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Medicaid Requires Pre-Approval For Vitamins

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So know I hear that Medicaid preauthorization is required to administer vitamins in an outpatient setting.  One of the greatest things about hospitalist medicine is I can give just about any medication I think is clinically justified to my patients in the hospital.  I don’t have any doctor, Dr Nurse, or other third party insurance bureaucrat telling me I have to get preauthorization before my patient can receive care.  I have at my disposal a 24 hour all you can eat pharmacy.  Sometimes they don’t know what I’m ordering, and my Green Goddess doesn’t get filled.  But generally speaking, I get what I ask for.

That’s not the way it works in the frustrating outpatient world of clinical medicine. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist Blog*

Sensationalism And Misinformation About Diabetes: Oprah And Doctor Oz Are At It Again

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The Open Letter Mailbag.  Also looks like a sack of potatoes.  BUT LOW CARB ONES!  :pDear Oprah and Dr. Oz,

Diabetes is very expensive to manage and to treat the complications of, but what comes at an even higher cost is the damage of statements from a doctor, claiming that diabetes is reversible. I was diagnosed as a child, and my type 1 diabetes is not the result of any controllable factors. However, I have many friends who have type 2 diabetes who can make the same claim.

I can’t lie – I had a lot of hope about your episode regarding diabetes.  Even though it was billed as “the silent killer” and even though I knew you’d show the darkest side of diabetes-related complications possible to “sensationalize” this disease, I was holding out because I wanted this episode to be accurate. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

How Are Dieters Like Congress?

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I am mad at congress.

I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans, I am sick of healthcare being treated as a political football.  How much more of a crisis do we need before we actually start working on a solution?  Why does each party have to sit on its side of the aisle shooting spitballs at the other?  Each side has its pet issues that are tied to contributors, supporters, and lobbyists.  Each side will work to see the other side fail even if the other side is right.  Each side seems unable to do anything unless there is political value in it.  Power is more important than service, and power is a short-term project. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

Is Healthcare The Engine Of The US Economy?

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Commenting on the President’s budget, an editorial in the Times on Feb 2nd juxtaposed three of our nation’s dilemmas: the deficit, jobs and health care.

“President Obama got his priorities mostly right. The deficit, compared with what it could have been, is $120B. That’s a lot of money. But it’s not too much at a time of economic weakness, when deficit spending is needed to put Americans back to work.”

“Medicare and Medicaid will cost $788B; that should be another reminder of why the country needs health care reform.” Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at PHYSICIANS and HEALTH CARE REFORM Commentaries and Controversies*

Online Marketing And Scattered Audiences

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Nuclear weapon test Romeo (yield 11 Mt) on Bik...
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Was your company blogging ten years ago? If not then why? Google made it easy for you and now you’ve lost ten years of priceless link juice. Given the fragmentation of media in the last ten years, it’s clear now just how relatively little work you actually had to do back then. But that’s in the past. Still, I have bad news for you: what you have to do now is far harder than it was ten years ago. Let me explain.

CONTENT FRAGMENTATION AND SOCIAL DISTORTION

As the Web expands and proliferates novel media, messaging becomes increasingly diffuse and fragmented. The Web creates new opportunities and destroys old standards. It disrupts communication patterns, rattles social structures and ruptures attention spans. Ten years ago, you could leverage your audience-building skills for acquiring and retaining customers. You could even have learned and mastered a skill which traditional marketing didn’t really demand: conversational aptitude. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

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…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

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…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

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…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

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…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

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…

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