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Should You Give Your Physician A Gift?

December 30th, 2009 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion

Tags: Culture, Dispensible, Doctor, Gift, Gifting, M.D., Physician, Relationship Change

I used to get lots of gifts from patients during the holidays.  Not so much anymore.

I’m more patient-centered than ever.  And the older I get the more relaxed I get with my patients.  I’d like to think
that I’m more likeable.  But still fewer gifts than ten or fifteen years ago.

So what gives?

Times have changed.

Doctors nowadays are dispensable.  If a patient doesn’t like what they’ve got they can move on.  But this is probably a good thing.   Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

Reflections On The State Of Online Healthcare

December 30th, 2009 by eDocAmerica in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion

Tags: Doctor Patient Relationship, eDocAmerica, Email, Internal Medicine, Online Healthcare, Technology

As 2009 draws to a close, the US health care system is ailing and quasi-reform proposals are frantically being debated and voted on. Although some type of reform is likely in 2010, we will have only scratched the surface of what still needs to be changed.

One particular aspect relates to the ease with which patients can use the internet to improve their health care. At eDocAmerica, we’ve been using the internet to improve the health of our users for over a decade. Ten years ago, I predicted that patients would routinely use internet messaging to interact with the health care industry by now, but I was wrong. Although, increasingly, web 2.0 approaches are providing innovative communication and health management tools for patients, the growth of interaction between patients and doctors has been much slower than I predicted it would be. And the future still remains cloudy. The issues are nothing new and include: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at eDocAmerica*

Do EMRs Increase The Risk Of Being Sued?

December 29th, 2009 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Opinion

Tags: Documentation, EMR, Internal Medicine, Legal, Liability, Medical Malpractice, Technology

Doctors are pushed to adopt electronic medical records harder than ever before.

However, costs are often the prohibitive obstacle, and whether the current generation of EMRs improve patient care remains in question.

But what about liability? Surely, more complete, legible medical records would reduce the risk of being sued. Right?

Well, it’s not that cut and dry. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Warning: Graphic Health Politics

December 28th, 2009 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion

Tags: Costs, Finance, Graph, Healthcare reform, Healthcare Systems, International, Life Expectancy, Right Care, US Spending

A friend sent me this interesting graph from the blog of the National Geographic.

You’ll have to click on it to see a bigger version.  It captures a lot of data very elegantly on a single graph–  Professor Tufte would love it.

What it shows is health care spending per person across a group of countries, along with life expectancies, average number of doctor visits per year, and whether a country has a system of universal health coverage.  Although putting all of this data on one graph is novel, the graph makes what by now is one of the oldest political arguments for reform – for all the money they United States spends on health care we don’t get a good deal.

So why blog about this graph? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Orac Needs A Movie Deal. . .

December 28th, 2009 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Humor, Opinion

Tags: celebrity, Health, Misinformation, Paul Offit, Science Based Medicine, USA Today

. . .or a spread in Playgirl.

Huh?

Orac has a nice essay today for your Christmas Eve reading about a USA Today article yesterday by Liz Szabo that called out celebrities for their pseudoscientific proclamations and advice entitled, “Are celebrities crossing the line on medical advice?”

So that’s where I came up with this thought: it would be great if some folks who talked science-based sense became celebrities so they’d at least have the same platform to counter people like Jenny McCarthy. On his comment thread, I suggested that we can only hope that Orac someday gets a movie deal and acquires the public celebrity that some of these jokers have. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*