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Getting Everyone Involved In The Health Care Discussion

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care is re-launching Let’s Talk Health Care, which started life as former CEO Charlie Baker’s blog. There’s a series of related discussions going on now in the Let’s Talk Health Care Linked In group, sponsored by Harvard Pilgrim.  I’ve been participating (at the request of the group organizer; disclosure: client) and would like to invite you to do the same.

A salient characteristic of the site and of the group is the focus on three broad categories of care and cost: fostering health and wellness, balancing quality and cost, and redefining care coordination — all of which are informed by a focus on chronic health care issues.

One of the great successes of modern medicine is the conquest of most infectious disease.  (Equitable global distribution of the tools necessary for eradication is another story — and some of the more compelling chapters of that story are being told these days by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.) One of the great failures of the modern consumer state is Read more »

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

How To Organize People In Real Time: Groundcrew

Jay Parkinson has recently found a nice service that is in beta version now. It’s called Groundcrew and lets you organize people in real time by combining the power of Google Maps with your online communities and friends such as Twitter of Facebook. For example, I would like to organize free lectures about DNA in order to educate people living in my neighborhood about genomics and health. It’s not that easy to find people around my home but this tool lets me spread the word easily and manage all the people who join the live feed of the event.

Give it a try and see how the demo works.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Emergency Departments: World’s Most Expensive Theaters

It was midnight and the Emergency Room door opened like a curtain on a Broadway. A lone man sat in blue at the countertop, writing. Behind him, the chorus, working feverishly on the protagonist – the script rehearsed a thousand times before.

Clothes off, Story?, facemask, C-collar, endotracheal tube, breath sounds, telemetry, IV’s, blood work, pulse ox, Stop.

Resume, Pulse?, patches, register, call the lab, Allergies?, epi, atropine, Pressure?, twitching, NG, x-ray, Stop. Pulse?

Resume, pacing wire, max output, capture?, not quite, “potassium?”, not ready, blood gas, foley, Capture! Stop.

Resume, blood gas, no capture, damn, tweak, better, pulse?, yes. Lab?, no, Which meds?, cardiologist, Go.

Vent, hoist, prep, stick, contrast, open, shock, balloon pump, a-line, movement, labs, blood gas, peep, transport, c-spine, CT, Go.

Then intermission. Read more »

*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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