Health policy and public health

4,357 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 95

Natural disasters in a time of telemedicine

September 8, 2017Sep 8, 2017

My significant other is a physician working in Houston, and he missed Hurricane Harvey over the weekend, being out of town for a conference. The hospital sent out an S.O.S. asking faculty to do their best to come in. As the Houston airports continued to be closed Monday and Tuesday, he and his colleague, also a physician and a native of Houston, flew to another airport and drove a few …

Medical education

A cancer survivor embraces the light of going to medical school

Shekinah N. Elmore, MD

September 8, 2017Sep 8, 2017

This article was originally presented as student remarks at the 2015 Harvard Medical School commencement. At the end of medical school, I always return to a musing, a zen koan of sorts from Dean Jeffrey Flier. At my white coat…

This article was originally presented as student remarks at the 2015 Harvard Medical School commencement.

At the end of medical school, I always return to a musing, a zen koan of sorts from Dean Jeffrey Flier. At my white coat ceremony, a close friend and current resident, Dr. Nina Gold was chatting with the dean about the heft of our newly bestowed bright white coats. He asked her, in one beautiful …

Physician finance

For a long, happy career, be more than just a doctor

Passive Income, MD

September 7, 2017Sep 7, 20177

“You’re a doctor; focus on being a doctor.” This piece of advice was recently given to me by my own father, in regards to my multiple ambitions outside of the medical field. He himself only recently retired from a long…

“You’re a doctor; focus on being a doctor.”

This piece of advice was recently given to me by my own father, in regards to my multiple ambitions outside of the medical field. He himself only recently retired from a long career as a surgeon, so his opinion is the result of years of experience.

His advice got me thinking.

What makes for career longevity in our field? Statistics show that more than half …

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Health policy

Co-production of care: A different kind of health care than we’re used to

Laura C. Leviton, PhD & Sylvester Jones

September 7, 2017Sep 7, 2017

More than anything, Willie needed a place to pee. Elaine needed help walking. Willie is homeless; Elaine is affluent. They both needed someone to listen to them and help them find solutions to their most pressing everyday challenges. That’s called…

More than anything, Willie needed a place to pee.

Elaine needed help walking.

Willie is homeless; Elaine is affluent. They both needed someone to listen to them and help them find solutions to their most pressing everyday challenges. That’s called “co-production of care.”

When Willie found out he had congestive heart failure, his doctor put him on beta blockers with diuretics.

The medications made Willie feel better, but there was one problem: Because of …

Physician voices

Medical device companies will soon face hard audits

Peter F. Nichol, MD, PhD

September 5, 2017Sep 5, 20172

Approximately 18 months ago, I was asked to serve as the surgical director for operating room (OR) services at our children’s hospital. The opportunity has been an eye-opening experience in understanding how a hospital functions. ORs are like the economic…

ORs are like the economic engine room in a large ocean-going vessel. Without them functioning optimally, the boat stops moving, and is batted about by of waves economic disruption. If surgical admissions drop below a certain …

Health policy

Don’t call it universal without including abortion coverage

Vidya Visvabharathy

September 4, 2017Sep 4, 201740

As Sen. Bernie Sanders prepares to introduce a universal health care bill in the next few weeks, many progressives who support a universal single-payer program worry about its effects on abortion access. Can we win Medicare-for-all while protecting hard-won reproductive rights? As a woman of color, a reproductive rights advocate, and graduate student of public health, I recognize the importance for marginalized groups to stand in solidarity for …

Health policy

A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America

W. Ryan Neuhofel, DO, MPH

September 4, 2017Sep 4, 20172

An executive summary of "A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America." The political theater over health care reform has quieted after yet another ugly show. A productive dialogue about big ideas seems impossible in our hyper-partisan climate.…

An executive summary of “A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America.”

The political theater over health care reform has quieted after yet another ugly show. A productive dialogue about big ideas seems impossible in our hyper-partisan climate. No matter which party holds power, any significant proposal is quickly met with fierce opposition from a variety of political and business interests.

So, for many decades, America has …

Physician voices

The plight of mid-sized emergency departments

Edwin Leap, MD

September 3, 2017Sep 3, 20174

I know, I know, I spend way too much time ranting about work in the emergency department. But after some recent shifts, my box of rants is full once more. And what I want to point out is the enormous…

I know this is a problem; I work in them, and I know and talk with people who work in them. It’s …

Physician voices

The fine line between do no harm and do nothing

Amy Fan, MD

September 2, 2017Sep 2, 2017

On a particularly sultry day in a hospital of the Peruvian Amazon, I found myself with the task of telling a group of parents that their babies, who had been waiting in the hallways for days without eating in preparation for surgery, would not be able to have their cleft lip and palate fixed. We, a group of American doctors and medical staff offering this procedure free of charge to …

Health policy

The moral hazard of health insurance

John Corsino, DPT

September 1, 2017Sep 1, 201710

I took a great continuing education course recently, and had an opportunity to review some useful skills and fascinating cases. Because health care knowledge areas expand more quickly than most and keeping current is an integral part of doing these…

The cost seemed unreasonable, but I was only superficially interested in that anyway; like most, I’m fortunate that my employer offers a generous …

Read more…

The moral hazard of health insurance

Physician voices

The parable of the pizza shop

Emily Dalton, MD

September 1, 2017Sep 1, 20173

One day a man decided to open a pizza shop. The first week he sold pizzas and collected money from his customers; the happy customers ate hot pizza, and the man made some money. The next week many of his…

One day a man decided to open a pizza shop. The first week he sold pizzas and collected money from his customers; the happy customers ate hot pizza, and the man made some money.

