June 26th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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An article by Brian Klepper and Paul Fischer at Health Affairs has me all fired up. Finally these two health experts are calling it like it is. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and EverythingHealth have written before about the way primary care is undervalued and underpayed in this country and how it is harming the health and economics of the United States.
A secretive, specialist-dominated panel within the American Medical Association called the RUC has been valuing medical services for decades. They divvy up billions of Medicare and Medicaid dollars and all insurance payers base their reimbursement on these values also. The result has been gross overpayment of procedures and medical specialists and underpayment of doctors who practice primary care in internal medicine, family medicine and pediatrics). These payment inequities have led us to a shortage of these doctors and medical costs skyrocket as a result. As Uwe E. Reinhardt says, “Surely there is something absurd when a nation pays a primary care physician poorly relative to other specialists and then wrings its hands over a shortage of primary care physicians.”
Klepper, Fischer and author Kathleen Behan make a bold suggestion. Let’s quit complaining about the RUC and their flawed methodologies. Let’s quit admiring the problem of financial conflicts of interest and the primary care labor shortage. It’s time for the primary care specialty societies, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
June 26th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Health Tips, True Stories
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Hi! Greetings from Breckenridge, Colorado. At 10,000 feet, I am told it is the highest resort town in North America. The Rocky Mountain scenery is breathtaking. But there’s a problem for about one in four of us who visit here, especially people like me who live at sea level. We can get hit with high altitude sickness and a few days ago, I was one of the unlucky ones.
What happens is your body isn’t used to the thin air and your blood has difficulty getting enough oxygen to your body. It usually happens at altitudes over 8,500 feet. You get an ongoing headache, you feel tired, you have insomnia (I was sleepless for two nights!), you could have nausea and certainly fatigue. Drinking lots of water and passing up alcohol can help, but even then some people have problems.
When I finally saw a family doctor – Doctor P.J. – he told me it’s genetic. Some people have trouble “acclimatizing” and others don’t, but there’s no easy way to know who will be affected before you make the climb. Now that I know I have difficulty I will take a prescription medicine (Diamox) ahead of coming up here again.
Doctor P.J. says even Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
June 26th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in News
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Meda Pharmaceuticals has announced a new nasal spray “Dymista” that contains both a steroid and an anti-histamine active ingredient. Why is this significant? It’s because it’s the first and only one to do so. Of course, it’s not available yet until the FDA approves it, but at least it has shown effectiveness in Phase 3 clinical trials.
At this time, nasal sprays as it relates to nasal allergies come in two separate flavors:
1) Steroid Nasal Spray (flonase, nasonex, nasacort, rhinocort, veramyst, omnaris, etc, etc)
2) Anti-Histamine Nasal Spray (patanase, astepro, astelin)
This new combo nasal spray “Dymista” contains Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
June 25th, 2011 by AnnMacDonald in Health Tips, Research
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On Saturday, while thousands of Boston Bruins fans gathered at Government Center to celebrate the team’s recent Stanley Cup victory, a hundred or so true die-hards met a few blocks away at a Massachusetts General Hospital conference to talk about complementary and alternative medicine for psychiatric disorders. While I hated to miss the Bruins parade, I’m glad I attended the MGH conference.
I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic about so-called natural therapies for one simple reason: they don’t have to go through the same rigorous testing in clinical trials that medications do. At the same time, I realize that FDA-approved drugs don’t work for everyone. One in three adults with major depression, for example, can’t completely improve their mood and other symptoms even after trying multiple antidepressants.
Clearly, we need better options for treating mental health disorders. The MGH conference convinced me that some types of complementary and alternative medicine—or CAM, for short—might be worth trying. The presenters, all psychiatrists who treat patients at MGH, backed up their recommendations with scientific evidence. Several of them also contributed to the American Psychiatric Association’s recent report on CAM therapies.
We’ll be doing a story on CAM therapies for psychiatric disorders in an upcoming issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter. For now, here are some things I learned on Saturday: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
June 25th, 2011 by Paul Auerbach, M.D. in Health Tips
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An allergic reaction in an outdoor setting can rapidly become a life-threatening emergency. While most of us think of food allergies as annoyances, they can be quite serious or even life threatening. Itchy skin rashes can progress to breathing difficulty, swollen soft tissues (e.g., lips, tongue, throat) that compromise the airway, and low blood pressure or even shock. Therefore, it’s important to be familiar with the signs and symptoms of severe allergy and to be prepared to respond rapidly in the event of an emergency.
An EpiPen (an epinephrine auto-injector)
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has released Food Allergy Guidelines for healthcare professionals to help guide the care of patients with life-threatening food allergies. The full guidelines can be found at http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodallergy/clinical/Pages/default.aspx. Here are some key points: Read more »
This post, Food Allergies: Treating Severe Allergic Reactions, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..
