I love graphs, especially interactive graphs.
GE made a graph of the average annual cost of patients with eleven common chronic diseases. Go check it out, marvel at the coolness as you grab the sliders and spin the wheel o’ misfortune. Take home point: hypertension is the single biggest driver of medical cost in all patients age 33 and up. Go figure.
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
This post at The Central Line caught my eye:
Texas Recognizes ABPS Certification
The Texas Medical Board ruled on Oct. 20 that physicians certified by the American Board of Physician Specialties (ABPS) could advertise themselves as board certified to the public.
The ABPS is the certifying body of the American Association of Physician Specialties (AAPS). The ABPS sponsors 17 boards of certification, including the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine (BCEM).
For a number of years, ABPS, in conjunction with AAPS, has been seeking recognition from various state medical boards, requesting that they allow physicians certified through an ABPS board to advertise themselves as board certified. The organizations were successful in Florida in 2002 but were recently rebuffed by the State of New York due to the lack of residency training as a qualification for ABPS board certification.
ACEP does not recognize BCEM as a certifying body in emergency medicine. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
In a comment on my last post, faithful reader and frequent commenter Anonymous asked, “How do you get a good reading on interpersonal skills in a brief interview?”
That’s a good question. I suppose the simplest answer is, you don’t, at least not in any sort of comprehensive way. In some cases you can — a person who is warm, engaging, and able to hold up their end of a lively conversation in an interview setting is always going to be near the top of my list. But I make a lot of allowances for people in their interviews — they are nervous, know they are being watched and judged, it is a high-stakes encounter for them, and most people are a lot more constrained in an interview than they are in their day-to-day lives. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
Fricking Brilliant.via Neil Versel
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
Ultrasound is a neat toy, and I’m all about toys. I found two opportunities to play with enhance patient care with our ultrasound today on my shift. But it doesn’t have the bang for the buck that the enthusiasts think it does. It has very narrow, but real, utility, and does nothing to generate revenue. It does in some cases enhance patient turnaround, and it certainly enhances patient satisfaction (they love cool toys as much as we do — and extra face time with the doctor to boot!). But that’s a small return on a machine costing tens of thousands of dollars. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
