When we think of people who enjoy the outdoors, the images in our minds are often of healthy and vibrant individuals — stereotypes are young athletes engaged in vigorous activities like climbing, biking, skiing, etc.
Of course, going outdoors is for everyone, and persons may be young or old, active or sedentary, and healthy or infirm. We carry our personal health status with us wherever we go, and the health habits we pursue in our daily lives form the framework for our participation in adventures, recreation and other outdoor activities.
Therefore, public health issues are important, be they adherence to precautions to avoid infectious diseases or lifestyle modifications to maintain optimal physical and mental health. Read more »
Vic Strecher, founder and head of the Center for Health Communications Research at University of Michigan, gave a TEDMED talk last year about what motivates people to change their self-abusing behavior. His unique experience with his daughter’s heart condition provides a background for how he approaches the topic of personal choice:
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
Hospitals today are aggressively buying physician practices in their local markets. Why? Hospitals want to solidify their referral base for inpatient and outpatient referrals as well as increase their negotiating power with insurance companies.
Over 50% of physician practices are now owned by hospitals according to the Medical Group Management Association. As such, many one-time private practitioners are now hospital employees.
Having done physician recruitment in a prior life, I know that before buying a practice that hospitals look at a variety of things including the practice’s patient volume, number of hospital referrals, estimates of patient turnover, and so on. One of the things we did not consider years ago in evaluating and buying a physician practice was the quality of the physician’s patient communication skills and supporting practices. I doubt that things have changed much since. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
In a recent Time magazine article, the author suggests, as many others have done in the past, that forcing patients to be more like customers and comparison shop will drive healthcare costs down. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The theory of consumer-driven healthcare goes like this: If there was more information about the costs of doctors, hospitals, imaging tests, and procedures, people would hunt around to find the best deal, stimulate competition, and drive pricing downward. Read more »
The large healthcare bill has some very good elements in it that should help the average American.
One is a provision that will kick in in 2011 that says all health insurers will need to spend 85 percent of the premium dollar on actually providing care. This means people may actually receive benefits they pay for. What a concept! Read more »
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
Hospitals today are aggressively buying physician practices in their local markets. Why? Hospitals want to solidify their referral base for inpatient and outpatient referrals as well as increase their negotiating power with insurance companies. 
