December 7th, 2009 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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I got an email today laying out the reality of our current health care debate. Is it a crisis of culture or a health care crisis. I am a firm believer in taking responsibility for one’s actions. I believe those who chose not to practice healthy lifestyles should pay more for the consequences of their actions than those who do. I believe the solution to our health care finance quandary lies not in controlling the cost of treating disease, but rather in upholding the personal responsibility all Americans have to themselves and their country.
What does the distribution of health care dollars look like among the American population? While we know that 50% of our population spends only 3% of health care dollars, we also know that 50% of our health care dollars are spent by 5% of our population, a population of chronic disease sufferers who’s diseases are, by and large, a direct result of the personal decisions they chose to make on a daily basis. For the most part, genetics alone is no longer an excuse. We knew very well that lifestyle directly affects the expression of disease by genes. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist Blog*
December 6th, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, True Stories
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Crummy shift the other night: 23 patients in eight hours, and 21 of them were painful. For me, that is, not necessarily for the patients. Lots of worried well, influenza, some minor injuries and a few chronic pain players. Not a single sick one in the lot. One particularly irksome case was a chronic pain patient dumped on our ER from a neighboring ER, complete with discharge instructions reading “Go to (name of our hospital).” So by the end of my shift I was pretty well burnt out. But the last two patients put an interesting perspective on the night.
The first was a 99 year-old man. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
December 6th, 2009 by GruntDoc in Better Health Network, Humor, True Stories
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I like living on the edge of built-up civilization, but it means our little development has one electric line coming in.
Today it wanted some time off, fortunately only 4 hours. Didn’t get that cold inside, but having an all electric house has some drawbacks in that circumstance.
My wife figured out the electric-less coffee, thankfully.
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
December 4th, 2009 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, True Stories
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The past few days have shown me some small pleasures of my practice. I spent about 20 minutes sewing together the hand and forehead of a sweet elderly lady who fell down while being evacuated from a nursing home fire. Her skin, like tissue, came together in fragile folds; my hands moved easily with the needle and thread thanks to so many years of practice, so many hundreds of feet of sutures placed. Although I must admit that my cataract-stricken right eye left my depth perception imperfect in a way that bonded me to her. (Sitting here, with no reading glasses, I can close my left eye and all I see is a hint of lines on the page, but no letters.)
My sweet little lady smiled at me, nervously, tentatively, but was comforted at the prospect of going back to her bed. Her son eased her fear with jokes, then took her home. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
December 2nd, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, True Stories
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My father in law is 83 years old. He has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and occasional “senior moments.” He rarely complains about anything, and spends most of his time doing household chores, playing with grand kids, and watching TV. So it was with some degree of concern that I raised my head from my morning cereal when George announced at the breakfast table that he was having chest pain.
I looked at him with narrowed, clinical eyes and began asking the usual rule out MI type questions – did it feel like pressure? Where was the pain exactly? When did it start? Does anything make it better or worse? Does it radiate down your arm or up your jaw? Have you ever had this pain before? How severe is it on a scale of 1-10? Read more »
