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An Obesity-Causing Virus?

Finally, the answer to the obesity epidemic. [According to the LA Times], it’s a virus:

New evidence indicates that children who are exposed to a virus called adenovirus-36 are more likely to be obese than those who are not exposed to it, and to be heavier than other obese kids who were not exposed to it, researchers said this week. The virus…is one of 10 bacteria and viruses that have been associated with a propensity for putting on plural poundage.

Maybe this explains why I and two of my sisters all became fat in the same year. Well, that — combined with the fact that we had just moved to a new neighborhood where there were no kids we knew to play outside with, and we started taking a bus to school instead of walking, and “Dark Shadows” had just started, leading us to spend every afternoon after school snacking in front of the TV. But I like to think it was a virus.

*This blog post was originally published at tbtam*

The Medical Profession: Is It Devolving?

I had lunch with a group of physicians recently, and along for the ride was a college student thinking of applying to medical school. When talking about the future, I suggested that the work of a physician 30 years from now will be hardly recognizable to today’s physician. Everybody disagreed and the student was confused. There was a lot of denial and myopic rationalization.

But I can’t blame them, really. Most of us see what’s immediately changing in our day-to-day work and the bigger picture gets lost. For most of us, the role of the physician is hard to see for anything other than it always has been. Most live and work as the self-determined independent care coordinator, reactively working to treat disease just as its been done for over a century. But change is happening around us. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

Nurses And Policemen, Rapid Response Teams, Useful Apps, And Photography

So who hasn’t heard about The Policeman vs. Nurse? A nurse was pulled over for speeding, told the policeman that she hoped he would never end up as her patient, and was subsequently fired when the policeman complained to the hospital she worked at.

Really? I have the utmost respect for the police of course, but put on some big boy undies and get over it. Should the nurse have made that comment? No. Not in front of him, at least. That was pretty dumb. But being fired for saying it is ridiculous in my opinion. Does that cop go complain to the pimp when the hooker he’s arresting makes a sassy comment? Nurse and Lawyer had a pretty good discussion about the whole situation.

Next up: Rapid Response Teams Sign of Poor Bed Management. Really? I think GruntDoc summed it up best in his tweet about it. The article states that rapid response teams (RRTs) are utilized due to overcrowding because sometimes patients aren’t placed in a unit that is appropriate for their needs. Therefore, their condition worsens and they need help. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*

The Next 10 Years In Medicine

Forbes magazine came up with a few lists describing what will happen in the next 10 years in different areas. Medicine is one of these:

We asked our staff and contributors to forecast some of the noteworthy events of the next 10 years, a vision of the coming decade sketched from real data, projections and facts whenever possible — though we’ve injected a dose of rigorous science fiction to fill the gaps.

  • 2012: Super-Tuberculosis
  • 2013: DNA Sequencing Pays
  • 2014: Big Pharma Implodes
  • 2015: First autism drug
  • 2016: First fatherless child using synthetic sperm
  • 2017: U.S. life expectancy declines for first time in a century. Doctors blame 55% obesity rate.
  • 2020: FDA approves autonomous robot surgery to remove tumors.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

New Self-Referral Disclosure Protocol Now In Effect

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services scrapped its old self-referral voluntary disclosure program in 2009 (it dated back to 1998, and was revisited in 2008), and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) mandated that it be replaced. Just like clockwork, on the deadline for its promulgation the OIG obliged, and the new Self-Referral Disclosure Protocol is now posted and effective.

The new protocol could be clearer and offer more comfort, but it doesn’t. Makes one pine for the old policy’s clarity: In the old days, voluntary disclosure bought you a discounted fine for Stark violations — not like the new protocol’s wishy-washy, maybe-we’ll-give-you-a-discount language. The new protocol also fails to help a provider seeking to disclose past wrongs voluntarily in dealing with the Federales on a number of fronts simultaneously (e.g., for false claims violations, anti-kickback violations, etc., all arising from the same set of facts). We can perhaps blame Congress for that failure, rather than the OIG — the OIG is just implementing the statute as written.

Keep your eyes peeled for some tinkering on this front as the OIG gains some experience working under the new regime.

*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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