August 30th, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Humor, Opinion
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If you haven’t seen Anderson Cooper catch a case of the giggles on live TV, you can still watch it on YouTube. I missed the first showing, but saw Mr. Cooper replayed it on his own Ridiculist List. But what’s this doing on Shrink Rap?
I watched the re-run, and I found myself laughing out loud. Only, it wasn’t a good, happy, hearty laugh, it was an embarrassed and uncomfortable laugh, and I realized I’d taken on the feelings of the newsman. If I were a psychiatrist (oops, I am, even in August), I might say that Anderson Cooper Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
August 30th, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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Race is a medically meaningless concept.
Spare me the few tired cliches about prostate cancer, diabetes, and sarcoidosis being more common in blacks than whites, or even the slightly increased risk of ACEI cough in patients of Asian descent. We screen Jews of Ashkenazi descent for Tay Sachs without any racial labeling. All that information is readily accessible under the Family History section of the medical history. It is no more than custom which dictates the standard introductory format including age, race, and gender. It turns out I’ve blogged about this before at some length (pretty good post, actually). What is new is the advent of electronic medical records.
Much hullabaloo has been made about federal stimulus funds allocated to doctors as payments for adopting EMRs; “up to $44,000!” Here’s the problem with that figure, though, including how it breaks down (source here): Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
August 30th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
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Although nearly 70% of medical specialties saw increases in compensation in 2010, increases were marginal, reports the American Medical Group Association’s 2011 Medical Group Compensation and Financial Survey.
Primary care specialties saw about a 2.6% increase in 2010, while other medical specialties averaged an increase of 2.4% and surgical specialties averaged around 3.8%. Specialties with the largest increases in compensation were allergy (6.38%), emergency medicine (6.37%), and hospitalist-internal medicine (6.29%).
In comparison, in 2009, primary care and surgical specialties saw about a Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
August 30th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Opinion
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The total debt cost of medical school has become obnoxious. When I started medical school 15 years ago this month, I took out approximately $2,000 a month in loans. $1,000 a month for all living expenses, including food, rent, utilities and entertainment and $1,000 a month for tuition and related expenses. I got out of medical school with just under $110,000 in loans for which I am currently paying back at a rate of $500 month for 30 years.
I learned the other day that a family medicine resident recently completed medical school with almost $250,000 in medical school loans. Family medicine? $250,000? Are you crazy? If that resident can lock in a 30 year loan at 3.5%, they’re looking at monthly payments of $1,200 a month for the rest of their lives. With current tax rates, this family resident will need to earn at least Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
August 30th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
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I was always under the impression that medical documentation was reserved for the office and the hospital. Not necessarily so — even in the battlefield, medics document medical care in real time.
Unfortunately, the tools they use to do this documentation consists of bulky Motorola hand held devices that are four years old.
Four years is an eternity in the tech world. To put this in perspective, I was still rocking a Motorola RAZR back then. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Army is field testing the iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones in the battlefield. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
