December 17th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: ACP Internist, American College Of Physicians, Asthma, Bariatric Surgery, Best Practice In Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Common Health Conditions, Common Medical Procedures, Comparing Healthcare Systems, Cutting Healthcare Costs, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Denver Health, Depression, Diabetes, Geisinger Health System, General Medicine, Healthcare Collaboration, Heart Failure, Improving the Healthcare System, Intermountain Healthcare, Knee Replacement, Labor And Delivery, Large Healthcare Systems, Mayo Clinic, Obesity, Ryan DuBosar, Spine Surgery, The Dartmouth Institute, Weight Loss Surgery
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Six of the nation’s leading healthcare systems will collaborate on outcomes, quality, and costs across eight common conditions or procedures in an effort to share best practices and reduce costs with the entire healthcare system.
Cleveland Clinic, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Denver Health, Geisinger Health System, Intermountain Healthcare, and Mayo Clinic will to share data among their 10 million patients with The Dartmouth Institute, which will analyze the data and report back to the collaborative and the rest of the country, according to a press release.
The collaborative will focus on eight conditions and treatments for which costs have been increasing rapidly and for which there are wide variations in quality and outcomes across the country. The first three conditions to be studies are knee replacement, diabetes, and heart failure. They will be followed by asthma, weight loss surgery, labor and delivery, spine surgery, and depression.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
December 17th, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Dr. Kevin Pho, General Medicine, Healthcare Lawsuits, KevinMD, Mediation, Medical Errors, Medical Litigation, Medical Malpractice, Medicine and Legal Issues, Patient Compensation, Settlement, Wall Street Journal Health Blog, When Patients Sue Doctors, WSJ
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Mediation has been cited as a way to lower the cost of litigation and compensate injured patients without going through the ordeal of a trial. In a post from the WSJ Health Blog, the problem is that few doctors are participating.
That’s a problem. A study from a law journal looked at 31 cases that went to mediation and found that,
of those cases, 16 were settled at mediation, 5 settled afterward and 10 weren’t settled. While defense attorneys were less likely to agree to mediation than plaintiff attorneys, lawyers who did participate reported satisfaction with the process, as did “plaintiffs, hospital representatives and insurers,” the study finds.
The authors write that in no cases did physicians participate in the mediation.
Many times, patients resort to suing their physicians simply to find out what happened. In a recent post here, attorney Brian Nash provided perspective from the legal standpoint, and in the comments (now 150+ strong), you can see the dissonance between the malpractice viewpoints of the physician, attorney, and patient. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
December 16th, 2010 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Better Health Network, Humor, Medical Art, Opinion, Research
Tags: Acupuncture, Alan Sokal, BMJ, British Medical Journal, Buttocks, CAM, Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, Cultural Studies, Dr. Harriet Hall, Dr. John McLachlan, Hoax, Homunculus, Integrative Medicine, Medical Humor, Medical Prank, Postmodern Philosophy, Reflexology, SBM, Science Based Medicine, Social Text
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In 1996, Alan Sokal got a bogus paper published in the journal Social Text. It was a parody full of meaningless statements in the jargon of postmodern philosophy and cultural studies. The editors couldn’t tell the difference between Sokal’s nonsense and the usual articles they publish.
Now a British professor of medical education, Dr. John McLachlan, has perpetrated a similar hoax on supporters of so-called “integrative” medicine. He reports his prank in an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
After receiving an invitation to submit papers to an International Conference on Integrative Medicine, he invented a ridiculous story about a new form of reflexology and acupuncture with points represented by a homunculus map on the buttocks. He claimed to have done studies showing that
responses are stronger and of more therapeutic value than those of auricular or conventional reflexology. In some cases, the map can be used for diagnostic purposes.
The organizers asked him to submit an abstract. He did. In the abstract he said he would present only case histories, testimonies, and positive outcomes, since his methods did not lend themselves to randomized controlled trials; and he suggested that his “novel paradigm” might lead to automatic rejection by closed minds. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
December 16th, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
Tags: Athlete's Health, Bluetooth, Cambridge Consultants, Drinking Frequency, Drinking Quantity, External Temperature, Health and Smartphones, Health Apps, Hydration Levels, i-dration, Medgadget, Real-Time Hydration, Sports Medicine, Water Bottle
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Imagine a water bottle that knows how hard and how far you are running, how much you’re drinking, what’s the outside temperature, and, based on all these variables, the device calculates when you need to have a drink. Cambridge Consultants have developed the i-dration bottle that does just that.
From the press release:
Intelligent sensors in the i-dration bottle can be used to monitor the external temperature, drinking frequency and quantity, and this data is then sent via Bluetooth to its user’s smartphone. The phone’s inbuilt accelerometer and gyroscope can measure exercise levels, and by “fusing” the data from a heart rate chest-band and information pre-entered using the smartphone interface (such as height, age and weight), the application can perform an assessment of a user’s hydration levels. The i-dration bottle then responds accordingly by flashing a blue light if the athlete needs to drink more. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
December 15th, 2010 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
Tags: Associated Professional Sleep Societies, Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway, Dr. Louise O'Brien, Fetal Health, Gestational Diabetes, Glucose Screening, Habitual Snorers, Healthy Pregnancy, Heart Attack Risk, High Blood Pressure, High Risk Pregnancy, Hypertension, Maternal-Fetal Specialist, Neurology, Nonsnorers, OB/GYN, Obesity, Obstetrics And Gynecology, Patient Education, Pregnancy and Childbirth, Pregnant Women, Sleep Apnea, Snoring, Stroke Risk, TAPSS, University of Michigan
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A recent medical study reported a fairly unique finding: Pregnant women who snore frequently are at an increased risk for developing gestational diabetes.
The Associated Professional Sleep Societies (TAPSS) reported that 24 percent of habitual snorers had an official diagnosis of gestational diabetes as opposed to 17 percent of nonsnorers. As gestational diabetes affects 4 to 6 percent of all pregnant women, this study is significant according to Louise O’Brien, Ph.D. who is associated with the department of neurology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Snoring is nothing new among women but it becomes more pronounced with the onset of menopause or weight gain. Approximately one-third of all women in the U.S. are obese and at risk for snoring and sleep apnea. Being overweight can cause bulky throat tissue which then physically blocks air flow.
Up until the publication of the University of Michigan study, the health risks associated with snoring included greater than ten seconds of interruptions of breathing, frequent waking from sleep, potential strain on the heart which then results in hypertension, increased risk of heart attacks, and stroke. Now the tide has changed. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
