November 11th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: Advice On Patient Care, Biomedical Community Websites, Doctors on the Internet, Dr. Bertalan Mesko, General Medicine, Internet-Based Healthcare, medCrowd, Medical Crowdsourcing, Medical Peers' Professional Opinions, Medicine and the Internet, Online Medical Communities, Physician Social Network, Science Roll, Social Medical Community, Social Networking For Doctors
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medCrowd is the 52nd in my list of biomedical community sites and maybe the first one using crowdsourcing. From medCrowd:
Perhaps, you have a patient with a rare condition and you don’t know the best treatment. Or you are treating a patient and you have heard there have been recent developments in the field, but you are not sure how these actually affect your patient’s day-to-day management.
The problem is finding the best solution for your patient. What you need is help finding it.
medCrowd enables you to find the best solution for your patient by collecting your peers’ professional opinions, simply and in one place. This is called crowdsourcing.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
November 10th, 2010 by Richard Cooper, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
Tags: CHSI, Colorado, Community Health Status Indicators, Dr. Richard Cooper, Ethnic Minorities, Family Practice, General Medicine, Grand Junction, Health Affairs, Health Outcomes, Healthcare Economics, Healthcare Politics, Healthcare reform, Hospital Rankings, Mesa County, Model Medical Community, Poverty, Primary Care, Rankings in Healthcare, St. Mary's Hospital, The Poor, U.S. Healthcare System
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In a high-profile paper in the September issue of Health Affairs, Thorson and coworkers showed that the care at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, CO was superior to that of 20 other unnamed hospitals. Grand Junction is, of course the smal town in SW Colorado that became famous when President Obama visited there during the health care reform debates during the summer of 2009, and here’s what he said:
“Hello, Grand Junction! It’s great to be back in Southwest Colorado. Here in Grand Junction, you know that lowering costs is possible if you put in place smarter incentives; if you think about how to treat people, not just illnesses. That’s what the medical community in this city did; now you are getting better results while wasting less money.”
So, Grand Junction, a town of 58,000 people located in SE Colorado, where there are virtually no blacks and fewer Native Americans but where family practice rules, is supposed to be the model for the nation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at PHYSICIANS and HEALTH CARE REFORM Commentaries and Controversies*
November 10th, 2010 by AndrewSchorr in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Andrew Schorr, Cancer of the Blood Cells, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, CLL, Empowered Patients, Helping Others, Hematology, Inspiring Others, Jill Clayburgh, Oncology, Patient Empowerment, Patient Power, Patient Privacy, Patient Responsibility, Responsibility Of Survivorship, Responsibility To Others, Sharing Your Health Issues
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This past weekend Oscar-nominated Hollywood and Broadway actress Jill Clayburgh died at age 66. The cause was chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), which she had been fighting, privately, for 21 years.
As you may recall, I, too, have CLL and I was diagnosed at the same age, 45. For me, I am 16 and a half years into that “battle” although, fortunately, I have been feeling very good in the ten years since I received treatment as part of a breakthrough clinical trial. While I have no symptoms and take no medicine I do not consider myself cured.
So when someone like Ms. Clayburgh dies of CLL after 21 years, I can’t help but wonder if the disease will shorten my life too, even if I feel good now. That brings up the question of what do we do with the time we have when we know we have had a serious diagnosis and the clock may be ticking for us — or not? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
November 9th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: ACP Internist, American College Of Physicians, Anti-Viral Medication, Antibodies, Common Cold, Gastroenteritis, Gastroenterology, Infectious Disease, Last Line of Defense Against Infection, Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Reducing Infection, Ryan DuBosar, TRIM21, U.K., United Kingdom, Viral Diseases, Viruses, Winter Vomiting
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Antibodies can fight viruses from within infected cells, reported researchers who now believe that treatments could be applied to viral diseases like the common cold, “winter vomiting,” and gastroenteritis.
Previously, scientists thought that antibodies could only reduce infection by attacking viruses outside cells and by blocking their entry into cells. Once inside the cell, the body’s only defense was to destroy the cell. But protection mediated by antibodies doesn’t end at the cell membrane. It continues inside the cell to provide a last line of defense against infection.
Researchers at the U.K.’s Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology showed that cells possess a cytosolic IgG receptor, tripartite motif-containing 21 (TRIM21), which binds to antibodies with a higher affinity than any other IgG receptor in the human body. Antibodies remain attached when viruses enter healthy cells. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
November 9th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
Tags: ADT, Androgen Deprivation Therapy, Clinical Guidelines, Dr. Vahakn Shahinian, Drug Prescribing By Doctors, Evidence Based Medicine, Financial Incentive To Treat, Gary Schwitzer, GnRH, Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone, HealthNewsReview.org, Hormone Therapy, Inappropriate Therapy, Inappropriate Use, Incentives For Care, Increased Utilization, Influenced Delivery of Care, Medical Uncertainty, Medicare Modernization Act, MedPageToday, New England Journal of Medicine, Overprescribing, Physician Drug Prescribing Habits, Physician Reimbursement, Prostate Cancer, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Unnecessary Medication, Unnecessary Treatment, Unneeded Medical Care
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Take medical uncertainty. Add financial incentive to treat. Voila! Increased utilization. Now take away financial incentive to treat. Guess what you get?
MedPageToday explains, in the case of hormone therapy for prostate cancer:
Medicare accomplished what clinical guidelines and evidence-based medicine couldn’t: it reduced unnecessary use of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in prostate cancer.
Inappropriate use decreased by almost 30% from 2003 to 2005, following enactment of the Medicare Modernization Act, which lowered physician reimbursement for ADT. Appropriate use of ADT did not change during the same time period, according to an article in the Nov. 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Our findings suggest that reductions in reimbursement may influence the delivery of care in a potentially beneficial way, with even the modest [reimbursement] changes in 2004 associated with a substantial decrease in the use of inappropriate therapy,” Vahakn B. Shahinian, MD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and co-authors wrote in conclusion.
“The corollary is that reimbursement policies should be carefully considered to avoid providing incentives for care for which no clear benefit has been established. The extreme profitability of the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists during the 1990s probably contributed to the rapid growth in the use of ADT for indications that were not evidence-based.”
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
