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Vaccination Rates For Health Care Workers At A Dismal Level

A 3D graphical representation of a generic influenza virion’s ultrastructure, by CDC/ Doug Jordan, M.A. Health care workers’ fear of flu shots has risen as an issue again.

Refusing flu vaccination has risen among health professionals again and again. And again. And again and again.

Vaccination rates for health care workers stands at 35%, which is “a dismal rate,” according to Margaret C. Fisher, MD, a pediatric disease subspecialist and the medical director of The Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center. She spoke about vaccinating adults and health care workers at Internal Medicine 2011.

The issue is as annual as the flu itself, and this time, a physician at London’s Imperial College NHS Trust has jumped into the debate, tackling misinformation given within his country’s own health service. He said: “A very interesting question for me is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

The Return Of Mumps

I write this post with a great deal of trepidation. The last time I perused the Medical Voices website I found nine questions that needed answering. So I answered them. One of the consequences of that blog entry was the promise that Medical Voices was poised to “tear my arguments to shreds.” Tear to shreds! Such a painful metaphor.

They specified that the shred tearing would be accomplished during a live debate, rather than a written response. While Dr. Gorski gave excellent reasons why such a debate is counterproductive, I am disinclined for more practical reasons. I am a slow thinker and a lousy debater and have never, ever, won a debate at home. If I cannot win pitted against my wife, what chance would I have against the combined might of the doctors and scientists at Medical Voices? My fragile psyche could not withstand the onslaught.

Still, there is much iron pyrite to be mined at Medical Voices and it may provide me for at least a years worth of entries. Please forgive me if I seem nervous or distracted. I have a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head and it may fall at any time. My writings may, without warning, be torn to pieces by the razor sharp logical sword of Medical Voices. Or maybe not. It is my understanding that Medical Voices will only answer with a debate, so maybe I am safe from total ego destruction.

This month, as I perused Medical Voices, I found it difficult to choose an article. So much opportunity and I have limited time to write. I finally decided on Why the New Mumps Outbreak Puts You At Risk by Robert J. Rowen, M.D. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

My Take On The Mammogram Issue

I was having an interesting Twitter chat with online friends (Liz Cohen @elizcohencnn, Dr. Chuk Onyeije @chukwumaonyeije; Dr. David Gorski @gorskon; Dr. Marya Zilberberg @murzee; Sherry Reynolds @cascadia; and @speakhealth) about the mammogram debate. They asked me “where I drew the line” on paying for expensive screening tests that may save lives but require unnecessary surgery for countless others. My opinion takes into account human nature and political savvy rather than pure science and statistics on this one.

To me, the bottom line is that the mammogram is a sloppy screening test. It’s expensive, there are lots of false positives and unnecessary surgeries, yet it saves occasional lives (which is dramatic and meaningful). We have to appreciate that women have come to accept the risks/benefits of this test, and have been told for a long time that they should begin screening at age 40.

It’s not emotionally or politically possible to reverse course on this recommendation until a better choice is available. You can trade the mammogram for a better test, but you can’t trade it for doing nothing. The amount of drama associated with the perception of having something potentially life-saving taken away is just not worth the cost savings. It may be a reasonable value judgment based on the data, but it’s not politically feasible so we should mentally take it off the table. Read more »

Medicare Summit Debate: Is Medicare A Good Model For Universal Coverage?

One of the highlights of the Medicare Policy Summit was a panel discussion entitled “Medicare Expansion, Entitlement Reform, and National Health Coverage.” The goal of the discussion was to explore the potential role that Medicare could have in serving as a model for universal health insurance coverage in America. I’ve captured some of the key points that each panelist made:

First panelist: Grace Marie Turner, President, Galen Institute.

Grace Marie Turner has been instrumental in developing and promoting ideas for reform
that transfer power over health care decisions to doctors and patients.
She speaks and writes extensively about incentives to promote a more
competitive, patient-centered marketplace in the health sector.

Top 5 reasons why “Medicare for all” will not work:

1. The provider payment rate is not sustainable.

2. It cannot be sold as a free-standing health insurance policy. Medicare is full of gaps in coverage which must be covered with a series of supplemental plans like Medi-Gap.

3. The centralized nature of the benefit structure limits patient choices.

4. There will be political opposition by seniors to opening the flood gates to millions more beneficiaries, which would reduce their current coverage.

5. Medicare is already in debt to the tune of 38 trillion dollars.

What is a better solution to achieve universal coverage?

Private, competing plans can better provide tailored benefits to groups of uninsured. This would also increase patient choice and customization of care. Medicare Part D is run under a private sector model and is currently 40% under budget. This is evidence that the private sector, influenced by market forces, is better at cost containment.

The bottom line is that we have to decide if we want to reform healthcare with top-down directives or by aligning incentives. I believe we need to do a better job of coordinating care – it’s a financial issue.

Second panelist: Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Health Policy, The Heritage Foundation.

Moffit has been an advocate of the free market principles of consumer choice and competition since the early 1990s, when he chastised Congress for keeping such a system of choice and competition ” exclusively for itself and federal workers while considering ways to impose vastly inferior systems on almost all [other] Americans.”

Who do you want to make key healthcare decisions for you?

1. Your employer

2. The government

3. Individuals and families

Other industrialized countries have accepted option #2, but America is a very different culture. We must enlist the states as the laboratories of democracy that they should be. The Medicare Advantage plan is revolutionary.

Third panelist: Robert Berenson, M.D., Senior Fellow, The Urban Institute

Dr. Berenson’s current research focuses on modernization of the Medicare program to improve efficiency and the quality of care provided to beneficiaries.

The consumer-directed healthcare system is not what the public wants or needs. We need supply-side solutions, not demand-side solutions. Medicare has been more successful than private plans at reducing costs.

There’s no doubt that a government-run healthcare system is not what Americans want – but I see no other alternative. The Massachusetts (state level solution) is not going to be successful because they provided universal coverage without any cost containment mechanisms in place, so costs simply sky rocketed.

Currently, 20% of Medicare beneficiaries discharged from the hospital are readmitted, and half of those are due to avoidable complications. Follow up care (after hospital discharge) is not well managed. Most patients discharged from the hospital don’t see a healthcare professional for follow up within 30 days of their discharge. We have to do better.

Latest Interviews

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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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