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Little Evidence For ER Wait Time Marketing Claims And Other Health News

ER Waits: Hospitals’ marketing claims of short waits for emergency room care aren’t backed up by any evidence, John Dorschner reports for the Miami Herald.

Chronic Fatigue: The editors of prestigious journal Science have retracted a controversial paper linking chronic fatigue syndrome to the XMRV virus; critics of the study believe contamination of samples was to blame for the results, which have not been replicated by other scientists, Ivan Oransky reports for Reuters.

Environmental Health: Tough new EPA rules on mercury emissions from oil- and coal-burning power plants are being Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Reporting on Health - The Reporting on Health Daily Briefing*

Kim Jong Il’s Health At The End Of His Life And Other Hot Topics In Medical News

kim jong il, north korea, health, reporting on healthKim Jong Il: Of course we’re going to highlight the lowlights of the North Korean leader’s health: CNN has the scoop on the dictator’s cause of death and previous illnesses. Knight Science Journalism Tracker’s Paul Raeburn rounds up previous analyses of Kim Jong Il’s psychological profile.

Breast Cancer: Companies are trying to build a better mammogram as they compete for a bigger slice of the $6 billion-and-growing medical imaging market, Sierra Jiminez reports for Fortune. Nearly 300,000 American women have been diagnosed with breast cancer this year.

Health Reform: The U.S. Supreme Court will devote an unprecedented week of oral argument over health reform when Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Reporting on Health - The Reporting on Health Daily Briefing*

Where’s The Safest Place To Have A Baby: Article Breaks Down Infant Mortality By Zip Code

A recent article about the shameful infant mortality rate in the U.S. caught my attention. Certainly the statistics quoted are nothing new but still remains alarming.  However, the Op Ed by CNN contributor Deborah Klein Walker gave the subject matter a new spin. Walker wrote “This is one of the greatest injustices in our country: that a baby’s chance of having a healthy life is largely dependent on where he or she is born. States and local communities vary widely in what care their leaders choose to provide to women and children.”  If Dr. Walker were present, I’d give her a great big hug for her courage to say what no one else dared. A baby can die based on a hospital zip code.

Every pregnant mother needs to take a mini course in hospital politics because they are directly affected. A hospital is no longer a place of healing. It is a business and at times, ruthless.  I have witnessed a colleague forced out of business because she said no when a hospital wanted to buy her practice so they withdrew her admitting privileges instead. I recall bitter battles with my former employer because I would not encourage my patients to deliver at a hospital that was notorious for Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*

Patients Need Encouragement To Talk About Depression

More than two in five patients hesitate to discuss depression in the primary care setting, leading researchers to offer practical tips on how to encourage people to broach the subject.

The big reasons for not talking to doctors included fears about patient confidentiality and fear of losing emotional control in front of the doctor, among those with a history of depression. Among those with no prior history, a fear of antidepressants/psychiatry and the perception that primary care isn’t the right setting are two big reasons.

To learn why patients choose not to talk about their depression, researchers Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

New App Allows Patients To Directly E-mail Their Physicians

Group Health, a Seattle, Washington based nonprofit healthcare organization has launched a medical app for their members that offers a wide variety of features — even allowing members to directly e-mail their physicians.

This should come as no surprise to those who have been following this revered Health Co-op.  They have been featured by the NY Times, CNN, and other medical publications due to their innovative approach to patient care — such as embracing electronic medical records before everyone jumped on the bandwagon.

Some of the other interesting features this app will offer their patients: mobile access to medical records, which means a member can check their test results, making appointments, check immunization histories, view summaries of past visits, get routine care reminders and view their allergies and other  health conditions.

Additionally, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

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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