October 11th, 2009 by Bongi in Better Health Network, True Stories
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I recently read a post that reminded me of an incident. depending on which side of the eyelid you found yourself that day, it could have been funny…or not.
I was doing casualty sessions after hours. It was a way of making ends meet while I was specialising, but mostly I just hated it. Anyway one night, between the snotty noses and neurotic parents a patient actually came in with a casualty-worthy complaint. He had a small laceration on his forehead. We decided to glue it together with dermabond because it was so small. I decided to leave it to the sister. After all the unit was full to overflowing with snotty noses and paranoid parents that I was required to work through and get rid of.
After a while the sister came to me. She had terror written all over her face. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
October 9th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in News, True Stories
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Thanks to Glenn Reynolds over at InstaPundit, I learned that motor vehicle collisions with deer are up 18% compared to 5 years ago.
State Farm calculates the chances of a West Virginia vehicle striking a deer over the next 12 months at 1 in 39. Michigan remains second on that list. The likelihood of a specific vehicle striking a deer there is 1 in 78. Pennsylvania (1 in 94) and Iowa (1 in 104) remain third and fourth respectively. Montana (1 in 104) moved up three places to fifth.
Now, aside from the fact that deer present challenges to our driving friends in West Virgina, Michigan, and beyond – they are also the definitive host for Lyme disease. Ticks feed on the deer (who, by the way, become infected with Lyme spirochetes but suffer no symptoms) and on unsuspecting humans – passing the infection along. And so when deer populations increase, Lyme disease often does too. Read more »
October 8th, 2009 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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I have been in senior executive management in both managed care and a major hospital system. I find the hysteria over “reform” bitterly amusing because it is so misdirected.
The real problem with health care in America? Greed, indifference and incompetence, pure and simple. But not in the places everyone is pointing.
Insurer side
Insurance companies have to maximize their revenue because they answer to their boards. They are in no rush to fix claims systems that make copious errors and delay payments to providers. There are hundreds of claims processing software programs out there. Some are acceptable, some are useless. None are really good or efficient. And there is the human error factor. A careless mistake by an apathetic claims processor can create payment problems that could literally last for years. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
October 6th, 2009 by GruntDoc in Better Health Network, True Stories
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I sent a guy with a normal EKG to the cath lab. Let me tell you my side of the story.
Dude was minding his own business when he started having crushing, substernal chest pain. I see dude by EMS about 45 minutes into his chest pain. He’s had the usual: aspirin, 3 SL NTG’s an IV, a touch of MS (I can abbreviate here, as it’s not a medical record) and is continuing to have pain.
He describes it like you’d expect (elephants have a bad rep in the ED), and looks ill. Frankly, he looks like a guy having an MI. Sweaty, pale, uncomfortable, restless but not that ‘I’ve torn my aorta’ look. The having an MI look.
Every EM doc knows the look. I didn’t ask about risk factors.
On to the proof: the EKG. EMS EKG: normal. ?What? Yeah, maybe there’s some anterior J-point elevation, but not much else. Our EKG: Normal. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
October 5th, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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Ezra kindly responds to my post from Friday with a more reasoned stance than “just don’t commit malpractice.” His response, however, boils down to two main theses:
- Frivolous Lawsuits are not as common as generally thought, and
- Standardization can reduce the opportunity for error and thus decrease the frequency of medical malpractice suits.
Well, yes, but I’m not sure that addresses the typical physician’s complaints regarding the current med-mal system.
For example, the “frivolous” moniker is a pretty ambiguous term, especially to doctors’ loose understanding of legal terminology. To a physician, a “frivolous” case is one in which there was no error — where the standard of care was met, but perhaps the outcome was bad. Or to put it another way, doctors tend to feel that when they are vindicated in court, it’s prima facie evidence that the case was frivolous. This conviction is bolstered by the little-recognized fact that physicians win the vast majority of cases that actually go to trial, and the vast majority of claims filed do not result in a financial settlement. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
I recently read a post that reminded me of an incident. depending on which side of the eyelid you found yourself that day, it could have been funny…or not.
