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Latest Posts

Public Health Should Be Apolitical

You can be for freedom. You can be for smaller government that intrudes less. You can be for lower taxes. You can be for most anything, but if you’re interested in improving the sagging health of American citizens, get on Michael Bloomberg’s wheel.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bar city residents from using food stamps to buy sugary soft drinks. It turns out that last year $135 million in food stamp money was used for the consumption of these obesity-fostering beverages in NYC alone.

Mr Bloomberg is morphing into a real-world public health super star. Previously, he was a pioneer in banning smoking in restaurants and bars. They said it could not be done, or that it wouldn’t work. Well, the naysayers were dead wrong. Now public smoking bans our commonplace and, backed by objective data, are accepted as having prevented thousands of heart attacks. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

Healing The Spirit: More Profitable Than Healing The Body

Yes, it’s true — most doctors may soon be government employees. No, not the Lasik surgeons, the plastic surgeons, or the dentists — they were clearly more focused on career day. But is it necessarily a bad thing if all of your income comes from federal, state, or local governments?

If your business is caring for the medical needs of the less fortunate, a Medicaid doctor or a VA doctor perhaps, then your luxury box may be something more Thoreau-like, maybe some nice lawn furniture in the backyard. On the other hand, if your business model involves caring for recently-released prisoners or drug addicts, then you are in the financial sweet spot. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

Healthcare Reform: Motivating Self-Responsibility In Patients

Last week I heard a lecture about Accountable Care Organizations by a physician leader working for one of the major hospital systems. His discussion made me realize that large physician organizations and hospitals are spending lots of time solving problems of quality medical care. In my opinion quality medical care has not been adequately defined.

A working definition right now is to decrease hospital stays, efficient medical care for a disease at lower cost, avoidance of medical errors in the hospital, and avoidance of hospital acquired infections. These are important goals. They must be attached to monetary incentives. Many of these problems can be solved now.

The solution demands the development of processes of care. An important question is how much money will process improvement save? I estimate that this process improvement could save an estimated 7 to 10% of the healthcare dollar.

The real question should be focused on how to repair the healthcare system by decreasing costs while improving the health of Americans. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

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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