I blogged about it saying “To me, bad data is…

“Some data is better than no data at all.” Do you believe that?

I heard it frequently when the infamous ProPublica’s Surgeon Scorecard first appeared three years ago. Back then I blogged about it saying “To me, bad data is worse than no data at all.”

A recent study in BJU International confirmed my thoughts about this type of publicly posted data and identified a previously unreported issue. The paper attempted to …

Health policy

Separating children at the border is a danger to their health

Oscar J. Benavidez, MD

June 26, 2018Jun 26, 201819

Fair and just societies protect children. The Trump administration’s unconscionable practice of separating children from their families at the border between Mexico and the United States is making me rethink what kind of society I live in. The images and…

The images and the stories are heartbreaking.

In an effort to deter families from migrating to the United …

Health policy

Bullying immigrant children in the name of politics

Linda Girgis, MD

June 26, 2018Jun 26, 20183

We’ve all seen the news and heard the stories about children being separated from their parents as they cross over the U.S. border. The pictures of human beings, including very young children, behind wire mesh (some argue that they are not really cages) is simply horrifying. Over the past decades, we have seen atrocities happening in many other countries around the world. And we sit and wonder why the citizens …

Health policy

The biggest health care fix: a relentless focus on primary care

Suneel Dhand, MD

June 26, 2018Jun 26, 201821

There are so many theories out there about what we should or shouldn’t be doing with our complex and fragmented health care system. We are facing a perfect storm of factors: an aging population, a huge increase in chronic disease, new and expensive treatments, and rising expectations of what care we should be receiving. All of this is sending costs spiraling out of control. As a nation, we spend almost …

Physician voices

Confronting sexism in medicine

Christopher Johnson, MD

June 25, 2018Jun 25, 20186

The recent prominence of the #MeToo movement has shined a light at many places in our society where insidious or even obvious sexism against women has long gone unremarked. Even when noticed it’s just shrugged off as the way things are. In honor of this, #MeToo was named Person of the Year for 2017 by Time Magazine. Medicine is no exception to this pervasive problem. A very interesting recent essay in the New …

Read more…

Confronting sexism in medicine

Physician voices

Dear CVS: Please change your hold music

Steve Schlozman, MD

June 24, 2018Jun 24, 20183

Dear CVS, Please change your hold music. Please. Do the right thing. It’ll take you, or someone who works for you, or even a barely pubescent adolescent who nevertheless knows how to program music on his iPhone with more aplomb…

Dear CVS,

Please change your hold music.

Please. Do the right thing.

It’ll take you, or someone who works for you, or even a barely pubescent adolescent who nevertheless knows how to program music on his iPhone with more aplomb than anyone born before 1975, only about 48 seconds.

And 48 seconds is substantially less than the amount of time I have listened to your never-changing hold music.

I have researched the source of this …

Read more…

Dear CVS: Please change your hold music

Health policy

5 reasons to get involved in organized medicine

Frances Mei Hardin, MD

June 24, 2018Jun 24, 2018

The following are intended to inspire to medical students and residents to learn more about organized medicine. Whether it be at the national, state, county, or specialty level, there are numerous societies with opportunities for contribution. 1. To pull back…

1. To pull back the curtain. Many physicians are innately curious and like to “see how the sausage is made,” so to speak. There is a great deal of policy behind the scenes of our …

Health policy

Health care is making the classic mistake that many startups make

Praveen Suthrum

June 23, 2018Jun 23, 20182

Before managed care became the dominant force that it is, patients and doctors had the opportunity to get to know each other well. Doctors treated multiple generations within families. This helped establish a strong bond among patients and their doctors.…

While it might have intended to mean preventing expensive care, managed care began to mean organized care. Run by institutions such as health maintenance organizations.

Insurances began to decide which doctors you …

Physician voices

What happens to the health of children taken from their parents at the border?

Maria Perez-Johnson, DO

June 22, 2018Jun 22, 201821

It's a Sunday evening in a local South Texas emergency room with the expected ER traffic for a weekend evening. Lots of simple traumas: ankle sprains, abrasions, lacerations, falls, common URI symptoms, and fevers. The EMS radios in with a…

It’s a Sunday evening in a local South Texas emergency room with the expected ER traffic for a weekend evening. Lots of simple traumas: ankle sprains, abrasions, lacerations, falls, common URI symptoms, and fevers.

