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When Individuals Are In Control Of Their Health Care

I’m speaking [today] at the 23rd Annual Benefits Forum and Expo. This is one of the premier events in the health care benefits industry, and it’s a thrill for me to be the opening speaker on the “Health Care” track.

I’m presenting along with Charlie Salter, the VP of Benefits of ConAgra, one of our customers at Best Doctors. The talk Charlie and I will give is called “Real Results: When Individuals are in Control of their Health Care.”

As regular readers know, good things happen when people are in control of their care. They have a chance to make sure they’re not one of the 20 percent of people that end up with an incorrect diagnosis, or the more than 60 percent of people that end up with the wrong treatment. It’s the single most powerful thing you can do to make sure your health care experience is as good as it can possibly be. Read more »

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

Hospital Fined By OSHA For Workplace Violence Violations

From Campus Safety Magazine:

DANBURY, Conn. — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Danbury Hospital for failing to provide its employees with sufficient protection against workplace violence. The hospital has been fined $6,300.

The announcement comes on the heels of the March 2010 attack, when nurse Andy Hull was shot three times by 86-year-old Stanley Lupienski, a patient at the hospital.

Yes, $6,300 isn’t much money, I agree. But I’d imagine it’s not good for admin careers…

*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*

Healthcare Road Rage

Road and construction projects have stopped all over town, thanks to concerns about future healthcare benefits. From ChicagoBreakingNews.com:

Construction companies and labor unions are divided over healthcare packages. The unions seek a 15 percent annual benefits increase over three years, while contractors have countered with a 1 percent annual increase.

-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Heart Disease And Working Overtime

The European Heart Journal studied 6,000 British civil servants and followed them for 11 years. They found that working an extra 3 to 4 hours a day is associated with increased coronary heart disease.

The researchers controlled and adjusted for lifestyle, cardiac risk factors, and other factors that would skew the results, and still found that people who worked 3 to 4 extra hours a day had a 60 percent increase in risk for heart disease. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Will Large Employers Dump Healthcare Coverage?

Fortune magazine has made some news recently about the impact of healthcare reform on large employers:

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the healthcare coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

The only trouble? There’s no way these employers are seriously thinking about doing this.

I can understand why the employers would do the math. According to healthcare reform law, penalties for failing to provide health coverage are a small fraction of the cost of that coverage. But as with most everything else in healthcare, there’s much more to it than just a simple math equation. Here’s what I mean. Read more »

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

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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