The next week many of his customers who came in had pizza insurance, and had already paid Blue Wall Insurance for their pizzas. Since so many of his customers had purchased pizza insurance, the man signed a …

Read more…

The parable of the pizza shop

Health policy

Health care stole the American dream. But it’s absolutely possible to take it back.

Dave Chase

September 1, 2017Sep 1, 2017

An excerpt from the CEO's Guide to Restoring the American Dream: How to deliver world class healthcare to your employees at half the cost. I often think about a question that should make us all step back a bit. Why…

An excerpt from the CEO’s Guide to Restoring the American Dream: How to deliver world class healthcare to your employees at half the cost.

I often think about a question that should make us all step back a bit. Why are millennials—the largest American generation in history—the first generation to think life won’t be better for them than their …

Physician voices

Patients and doctors need one another now more than ever

Catherine Cheng, MD

September 1, 2017Sep 1, 20173

To the patients concerned about the future of health care: We need one another now more than ever. In April last year, I started this blog to help patients and physicians connect in an increasingly disconnected health care system. Both…

To the patients concerned about the future of health care:

We need one another now more than ever.

In April last year, I started this blog to help patients and physicians connect in an increasingly disconnected health care system. Both patients and physicians feel bound and invaded from multiple directions, all interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. We all suffer for it.

It occurs to me that many of you may …

Health policy

The effect of rescinding DACA on immigrant communities

Isha M. Di Bartolo, MD

August 31, 2017Aug 31, 20175

Despite assurances over the course of his presidency that undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents would be protected by this administration, President Trump has announced recently that he is considering ending the deferred action for childhood…

DACA was announced by former President Obama in August 2012 as an initiative providing individuals who came to the United States as children and who meet certain other …

Conditions and diseases

Anti-vaccination beliefs don’t follow the usual conservative and liberal lines

Charles McCoy, PhD

August 31, 2017Aug 31, 20173

When health officials learned that the 2015 measles outbreak was caused by clusters of unvaccinated children, Americans once more wanted to understand why some parents do not vaccinate their children. In our highly polarized culture, media commentators and even academics…

So a question arises: Who is more likely to be opposed to vaccination, liberals or conservatives? As …

Health policy

The Big Short in health care: What happens after the bubble bursts

Suneel Dhand, MD

August 30, 2017Aug 30, 20172

Last week a physician friend recommended watching the movie the Big Short. The description given to me was that it was a great movie that was all about a bunch of guys who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. Sure…

And it sure didn’t disappoint. Starring Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell, Christian Bale, and …

Physician voices

9 reasons the “golden age of medicine” was golden

Thomas D. Guastavino, MD

August 29, 2017Aug 29, 201780

To listen to all those desperate to reform health care, you get the impression that physicians are pretty horrible people. We are all sexist, greedy, money grubbing tyrants who will perform unnecessary tests and procedures just to make money. We don’t care about quality or cost. We are killing off 250,000 patients every year with our ignored “errors.” We purposely keep our patients in pain, or we addict them to …

Conditions and diseases

The mythical unicorn of vaccine denialists

Christopher Johnson, MD

August 28, 2017Aug 28, 20177

I swiped this editorial cartoon by Steve Sack from the redoubtable Dr. David Gorski’s blog, who goes by the nom-de-web of Orac. Recent epidemiology shows reducing the fraction of vaccinated children in the population rather promptly leads to a resurgence…

Epidemiologists debate the concept around …

Physician voices

Physicians: Use your voice to make the difference

Vineet Arora, MD

August 28, 2017Aug 28, 20172

Recently, there have been many times when you may have gotten a news alert on your phone or checked the latest Twitter hashtag and wanted to scream. Or you were too busy to even check until later that day and did not know what to say other than to lurk and watch a train wreck in progress. You may have thought about saying something, but paused and wondered, “Is this …

Health policy

Fix the pay imbalance between specialists and primary care physicians

Zachary Janowski

August 27, 2017Aug 27, 201711

Reformers have expended considerable effort to change the way Medicare buys health care for millions of Americans, finding a wide range of support across the political spectrum. But Medicare’s current structure may doom these reforms. Some primary care doctors fear that the skewed incentives in Medicare’s pricing system will get built into any new system, whether it is “accountable,” “affordable,” or “value-based.” This fear is well-founded. If special interests buy …

Health policy and public health

Articles, page 95

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