October 28th, 2010 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Bedbugs, Dermatology, Dr. Felasfa Wodajo, Health Tips for Travelers, iMedicalApps, Infectious Disease, Infestation, Insect Bites, International Travel, iPhone App, Logical Images, New York, Organism-Borne Skin Diseases, Parasite Contamination, Parasitic Insects, Public Health, Skin Lesions, Skinsight, UK Guardian
No Comments »
Bedbugs are back. For many people, this is only slightly curious, since their understanding of bedbugs stops at the second half of the bedtime admonition: “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” But, for those others who have experienced a home bedbug infestation, it is a modern nightmare.
The tiny critters can hide in any furniture crevice or fabric fold and come out only in the wee hours of the night in search of their favorite food: human blood. Their bites cause intense itching which can last days to weeks and they can remain dormant and hide for months.
The cause of the recent resurgence is unknown. It does not seem to be paying any great regard to socioeconomic status nor to cleanliness. In metropolitan New York, it seems to have caused a minor panic, with families having to temporarily move out of their homes for toxic fumigation and thousands of dollars of clothes and artifacts being disposed of for fear of contamination. For a chilling recounting, check out this article in the UK Guardian: “How bedbugs invaded New York.”
Since so many skin afflictions are related to insect bites, the folks at Logical Images have just released Bedbugs ‘n Things, an iPhone app that describes the most common perpetrators of insect bites, identification by the appearance of the bite marks and recommended treatment. For bedbugs in particular, it goes further and gives a thorough set of guidelines for concerned traveler so they avoid bringing home uninvited travelers inside their luggage or clothes. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
October 27th, 2010 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Opinion
Tags: Disease By Choice, Happy Hospitalist, Health Insurance, Healthcare Costs, Hospitalist Medicine, Hypertension, Lifestyle Choices, Lifestyle Modifications, Medical Self-Care, Medicare, Out-Of-Pocket Healthcare Expenses, Patient Empowerment, Patient Motivation, Patient Self-Responsibility, Personal Choices, Personal Responsibility For Illness, When Patients Don't Take Their Pills
No Comments »
“Why should I take my blood pressure medication,” you ask? The more I do this thing called hospitalist medicine, the more I appreciate the power of lifestyle choices we all make.
Every opportunity I get I give my patients my smoking lecture and charge their insurance a CPT 99406. Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you and it causes lung cancer. Nobody knows all the other stuff. They’re always shocked.
Maybe it’s time for me to start a blood pressure lecture. I often have patients who say: “Why should I take my blood pressure medication?” They always answer their own question with the same answer: “I was feeling fine. I didn’t see a reason to take my blood pressure medication.”
You see, these are people with insurance. These are people with the Medicare National Bank. These are people who don’t have to lift a finger or a dime to pay any out-of-pocket expenses for their healthcare. And yet, they still lack the motivation to care for themselves, even with incredible resources out there these days to help them — things like great online blood pressure chart sites for home monitoring.
Whatever the reason — whether it’s ignorance, laziness, lack of motivation, lack of remembering, or selfishness — people just don’t take care of themselves. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
October 26th, 2010 by Jennifer Shine Dyer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Centers For Medicare And Medicaid Services, CMS, Communication Gap, Consumer Health Information, Doctor Patient Relationship, Doctor-Patient Communication, Dr. Don Berwick, Dr. Jennifer Shine Dyer, General Medicine, Hard-To-Understand Medical Information, Health Insurance, Health Literacy Action Plan, Healthcare reform, Kaiser Permanente, Medical Forms, Patient Education, Patient Handouts, Plain-English Documents, Poor Health Outcomes, Public Health, Reading Medical Materials, Training New Doctors, Type 2 Diabetes, UCSF, Understanding Health Information, University of California-San Francisco
No Comments »
When it comes to understanding medical information, even the most sophisticated patient may not be “smarter than a fifth grader.”
In one of the largest studies of the links between health literacy and poor health outcomes, involving 14,000 patients with type 2 diabetes, researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente found that more than half the patients reported problems learning about their condition and 40 percent needed help reading medical materials. The patients with limited health literacy were 30 to 40 percent more likely to experience hypoglycemia — dangerously low blood sugar that can be caused if medications are not taken as instructed — than those with an adequate understanding of medical information.
Now, federal and state officials are pushing public health professionals, doctors, and insurers to simplify the language they use to communicate with the public in patient handouts, medical forms, and health websites. More than two-thirds of the state Medicaid agencies call for health material to be written at a reading level between the fourth and sixth grades.
A new federal program called the Health Literacy Action Plan is promoting simplified language nationwide. And some health insurers, doctors’ practices, and hospitals have begun using specialized software that scans documents looking for hard-to-understand words and phrases and suggests plain-English replacements. Read more »
October 26th, 2010 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Interviews, News, Video
Tags: Barbara Ficarra, Consumer Health Information, Dr. Bill Crounse, Health In 30, Health Information Technology, Health Insurance Options, Health Tech Today, Healthcare reform, Healthcare.gov, HHS, Microsoft, Patient Engagement, President Obama, Private Health Insurance Plans, Todd Park, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
1 Comment »
Microsoft’s Dr. Bill Crounse Talks with Todd Park, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, on Health Tech Today
There’s a plethora of health information for consumers today. We are surrounded by smart meaningful material, but somehow it is easy to get lost in the maze of information. We get stuck navigating through it and we find it hard to obtain information that is right for us.
Even the most savvy health consumer may find it difficult to find information out about healthcare reform, insurance plans and the Affordable Care Act. But Dr. Bill Crounse, host of Health Tech Today talks with Todd Park, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about Healthcare.gov — a government website that makes it simple to find information on prevention, consumer rights, health insurance plans, and tools to assess the quality of care you’re getting.
Dr. Crounse calls Todd Park the “tech guru” behind the government website, charged with improving the nation’s health through the innovative use of technology and data. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
October 25th, 2010 by DavedeBronkart in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: British Medical Journal, Dave deBronkart, Dr. Marcia Angell, e-Patient Dave, e-Patients.net, Empowered Patients, General Medicine, Grant Funding, Inaccurate Studies, JoPM, Journal of Paticipatory Medicine, Lies, Medical Misinformation, Medical Publishing, Medical Research, Medical Science, Medical Studies, Misleading Scientific Conclusions, Peer-Reviewed Journals, Peter Frishauf, Research Grant, Research Studies, Richard Smith, Scientifically Weak, The Atlantic, Understanding Statistics
No Comments »
There’s an extraordinary new article in The Atlantic entitled “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.” It echos an excellent article in our Journal of Participatory Medicine (JoPM) a year ago by Richard W. Smith, 25-year editor of the British Medical Journal, entitled “In Search Of an Optimal Peer Review System.”
JoPM, Oct 21, 2009: “….most of what appears in peer-reviewed journals is scientifically weak.”
The Atlantic, Oct. 16, 2010: “Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong.”
JoPM 2009: “Yet peer review remains sacred, worshiped by scientists and central to the processes of science — awarding grants, publishing, and dishing out prizes.”
The Atlantic 2010: “So why are doctors — to a striking extent — still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice?”
Dr. Marcia Angell said something just as damning in December 2008 in the New York Review of Books: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Our post on Angell is here.)
What’s an e-patient to do? How are patients supposed to research if, as all three authorities say, much of what they read is scientifically weak? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
