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The Importance Of Social Media In The Medical Field

Recently,  I had the pleasure of being surrounded by brilliant health care thought leaders.  First, I delivered a social media presentation at the Eyeforpharma conference.  Secondly, I sat in the audience at the Social Communications and Health Care 2011 conference to listen to others present on social media, and participate in a round-table discussion on social media.

It’s clear from the personal discussion that followed with folks from the pharma industry, medical device companies, and hospitals, that they understand the need for social media (or social networking), but they are cautious to dive in.

A few concerns I’ve heard:  “social media can be paralyzing,” “senior leadership in the pharma industry is looking for the FDA to make decisions because it’s such a highly regulated industry,” and “it’s still so new, what’s the ROI?”  Concerns are real; however there will always be concerns and questions.  Sometimes, the best approach is to just dive right in.

The brilliant reason to dive deep into the social media health space is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*

“Just In Case” Heart Tests: Can They Do More Harm Than Good?

Here’s an important equation that all of us — doctors include — should know about healthcare, but don’t:

More ≠ Better

“More does not equal better” applies to diagnostic procedures, screening tests meant to identify problems before they appear, medications, dietary supplements, and just about every aspect of medicine.

That scenario is spelled out in alarming detail in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Clinicians at the Cleveland Clinic describe the case of a 52-year-old woman who went to her community hospital because she had been having chest pain for two days. She wasn’t having symptoms of a heart attack, such as shortness of breath, unexplained nausea, or a cold sweat, and her electrocardiogram and other tests were fine. The woman’s doctors concluded that her chest pain was probably due to a muscle she had pulled or strained during her recently begun exercise program to lose weight.

To “reassure her” that she wasn’t having a heart attack, the emergency department team recommended she have a CT scan of her heart. This noninvasive procedure can spot narrowings in coronary arteries and other problems that can interfere with blood flow to the heart. When it showed a suspicious area in her left anterior descending artery (a key artery nourishing the heart), she underwent a coronary angiogram. This involves inserting a thin wire called a catheter into a blood vessel in the groin and deftly maneuvering it into the heart. Once in place, equipment on the catheter is used to make pictures of blood flow through the coronary arteries. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*

Leading Healthcare Systems Collaborate On Best Practices For Common Conditions

Six of the nation’s leading healthcare systems will collaborate on outcomes, quality, and costs across eight common conditions or procedures in an effort to share best practices and reduce costs with the entire healthcare system.

Cleveland Clinic, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Denver Health, Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare, and Mayo Clinic will to share data among their 10 million patients with The Dartmouth Institute, which will analyze the data and report back to the collaborative and the rest of the country, according to a press release.

The collaborative will focus on eight conditions and treatments for which costs have been increasing rapidly and for which there are wide variations in quality and outcomes across the country. The first three conditions to be studies are knee replacement, diabetes, and heart failure. They will be followed by asthma, weight loss surgery, labor and delivery, spine surgery, and depression.

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Talk To Patients Before Running Tests

The Associated Press ran a provocatively-titled piece recently, “Family health history: ‘best kept secret’ in care”, which noted how a geneticist at the Cleveland Clinic discovered that asking about family members and their history of breast, colon, or prostate cancer was better than simply doing genetic blood testing.

Surprising? Hardly. This is what all medical students are taught. Talk to the patient. Get a detailed history and physical. Lab work and imaging studies are merely tools that can help support or refute a diagnosis. They provide a piece of the puzzle, but always must be considered in the full context of a patient. They alone do not provide the truth. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*

Cleveland Clinic Targets The “Heart” Of Chicago

All I can say is, best of luck. From the Chicago Tribune:

In a move likely to shake up the market for heart care in the Chicago area, the well-known Cleveland Clinic’s cardiac surgery program said Thursday that it has signed an affiliation agreement with Central DuPage Hospital in the western Chicago suburbs.

The internationally known Cleveland Clinic draws patients from more than 85 countries around the world for everything from open-heart surgery and valve replacement to heart transplants. Its deal with Central DuPage, in Winfield, is designed to enhance the heart care provided at the 313-bed community hospital and potentially bring Cleveland Clinic patient referrals at a time heart surgeries are less needed than they were a decade ago.

This won’t shake up the market in Chicago. After all, when you have a bunch of Cadillacs in the garage, why go after a Ford? Unless, of course, it costs a whole lot less to buy a Ford.

-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

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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