Felasfa Wodajo, MD has written a post for iMedicalApps on the iPad’s future role in healthcare institutions. The title says it all: Why Locked Android Tablets Will Beat the iPad for Hospital Use.
The gist of his argument is that Android’s “openness” and hardware-agnosticism will make it more ubiquitous in the market in general, and a more robust and …
Will an Android or iPad platform dominate hospitals?
Private practices are organized in a corporate model where the physicians are shareholders, or where one or more physicians own the practice and employ other physicians or providers. Private practices are almost exclusively for-profit. Physician practices are organized into corporations for the tax benefits as well as protecting the owners from liability judgments.
Hospitals can be for-profit, not-for-profit …
Pros and cons of private or hospital owned practice
Lying on the backboard, a frail little old lady moaned with discomfort.
She had fallen beside her bed in the nursing home and was then tightly bound by straps onto the backboard, a cervical collar pushing her chin up and holding her immobile. A person not familiar with modern medicine might think the ensemble looked like a torture device. Indeed, it can …
Why confused, weak elderly patients are subjected to aggressive care
by Mariana Perroni, MD
The following post was written on February 27, 2010, while working as a volunteer in a field hospital in Haiti. It was called Love a Child Recovery Center and it was run by us (Albert Einstein Hospital – São Paulo – Brazil), Harvard Medical School and University of Chicago Medical School.
We …
The power of music at a hospital in Haiti
by Rima Rudd, ScD
We take the written word for granted.
Signs and billboards are everywhere – offering directional information, alerts, warnings, and advertisements. Streets, public squares, buildings, agencies, and institutions are numbered and named. We are surrounded by the written word in public locations and within public and private institutions. Individual entrances and even elevators in some large buildings carry names. The lobby, the inside …
Navigating any health care facility requires sophisticated literacy skills
“Code Blue ICU … Code Blue ICU”
I was greeted by the PA system as I walked into the hospital this morning. A shiver ran down my spine as I quickened my pace. The days of running to codes are long gone. But since I have a patient In the ICU I was curious and just a little bit worried.
As I walked through the sliding doors I passed the room full …
How real life medicine is less glamorous than residency
One aspect of religious dogma that has entered the medical world is that fee-for-service pricing of medical services is bad and should be replaced by a capitated, or global, arrangement that establishes an annual budget for care for different risk groups of patients.
Like other religious beliefs, this is often offered without rigorous analytic support. Some insurance companies are particularly pleased …
The problem with global, or capitated, payments to doctors and hospitals
Our society thrives on tension and competition.
Ideas, like sports teams, compete to win. We are the referees of these contests. Many of these competitions in the public square are ongoing. Some of these duels are locked in a dead heat. Others are in overtime. Some are ‘challenge matches’ when a vanquished idea wants another shot to change the original outcome. …
Honored to care for many priests and nuns in my practice
Bullying is a problem within health care.
Stung by a physician’s rebuke, Theresa Brown, an oncology nurse, takes to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to address the issue.
In it, she cites several vignettes that paint doctors poorly:
But while most doctors clearly respect their colleagues on the nursing staff, every nurse knows at least one, if not …
Theresa Brown unfairly blames doctors for hospital bullying
We all like lists. US News & World Report has told us for years which colleges are considered the top in the nation. Castle Connolly tells us which are the “Top Doctors” in our community and Car & Driver gives us a ranking of cars by type.
In The Order of Things, Malcolm Gladwell pokes serious holes in some of our most revered rankings and lists.
If …
Best hospital lists influence consumer decision making
Until recently, I had but the vaguest idea of what hospice and palliative care and medicine (hpm) entailed.
Until tuning into the #hpm Twitter group – hospice and palliative medicine – both words conjured a gloomy atmosphere of despair, grief, anger, pain en route to dying. I wondered at those working in the field: they must be a bit weird.
I now know differently, …
The mission of the hospice and palliative care is to ease patient suffering
Kimberly Hiatt was a pediatric critical care nurse who accidentally gave an infant a fatal overdose of calcium chloride last year.
By accounts, it was a calculation error. A human mistake.
After the incident, the hospital fired her.
This past April, she took her own life.
Although it cannot be concluded that the tragedy was directly responsible for her suicide, the incident clearly …
Should nurses be fired for fatal medication errors?
by Justin Chang, MD
I think we can all agree — physician, payer, provider, patient, etc. — that the ultimate goal of regulations and reform should be to improve the delivery of healthcare, lowering costs and ultimately, making patients healthier and more satisfied.
Coupled with driving toward the results defined by CMS, this requires some fairly significant changes …
How the ACO model can be successful
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Sam was late and Ella was furious. “Now why isn’t that man back by now? He knows it’s time to leave for church.”
The hours began to pass and Ella became frightened. Sam had gone out for his usual two mile run and had simply disappeared. Ella called friends and neighbors but no one had seen him. Panic began to set in so Ella called 911 who connected her to the …
How a patient’s organs could live on and be life saving to a recipient
I just finished another 2 weeks on service. This time, I had also had a shadower, but one of a different kind. As part of our Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Open School, we are making an effort to have collaborative learning opportunities for our medicine and health administration program students. Achieving true interprofessional learning is challenging for schools like ours without …
Social workers can reduce preventable readmissions
There was a time when Herb was living the American dream in the sunny state of California. He was married with 2 children, a big house in the suburbs, a golden Labrador retriever, and a well-paying job as an executive in a book publishing company.
His two sons were stellar athletes and students, both moving on to attend nationally ranked colleges upon graduation from high school. They were the pride and joy …
Alcohol does not discriminate when it destroys the human body
In Today’s Hospitalist, Jeremy Graham, DO discusses implications of research he’s published about hospitalists and costs: How much is that bed on the ward? Hospitalists are clueless about patient charges.
Not surprisingly, hospitalists, like almost everyone in the hospital, have no idea what anything costs.
That’s no real shock, as Graham points out:
It’s often hard for hospitalists to know these charges, …
Should a hospitalist be given more information on hospital costs?
Harold was 51 years old and needed his left arm amputated. A year ago he noticed some swelling in his forearm and went to his primary care doctor.
An MRI showed something. It was small and hard to define, hard to categorize, probably a collection of blood, but there was an outside chance it could be a sarcoma, a tumor originating from muscle …
Arm amputation from a rare sarcoma
I recall with fondness many meetings in 1996-98, when the hospitalist field was still in its infancy. We had invented a new medical specialty, and our gatherings were vibrant and purposeful.
We were determined to remake the healthcare system, learn from each other’s triumphs and disasters, and chart a course that would improve the care of hospitalized patients. These were heady …
Specialty hospitalists joining forces with the generalist hospitalists
The new healthcare reform law appears to be using the idea of improved quality to justify the enormous expense of changing the way care is delivered in the United States.
As a justification for the need for change is the reporting currently being touted as a great measure of quality. This information is gathered in many different ways and …
When quality of care becomes customer satisfaction demands
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