November 20th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Adults who received care from a medical home in 11 Westernized countries were less likely to report medical errors and were happier with their care, according to a new Commonwealth Fund international survey.
The 2011 survey included more than 18,000 ill adults in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It included people who reported they were in fair or poor health, had surgery or had been hospitalized in the past two years, or had received care for a serious or chronic illness, injury or disability in the past year. The vast majority had seen multiple physicians.
A medical home was defined as patients reporting a regular source of care that knows their medical history, is accessible and helps coordinate care received from other providers. Results were published in Health Affairs.
Sicker adults in the U.S. were the most likely to Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
October 5th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Research
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Though one should always use an EpiPen that is not expired, it is better to use an expired EpiPen to treat anaphylaxis than to do nothing at all.
Some Canadian researchers studied expired EpiPen auto-injectors 1 to 90 months past the expiration date.
What they found was that the older the EpiPen, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
September 17th, 2011 by John Di Saia, M.D. in Opinion, True Stories
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Looking to obtain a break on my practice’s botulinum toxin of choice (Myobloc) I yielded to curiosity and ordered from a Canadian Pharmacy…Northwest Pharmacy.com. I figured we would try to break the price point of this popular product. Thankfully I used my credit card.
Botulinum toxin must be kept cold to retain its potency. We traditionally receive this product on dry ice and have never had much of a problem with effectiveness. I was promised by the pharmacy rep that this product would arrive cold within 2-5 days of shipping. Only after I gave her my credit card information did she share with me that the product would be coming from Great Britain. This was not welcome news. I was reassured that the product would be cold and usable.
The product arrived Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*
August 20th, 2011 by BobDoherty in Health Policy, Research
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If you ask internists and their patients what makes them bonkers about the U.S. health care system, paperwork will top the list. Many will point to the federal government as the culprit, citing the many forms, RAC audits, pre-and post-payment reviews, documentation and coding guidelines, HIPAA privacy rules, quality measurement and reporting, Part D drug formularies, and HIT meaningful use requirements imposed by Medicare and other federal programs. (Some put more of the blame on private insurers and pharmacy benefit managers.)
But if paperwork is associated with the degree of government involvement in health care, then Canada–a single payer system–should have more of it than the United States, right? Think again.
A new Health Affairs survey of U.S. physicians and practice administrators found that U.S. physicians spend Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*
June 3rd, 2011 by ErikDavis in Quackery Exposed, True Stories
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The team of nutritionists at D’avignon Digestive Health Centre on Danforth Avenue in Toronto are an impressive bunch — just consider their qualifications:
- Louise Comtois – CNP, RNCP, Colon Therapist
- Heidi Horowitz – CNP, RNCP, Live Cell Analyst
- Marnie Ryan – CNP, Colon Therapist
- Natasha Audette – RHN, Colon Therapist
- Jane Sloan – CNP, NNCP, RhA
CNP, RNCP, RHN, NNCP. I single out D’avignon only because they came up at the top of my Google search, but the story is consistent across the nutritionist community — there are an awful lot of letters next to the names of practitioners. So what exactly do they all mean? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North » Erik Davis*
