April 21st, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips, True Stories
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My husband had a screening colonoscopy last Friday. His nurse in the recovery is the only one I had issues with. I, not my husband.
All went well, but let me tell you he is not an ePatient Dave. He did not read his instructions about when to quit eating and the prep. I did. I then reminded him along the way: “Only clear liquids today.” “You must take the Ducolax at 3 pm. Do you want me to text you a reminder?”
Sometimes the instructions we give patients are clear, but not always read.
The staff at the front desk were very kind and organized. Calls had been made the day before and I had insured the insurance information they had was correct. I did not tell anyone I was a doctor. I’m not sure if my husband did later or not.
…..
When I was called back by the nurse, she mispronounced my name calling me Rhonda (which I forgave easily). She did not introduce herself to me.
As we entered the recovery area, she did not take me to my husband and assure me he was okay. She took me to the desk and abruptly said, “You need to sign this.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
April 12th, 2011 by Michael Kirsch, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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Prototype ‘BS’ meter.
So many folks express views that are obviously self-serving, but they try to masquerade them as altruistic positions that benefit some other constituency. These attempts usually fool no one, but yet these performances are common and ongoing. They are potent fertilizer for cynicism.
Teachers’ unions have been performing for us for decades. Their positions on charter schools, school vouchers, merit pay and the tenure system are clear examples of professional advocacy to protect teachers’ jobs and benefits; yet the stated reasons are to protect our kids. Yeah, right. While our kids are not receiving a top flight education, the public has gotten smart in a hurry on what’s really needed to reform our public educational system. This is why these unions are now retreating and regrouping, grudgingly ‘welcoming’ some reform proposals that have been on the table for decades. This was no epiphany on their part. They were exposed and vulnerable. They wisely sensed that the public lost faith in their arguments and was turning against them. Once the public walked away, or became adversaries, established and entrenched teachers’ union views and policies would be aggressively targeted. Those of us in the medical profession have learned the risk of alienating the public. Teachers have been smarter than we were.
The medical profession is full of ‘performances’ where the stated view is mere camouflage. For example, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at MD Whistleblower*
April 7th, 2011 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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There are many tips to saving money on medical costs like asking your doctor only for generic medications, choosing an insurance plan with a high deductible and lower monthly premiums, going to an urgent care or retail clinic rather than the emergency room, and getting prescriptions mailed rather than go to a pharmacy.
How about getting your old medical records and having them reviewed by a primary care doctor? It might save you from having an unnecessary test or procedure performed.
Research shows that there is tremendous variability in what doctors do. Shannon Brownlee’s excellent book, Overtreated – Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, provides great background on this as well as work done by the Dr. Jack Wennberg and colleagues on the Dartmouth Atlas. Some have argued that because of the fee for service structure, the more doctors do the more they get paid. This drives health care costs upwards significantly. Dr. Atul Gawande noted this phenomenon when comparing two cities in Texas, El Paso and McAllen in the June 2009 New Yorker piece. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
March 19th, 2011 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in True Stories
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This week I lost one of my patients, Cooper. He was a feisty 4-year-old with mitochondrial depletion syndrome. I began looking after him as an infant when he wouldn’t stop screaming. I saw him through surgeries, diagnostic rabbit trails, and ultimately helped with the painful decision to undergo small bowel transplantation. Inexplicable symptoms and strange complications defined his short life. While he spent his final days in considerable pain, his lucid moments were spent throwing marshmallows at his siblings. It sort of encapsulates who he was. Great spirit.
Independent of the circumstances, a child’s death is always brutally difficult to process. It’s counterintuitive. And facing Cooper’s parents for the first time after his passing was strangely difficult for me. When he was alive I always had a plan. Every sign, symptom, and problem had a systematic approach. But when faced with the most inconceivable process, I found myself awkwardly at odds with how to handle the dialog. In a hospital my calculated clinical role has a way of sheltering me from a parent’s reality. At a funeral it’s different. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
March 9th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Better Health Network, Research, True Stories
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Maybe you read the other day in The New York Times that the pharmaceutical industry has a problem. Big blockbuster drugs like Lipitor are going off patent and the industry leaders don’t have new blockbusters showing promise to replace them. So the big companies search for little companies with new discoveries and they consider buying them. Industry observers think the days of $5 billion-a-year drugs to lower cholesterol or control diabetes may be past for awhile, and the companies will have smaller hits with new compounds for autoimmune conditions and cancer.
When I saw my oncologist for a checkup yesterday — the news was good — we chatted about the article and the trend toward “niche science.” We welcomed it. We didn’t think — from our perspective — the world needed yet another drug to lower cholesterol. We need unique products to fight illnesses that remain daunting, some where there are no effective drugs at all. For example, my daughter has suffered for years from what seems to be an autoimmune condition called eosinophilic gastroenteritis (EGID). Her stomach gets inflamed with her own eosinophil cells. They would normally be marshaled to fight a parasite in her GI tract but in this case, there’s nothing to attack. So the cells make trouble on the lining of the stomach and cause pain and scarring. Right now, there’s no “magic bullet” to turn off these cells. My hope is some pharma scientists will come up with something to fill this unmet need.
In the waiting room before I saw my doctor at the cancer center in Seattle I overheard a woman on the phone speaking about her husband’s new diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I was sitting at a patient education computer station nearby. When she was finished I introduced myself and showed her some webpages to give her education and hope: pancan.org and our Patient Power programs about the disease. She was grateful. I did tell her — and she already knew — that there was no miracle drug for pancreatic cancer and that it was a usually-fatal condition. But that there were exceptions and, hopefully, her husband would be one. Of course, wouldn’t an effective medicine be best? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
