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When Public Health Legislation Is More Effective Than Physician’s Advice

Last month, my family was involved in a scary traffic accident en route to the Family Medicine Education Consortium‘s North East Region meeting. I was in the left-hand eastbound lane of the Massachusetts Turnpike when a westbound tractor trailer collided with a truck, causing the truck to cross over the grass median a few cars ahead of us. I hit the brakes and swerved to avoid the truck, but its momentum carried it forward into the left side of our car. Strapped into child safety seats in the back, both of my children were struck by shards of window glass. My five year-old son, who had been sitting behind me, eventually required twelve stitches to close a scalp laceration. Miraculously, none of the occupants of the other six damaged vehicles, including the truck driver, sustained any injuries.

Family physicians like me, and physicians in general, like to believe that the interventions we provide patients make a big difference in their eventual health outcomes. In a few cases, they do. But for most people, events largely outside of the scope of medical practice determine one’s quality and length of life, and Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Common Sense Family Doctor*

Severe Paperwork Burden Tempts Physicians To Quit Medicine

For physicians, and especially those in primary care, it seems like there is a form for every purpose imaginable—often for purposes that are hard to imagine.

An ACP member in Rhode Island recently gave this example:

“I was just asked by my Medicare Advantage plan to sign a form for [a well-known pharmacy benefit manager]. This form is to be faxed to them in order for them to send me a prior authorization form for a med. So in other words, I had to complete a form in order to get another form. This is nuts!”

Or how about this, from another ACP member in a private internal medicine practice:

“The documentation that is getting to me, is that documentation that the ‘durable medical equipment people want including repetitive- recurrent documentation, whenever we see a patient to document “continued need”. The list of things we have to document, sign, approve or prior authorize, I believe is what makes most physicians think they chose the wrong field. A PBM letter to me about my prescribing practices today nearly did me in! Luckily I just shredded it. If I am kicked out of this business, I am so close to retirement it would be a blessing!”

Or this: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

New Jersey Attempts To Outlaw Cosmetic Botox For Minors: Will The Legislation Work?

TRENTON — Minors in New Jersey wouldn’t be able to get Botox injections unless a doctor says it’s medically necessary and documents the reason, under a bill moving through the Assembly. The Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee approved legislation Thursday to clamp down on doctors injecting people under 18 with botulinum toxin for cosmetic purposes. The Federal Drug Administration already bars anyone under 18 from getting Botox for cosmetic reasons. The new state legislation would go further by requiring doctors to document in a patient’s chart the noncosmetic medical reason for performing the procedure on a minor. Botox is used widely to smooth out facial wrinkles, but also can be used to treat headaches and spasms.
Source: app.com/article/20110520/NJNEWS10/305200023/Botox-regulations-minors-pass-NJ-committee
?odyssey=mod_sectionstories

This prospective law in New Jersey would make Botox injections illegal in minors without a doctor’s statement that it is medically necessary. Unfortunately this is not to say such a law would have the desired effect. There are docs who will write those “permit slips.” Watch how many of these Botox-using minors get headaches.

I am not really a fan of laws restricting the flow of medicines. I do not believe they work well. Then again Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*

New York State Wants To Dictate What Doctors Can Wear

From AMA Medical News:

New York physicians may have to take off their neckties, jewelry, wristwatches and long-sleeved white coats when caring for patients if a bill under consideration in the state legislature becomes law.

The bill, proposed in April in the state Senate, calls for a “hygienic dress code council” within the New York Health Dept. to consider advancing a ban on neckties and requiring physicians and other health professionals to adopt a “bare below the elbow” dress code in an effort to slash hospital-acquired infections.

Even though there’s no data that this does anything to reduce hospital acquired infections.

But that doesn’t matter.

So why stop there? I say, doctors should do the ultimate for their patients: the Full Monty.

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Progressive Counter Point: The IPAB Could Be A Good Thing

I shouldn’t do this. It’s madness to try to delve into the minds of conspiracy theorists and try to make sense of their ravings. But I can’t help myself; I’m drawn like a moth to the flame. It never ends well. I only wind up with a horde of trolls in the comments telling me that I’m a glib supercilious idiot and should stick to medicine or go die in a fire or something.

Sometimes it’s too hard to stay away. Maybe it was the personal affront I felt in the false imputation of ill motives onto progressives. Maybe it was the gross errors in fact, sitting there ripe for the plucking. I don’t know, but I just can’t resist a rebuttal to Dr Rich at Covert Rationing, who weaves a technocratic cost control body into a paranoid web of fantasy, concluding that:

Progressives are dedicated to “progressing” to a perfect society, and they know just how to achieve it. … Specifically, the Progressive program requires individuals to subsume their own individual interests to the overriding interests of the collective – and human nature just doesn’t function that way. Thus, the Progressive program inevitably relies on a cadre of elites – those who have dedicated themselves to furthering the Progressive program – to set things up the right way for the rest of us, while manipulating we in the teeming masses to let them. And the rest of us, once the correct programs and systems are in place, will at last understand that it was all for our own good.

I suppose this paragraph tells you everything you need to know … about Dr Rich. Any supposition that he was approaching the view of policy with a fair mind or that he is willing to attribute anything but the worst motivations to those on the other side of the aisle is completely shredded by this paragraph. As rhetoric goes, it’s up there with “Conservatives want old people to die in pain.” So we can scratch Dr Rich off the list of people who are willing to discuss health care policy with a neutral mindset. He’s engaged in a holy war of ideology. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*

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