November 10th, 2010 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: Blogging, Doctors, Doctors and Social Media, Ethics, Facebook, Healthcare Professionals, Healthcare Social Media, Medblogging, Pediatrics, Physicians, Seattle Children's Hospital, SeattleMamaDoc, Social Media, Twitter, Why blog?
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Wendy Sue Swanson, MD
Most physicians still don’t see the need to blog, Tweet, or spend time on Facebook. They groan when you ask if they participate on social media platforms. “I’m too busy seeing patients,” they say, “and why would I expose myself to legal risk? Someone might think that I’m giving medical advice, or disclosing personal information about patients online.”
While these fears are pervasive, early adopters of social media like Dr. Wendy Swanson (and yours truly, by the way) have a different view. Not only should physicians become active in social media, but they have an ethical responsibility to do so.
Wendy is a pediatrician, mother, and blogger at Seattle Children’s Hospital. My friend “ePatient Dave” deBronkart recently encouraged me to watch an excellent video of Wendy speaking at the Swedish Symposium 2010 conference. I’d like to summarize Wendy’s pro-social media arguments for you here, with the hope of luring more of my peers to join the conversation online! Read more »
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 10th, 2010 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion
Tags: Barbara Ficarra, Clinical Empathy, Doctor-Patient Communication, Dr. Jodi Halpern, Empathy, Empowered Patients, Family Medicine, Health In 30, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Patient Care, Patient Empowerment, Patient Engagement, Patient-Physician Relationship, Personalized Medicine, Primary Care, Quality Patient Care, The Decision Tree, Thomas Goetz
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In my recent post on KevinMD, “Deeply Connect and Engage Your Patients With Empathy,” I write about how empathy is essential to help empower our patients: “It is with empathy that we can engage and empower our patients.”
Doctors and nurses are leaders in health care.
Being a great leader means having a clear vision, mission or goal. It means being committed, and knowing how to listen and communicate, but it involves much more. It’s about having heart, empathy, and an uplifting spirit.
I value and respect a well written post by Thomas Goetz, author of The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine recently published on KevinMD, “How can doctors successfully engage their patients?” Goetz writes about “Five things they should seek to give every patient, strategies to tap the most underutilized resource in medicine, their patient,” however I feel the most critical ingredient is missing, empathy.
Empathy
It is with empathy that we can engage and empower our patients. With empathy and heart we can help our patients feel good, valued and respected. Empathy allows us to engage and empower our patients to take charge of their health and well-being. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
November 9th, 2010 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: America's Health Insurance Plans, Big Health Insurers, Dr. Lucy Hornstein, Election 2010, Family Medicine, General Medicine, Government-run Healthcare, Healthcare Insurance Reform, Healthcare Politics, Keep Your Health Insurance, Meaningful Healthcare At Reasonable Cost, Musings of a Dinosaur, Primary Care, U.S. Healthcare System
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Forgive me for being a little late to the healthcare insurance reform discussion. I was busy, y’know, providing actual healthcare to sick people while that whole rigamarole was going on. But that one sentence, uttered over and over by everyone from the President on down, always stuck in my craw. At long last, I’m finally able to properly articulate my response.
Trying to pass sweeping health insurance reform legislation while telling people that, of course, they “can keep their current plans if they want” is like legislating tough new laws against wifebeating and assuring women that, of course, they can stay with their husbands if they like.
No one tries to force victims of domestic violence to leave their abusers, but they do try to help them understand that they have options, and that they don’t deserve to be treated so poorly. I firmly believe that people who like their current insurance plans probably have several things in common. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
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*