The EMS radios in with a call of a five-year-old male who has altered mental status. The patient is brought in around five minutes later and placed in an open emergency room. The patient is accompanied by …

Health policy

How our health system is like the Marvel supervillain Thanos

Tom Davis, MD

June 21, 2018Jun 21, 20189

You are a child of Thanos. "Hear me and rejoice!” “You have had the privilege of being saved by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. (Yeah, I know we said the same thing when we prescribed…

You are a child of Thanos.

“Hear me and rejoice!”

“You have had the privilege of being saved by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. (Yeah, I know we said the same thing when we prescribed low-fat diets to decrease the risk of heart disease, but you gotta give us a pass on that one.”)

“Based on our research, we have found 100,000,000 of you are ill.”

“But we can …

Physician voices

This is what dying poor in America looks like

DocG, MD

June 20, 2018Jun 20, 201832

Signing the divorce papers was probably Charlie’s lowest point. His wife sitting by his side, occasionally she would swat at the air at some invisible fly buzzing around the room. There was no fly. Just the acrid smell of the nursing home, a horrifying mix of sweat, shit, and desperation. He tried to focus his aged eyes on the legal papers as the tears swirled past his nose and losing traction, fell …

Conditions and diseases

Health misinformation in the news: Where does it start?

Joy Victory

June 20, 2018Jun 20, 20186

A new study confirms something we here at HealthNewsReview.org have been emphasizing for many years: Health news stories often overstate the evidence from a new study, inaccurately claiming that one thing causes another — as in drinking alcohol might help you live longer, facial exercises may keep your cheeks perky, and that diet soda might be a direct line to dementia.

The researchers looked at the 50 “most-shared academic articles and media articles covering them” in …

Health policy

A bipartisan solution for Medicaid work requirements

David Velasquez

June 20, 2018Jun 20, 20186

When I hear pundits going on about the Medicaid work requirements, I think of my father. He has worked in the United States for twenty-four years, taking on the role of a handyman, migrant farmer, truck driver, construction roofer, dialysis…

When I hear pundits going on about the Medicaid work requirements, I think of my father.

He has worked in the United States for twenty-four years, taking on the role of a handyman, migrant farmer, truck driver, construction roofer, dialysis patient transporter, and elder transporter. His limited English and third-grade education land him in low-paying jobs with limited hours and an oversupply of workers — resulting in frequent periods of unemployment.

For …

Health policy

The National Guideline Clearinghouse will go offline. Patients will be worse off.

Kenneth Lin, MD

June 19, 2018Jun 19, 2018

Absent a last-minute, lifesaving intervention, after 20 years of reviewing and summarizing clinical practice guidelines in a continuously updated database, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) will go offline on July 16th. Prior to its untimely death due to budget cuts, the NGC not only served as a one-of-a-kind online resource for clinicians, researchers, and educators, but raised the bar on guideline …

Drugs and prescribing

An innovative approach to fix the generic drug shortage

Christopher Johnson, MD

June 19, 2018Jun 19, 2018

Most physicians are increasingly forced to grapple with the problem of shortages in generic drugs. These are drugs for which the patent has expired and any company can make them. Certainly for those of us in the PICU it is a chronic problem because the majority of drugs we use are injectable medications that have been generic for many years. Hardly a week goes by I don’t receive a notification …

Health policy

It’s always easier to judge someone’s failures from higher ground

Michael Kirsch, MD

June 18, 2018Jun 18, 20182

We’ve all heard the excuse or explanation that "it’s society’s fault," to explain someone’s failure. We hear expressions like this often when an individual has committed a crime or simply failed to succeed. Personal accountability is diluted as we are…

We’ve all heard the excuse or explanation that “it’s society’s fault,” to explain someone’s failure. We hear expressions like this often when an individual has committed a crime or simply failed to succeed. Personal accountability is diluted as we are told that this person came from an imperfect home, had no role models or ample education.

These arguments are often wielded by those who have been favored with society’s blessings and …

Health policy

A physician was fired for standing up for his beliefs

Jamie Katuna

June 17, 2018Jun 17, 201824

Dr. Eugene Gu. He is -- was -- a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University. His resume exemplifies academic perfection: valedictorian in high school, undergraduate degree from Stanford, medical degree from Duke, surgical residency at Vanderbilt. He also founded his own…

Dr. Eugene Gu. He is — was — a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University. His resume exemplifies academic perfection: valedictorian in high school, undergraduate degree from Stanford, medical degree from Duke, surgical residency at Vanderbilt. He also founded his own research company. Not once throughout the span of his academic or professional career would one have any reason question his capability or competency. But several weeks ago Vanderbilt fired him, citing “performance” issues.

Why?

Because …

Health policy and public health

Articles, page 80

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