October 9th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews
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I’ll admit it – when I was a kid, I admired Dr. Bones (McCoy) of Star Trek. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy who was very clear about his areas of expertise (“Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a spaceship engineer.”) But best of all, Dr. McCoy had special healing gadgets that he could wave over people for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Those “tricorders” fascinated me – and I always wished I could have one myself.
And now my dream could actually come true: advances in focused ultrasound technology (FUS) make non-invasive surgical procedures possible. I attended the very first international symposium about this new technology, and learned some very exciting things.
First of all, Dr. Ferenc Jolesz gave a riveting key note address about the history of focused ultrasound technology, and why modern advances have made this treatment modality feasible. Scientists have been fantasizing about heating tissues with sound waves since 1942 when the first ultrasound experiment was conducted on a liver tumor. Unfortunately back then, imaging studies (beyond X-rays) had not yet been developed – so it was virtually impossible to “see” one’s target.
However, now that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines are capable of displaying our innards in exquisite detail Read more »
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews, Medblogger Shout Outs
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Many thanks to my fellow blogger KevinMD who offered to host me during my period of blog homelessness. In this post, I interview Dr. Ken Thorpe about the real driver of healthcare costs:
About 75% of what we spend on healthcare is associated with chronically ill patients. That’s about 1.6 trillion dollars per year. Chronic disease accounts for the biggest source of spending in the healthcare economy, and it’s also the fastest growing – as more and more people are living with chronic illnesses. If we’re really serious about getting to the bottom of the healthcare affordability crisis, we’ll have to first address the chronic disease issue…
For the rest of the post, please click here.
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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Thanks to my friend and fellow blogger Bob Coffield for hosting me (during my homeless period) at the Healthcare Law Blog. Here is an excerpt of my post:
Today I viewed a TV ad sponsored by the AARP. It was promoting a remote alarm device that elderly people could use to notify EMS if they fall and need help. The ad featured a surprising statistic:
“One in three people over the age of 65 will fall down this year.”
That’s a pretty common occurrence, wouldn’t you say? It certainly argues for the need for those wearable alarm buttons.
But at the same time that these ads are running on television, Medicare is moving forward with their “never event” quality program. The initiative means that Medicare will not pay for the care of patients who experience a “never event” in a hospital – funding for that patient’s care will need to come out of the hospital’s budget. Medicare argues that they shouldn’t have to pay for medical errors such as “wrong side surgery.”
While I’m sympathetic to their perspective on wrong side surgery, the list of never events reaches far beyond the limits of medical errors to include things like mental status changes, infections and…
drum roll please . . .
Falls….
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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Thanks to Dr. Wes for hosting me during my recent period of blog homelessness. Please check out his excellent site – here’s my featured post:
It seems in cardiology, things are so tiny: tiny angioplasty balloons, itsy bitsy guidewires to snake down the smallest of coronary arteries. Heck most things they deal with are measured in millimeters: need I say more? Now electrophysiologists, well, I’ve already had my say.
But Dr. Val, today’s guest blogger who transitions from her old space at Dr. Val and The Voice of Reason at Revolution Health to her new site at Getting Better With Dr. Val, notes a new trend in medical marketing to these marvelous medics of the miniature:
October 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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I posted this at Medpolitics.com during my recent period of blog homelessness. Here’s an excerpt:
Sec. Tommy Thompson:
“SCHIP runs out in March, 2009. The new President will have to come up with a Medicare ‘fix it’ bill within 90 days of coming into office. I think that 2009 will be the biggest year in the transformation of healthcare that any of us have ever seen.”
For the rest of the post, click here.
