July 25th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Research
Tags: Communication Is Key, ED, Emergency Department, Emergency Medicine, Emergency Room, ER, Kept Informed, Long Wait Is Okay, Long Waits for Patients, Patient Satisfaction, Press Ganey Associates Inc., Satisfied Patients, U.S. Hospitals, Waiting Room
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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 25th, 2010 by Debra Gordon in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Better Medical Care, Cost Vs. Quality in Medicine, Denied Healthcare, Doctors Are Falliable, Enough Is Enough, Evidence Based Medicine, Evidence-Based Guidelines, Expensive Treatments Are Best, General Medicine, Health Affairs, Healthcare Quagmire, Healthcare reform, More Care Is Better, Retain Healthcare Consumers, Substandard Care, US Healthcare
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A new survey in the journal Health Affairs synthesizes nearly everything I believe is wrong with the U.S. healthcare system. The survey found that patients believe that more care is better, that the latest and most expensive treatments are the best, that none of their doctors provide substandard care, and that evidence-based guidelines are a pretext for denying them the care they need and deserve.
Sigh.
Until we can retrain consumers (that would be all of us) to understand that in medicine more is NOT better, that evidence-based guidelines may translate in some instances into less but better care, that doctors are falliable and should be questioned, and that the cost of a treatment has nothing to do with the quality, we will never get out of the healthcare quagmire in which we find ourselves.
Your thoughts?
*This blog post was originally published at A Medical Writer's Musings on Medicine, Health Care, and the Writing Life*
July 25th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
Tags: $7.1 Million, Bioethics, Birth Center, Buffalo, Carl Elliott, Catering To Patients, Childbirth, Economic Disincentive, Gary Thaden, Infection Rate, Labor And Delivery, Luxury Hotel Amenities, Maternity Ward, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minnesota Mechanical Contractors Association, Multi-tasking, New Generation of Patients, New Mothers, Obstetrics And Gynecology, Star Tribune, State-Of-The-Art, Steve Miles, U.S. Hospitals, Upscale Medicine
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Here’s the Minneapolis Star Tribune headline: “Buffalo birthing center has the latest amenities.” An excerpt:
Starting in August, new mothers will have a chance to multi-task in style in Buffalo, Minn.
The local hospital is unveiling its new birth center, where every patient room will be equipped with an iPod docking station, a flat-screen TV and DVD player, a soaking tub, rocking chair and refrigerator — oh, and a place for the baby to sleep, too.
Buffalo Hospital has spent $7.1 million to turn its old labor and delivery unit into a state-of-the-art facility to appeal to a new generation of patients.
At maternity wards around the country, that increasingly means catering to patients and families as if they’re at “a luxury hotel,” as the Buffalo Hospital website puts it.
And some smart readers have reacted. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
July 24th, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
Tags: Academic Sites, Commercial Sites, Family Medicine, General Medicine, Health and the Internet, Health Content, Health Information on the Web, Health On The Net Foundation, HON, Individual Sites, Internal Medicine, Internet-Based Health Information, Medicine and Healthcare Online, Online Health Information, Patients in the Internet, Primary Care, Quality Health Information, SBM, Science Based Medicine, WebMD
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Recently some Science-Based Medicine (SBM) colleagues (David Gorski, Kimball Atwood, Harriet Hall, Rachel Dunlop) and I gave two workshops on how to find reliable health information on the Web. As part of my research for this talk I came across this recent and interesting study that I would like to expand upon further: Quality and Content of Internet-Based Information for Ten Common Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Diagnoses.
The fact that the article focuses on orthopedic diagnoses is probably not relevant to the point of the article itself, which was to assess the accuracy of health information on the Web. They looked at 10 orthopedic diagnoses and searched on them using Google and Yahoo, and then chose the top results. They ultimately evaluated 154 different sites with multiple reviewers for quality of content and also for their HON rating. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
July 24th, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: American Users, Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, East Coast, Harvard Medical School, Health of Americans, How Words Make People Feel, Mood of the Country, Mood Scores, Nation's Mood, National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, Northeastern University, Psychiatry, Psychological Health, Psychological Word-Rating System, Psychology, Public Mood, Tweets, Twitter, U.S. Health, West Coast, Word Analysis
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A team from Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School has been analyzing words used in tweets by American users in an attempt to gauge the public mood around the country.
What they discovered was that users on the West Coast seem to be quite a bit jollier than those on the East Coast. It’s not clear whether the data was collected during the summer or winter months and accordingly adjusted, for that surely would affect the readings.
Researchers were able to infer the mood of each tweet using a psychological word-rating system developed by the National Institute of Mental Health’s Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention. The system ranks words based on how they make people feel. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
