July 30th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
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Study painting, drama or the “soft” social sciences and you’ll probably be a pretty good doctor anyway. Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has been doing it for years and compared students in a special liberal arts admissions program to its traditional pre-med students.
For years, Mt. Sinai has admitted students from Amherst, Brandeis, Princeton, Wesleyan, and Williams colleges based on a written application with personal essays, verbal and math SAT scores, high school and college transcripts, letters of recommendation, and personal interviews. No MCAT is required.
Students need to take one year of biology and one year of chemistry and maintain (swallow hard) a “B” average. They later get an abbreviated course in organic chemistry and medical physics. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
July 28th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
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While the “patient-centered medical home” may be a good idea, it needs a better name. It sounds like a hospice, reports surgeon and columnist Pauline Chen, M.D. She outlines the initial experiences of practices making the transition to the new practice model.
One problem uncovered by pilot projects is that doctors in transition to the practice model have to spend inordinate amounts of time of things other than patients. And while the patients want and welcome the changes, they face a learning curve too, as they move from seeing just the doctor to working with a team of providers for their care.
Physicians suggested using resources from the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a collaborative group set up to help offices make the transition. (New York Times)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
July 25th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
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Patients don’t mind waiting in the ER as long as they’re kept apprised of the time, an industry survey revealed. This is a good thing, since ER waits have risen nationally to an average of four hours and seven minutes this year.
Press Ganey Associates, Inc., has conducted the survey annually and says that ER wait times are four more minutes than last year, or a half hour more than the first survey in 2002. The company collected data on 1.5 million patients treated at 1,893 hospitals in 2009.
Despite longer wait times, patient satisfaction with U.S. hospital emergency departments stayed about the same in 2009. Communication was the key, as patients who waited more than four hours, but received “good” or “very good” information about delays were just as satisfied as patients who spent less than one hour in the emergency department.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
July 21st, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News
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Harvard’s annual primary medicine conference, Pri-Med East 2010, will move the industry-supported portion of the program off-site, and marketing will be further restricted (advertisements had been allowed in bathrooms, for example.) A Harvard official said the new rules are meant to keep doctors from becoming or appearing as industry marketing agents. (The Boston Globe)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
July 13th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
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Heart attack mortality fell by nearly a half a percent last year at 4,500 hospitals that treat Medicare patients. And, facilities with the lowest and highest death rates saw similar declines, according to a new hospital report card by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Heart attack mortality fell from a national average of 16.6 percent last year to 16.2 percent, with a range among all facilities from 14.5 percent to 17.9 percent. CMS released the data as part of its hospital report card effort to spur better quality and outcomes through public reporting of recommended treatments. The agency added heart attack and heart failure mortality to the report card three years ago.
At issue now is what’s driving the figures: public reporting of hospital data driving improvement, or faster door-to-balloon-treatment times. Areas that do need to improve include lowering readmissions and getting people to the hospital faster when they have a heart attack. (USA Today)
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
