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Cancer Pathology: Are Lab Tests Always Right?

The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog says that cancer lab tests “aren’t always right.” They report on reports issued by two professional societies that point out that as many as 20% of a certain kind of test are inaccurate. According to the Health Blog the problem is the tests “aren’t black and white, and rely on a pathologist’s judgment.”

Now, judgment is a critical factor in most everything in medicine, but perhaps nowhere else are the consequences of incorrect judgment so serious as in pathology. As Dr. William Osler famously observed: “As is your pathology, so goes your clinical practice.” But how widespread is this problem? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

6 Reactions To The Healthcare Reform Plan

Since the 2000 Presidential election, and most especially since the world-changing events of October 17, 2004, I’ve known this: Don’t assume anything is over until it’s over. Still, I’m going to bed so I’m going to give you my six quick reactions to the healthcare reform plan, based on the assumption it’s about to get voted in:

UPDATE: I stayed up and it passed.

1.  It’s Historic. It is, but mostly because people keep saying that it is.  I mean the President of the United States has gambled most of what he’s got on this, so it’s one for the history books in that sense.  Still, a health care program that was truly historic would be something like taking all of the uninsured and just enrolling them immediately in Medicare.  This plan doesn’t come anywhere close to doing that.  Much of what is meant to deal with the serious problem of the uninsured doesn’t start for years, and is going to be handled through a complicated mechanism that may not even work.  I suspect the history-making part of this will have to do more with the political fortunes of the Democrats and President than American health care. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Does Pay For Performance Improve Healthcare Quality?

The Jobbing Doctor, a primary care doctor in the UK, writes about the British version of what Americans call “Pay for Performance,” or “P4P.”

He says something I’ve said many times before (like here, here, and here).  Which is this: incentives fail because they try to treat medicine as an assembly line process, when it’s not.

But what’s most interesting about his post is that it could have been written by a doctor from anyplace on the planet Earth.

The Jobbing Doctor talks about a UK program that started in 2004 called the Quality and Outcomes Framework, or “QoF.”   Now, the American “P4P” is a much more catchy name, so score one for American marketing.  But it doesn’t matter what you call it – that which we call a rose would, by any other name smell as sweet. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Is The Healthcare Industry Calling The Shots?

Why has health care reform run into so much trouble?

Well, it could be because people think reform plans will affect them in ways they aren’t going to like.  Or because people don’t believe politicians in Washington who say that spending huge amounts of money will actually save money.  Or because confusing mixed messages and ever-shifting sales pitches create a lot of anxiety about what’s really going on.  It could be all of those things.

Or, it could be something more….sinister…. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Why Does The US Spend So Much On Healthcare?

Today the Commonwealth Fund came out with a chart that it says is a “grim reminder” of what happens when health care doesn’t get reformed.

If only we had listened to Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter.  We would have saved tens of trillions of dollars in health care spending.

Click to enlarge Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

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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