January 14th, 2010 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, Research
Tags: Bone Density, Boniva, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Exercise, Fractures, Harm, Merck, Osteopenia, Osteoporosis, Risk Benefit Ratio, Sally Field, Side Effects, Vitamin D
1 Comment »
A recent story on NPR accused the drug manufacturer Merck of inventing a disease, osteopenia, in order to sell its drug Fosamax. It showed how the definition of what constitutes a disease evolves, and the role that drug companies can play in that evolution.
Osteoporosis is a reduction in bone mineral density that leads to fractures. The most serious are hip fractures, which require surgery, have complications like blood clots, and carry a high mortality. Many of those who survive never walk again. Vertebral fractures are common in the osteoporotic elderly and are responsible for dowager’s hump and loss of height. There is also an increased risk of wrist and rib fractures. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
January 13th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: Emergency Medicine, Narcotics, Popularity, Saying no to drug seekers, Unnecessary Testing
1 Comment »
This is my column in EM News for the month of January. Sometimes, being a physician means saying no and being disliked. It’s not a popularity contest! It’s about doing the right thing.
Most of us went into medicine because, in addition to being good students, we wanted to help people. How many oceans of ink and forests of paper have been used explaining that point to admissions committees we’ll never know. Suffice it to say, it felt very good when our professors wrote us glowing letters of recommendation. Of course, we were also saying, “I want to feel good about helping people. I want the recognition associated with the act of helping!” Premedical students, medical students, and physicians tend to be those people who desire accolades and who are naturally well-suited to attaining them. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
January 13th, 2010 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: 30 Day Readmission Rate, Addiction Medicine, Alcoholism, Bounce Backs, Cause of Readmissions, CHF, Diabetes, Hospital Readmissions, Internal Medicine, Reducing Hospital Readmissions, Why
3 Comments »
Bouncing back to the hospital refers to patients who were discharged from the hospital but return during some defined period of time. This will become important as insurance companies, including CMS, stop paying for patients who are readmitted within some defined period for the same condition. In medical circles, we usually refer to this as the 30 day readmission rate.
When hospitalist groups were first coming on the scene and were showing reduced length of stay, many folks falsely believed that hospitalists must have a higher percentage of patients bouncing back into the hospital. I have yet to see any research that indicates such trend every existed. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist Blog*
January 12th, 2010 by KerriSparling in Better Health Network, Medblogger Shout Outs, Opinion, Patient Interviews
Tags: Bloggers, Blogging, Diabetes, ePatients, Exploitation, FTC, Harrassment, Industry, Influence, Patient Bloggers, PR, PR Professionals, Press Releases, Social Media
No Comments »
Quick post to the PR professionals in the healthcare sphere:
When someone dies, it is terrible tragedy. That person leaves behind a family, loved ones, and – especially when they die young – their future. If someone dies as a result of diabetes, or due to complications from diabetes, or from something else entirely but they happened to have diabetes, and you decide to exploit their death to gain pageviews for your website? (See also: Brittany Murphy, Casey Johnson)
Come on.
There’s a difference between passing on information that could help people improve their lives, and then there’s pure, TMZ-style exploitation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
January 11th, 2010 by DrRich in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: Amiodarone, Antiarrhythmic Drugs, Britain, Cardiac Arrhythmia, Cardiac Electrophysiology, Cardiology, Comparative Effectiveness, Dronedarone, NICE
No Comments »
As has been pointed out (pointedly) to DrRich, we do not have death panels in the United States. And indeed, considering that we’re not conducting military tribunals for Islamist terrorists who have tried (or succeeded in) killing and maiming as many of us as possible, it seems relatively unlikely that we’d assemble death panels (which sound even less due-process-friendly than military tribunals) for American patients.
What we will have, however, is a federally-mandated assembly, body, committee, commission, board, diet, parliament, or posse (but not a panel) of experts which will carefully evaluate all the objective clinical evidence regarding a particular medical treatment, and make “recommendations” to doctors about whether or when to use that treatment. The model which frequently has been offered up for our consideration, as we contemplate the workings of such a non-death-panel, is the British National Institute for Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
