August 15th, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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“Live the questions now. Perhaps then, without hardly noticing, you will live along some distant day into the answers.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
With the tectonic shifts underway in America’s healthcare delivery model, doctors influence in shaping the forces ahead seems to be dwindling.
It started with the entire healthcare bill drafted by a team of some undisclosed, very influential academics, lawyers and policy wonks adept at social security and tax laws and was morphed by corporate and hospital interests with huge political and financial influence. Before the legislation was even read, the American Medical Association had stamped their seal of approval, worried that “they’d be eaten if they weren’t at the table.” As a result, a significant number, no, I’ll stick my neck out here and say a majority of doctors, had little to do with shaping healthcare in America as we will come to know it.
But I would also bet that most of Americans want doctors with their best interests at heart to be integral participants in shaping our new healthcare system.
So now, as doctors align themselves with a single health system employer so they can beg for a portion of the government’s soon-to-be-implemented “bundled” (bungled?) payment scheme to healthcare systems for episodes of care, how will doctors have any meaningful voice at improving healthcare for our patients and ourselves? Enter social media. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
August 15th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, Research, True Stories
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It is summer camp season for kids and well-run camps require a medical history and record of prescription medications that the child is taking. One prestigious camp for teens (ages 11 to 19 — average camper is 16) in Southern California recently had 153 residential teenagers. These kids come from California and other states across the U.S. Fifty percent come from out of state and a number of campers each week are international.
Okay, so far so good. Healthy teens getting together for a week of learning and fun. Here is the shocker! I was amazed to learn that almost 25 percent of these kids are on prescription medication. Can it be that we are overmedicating teens?
Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
August 14th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, True Stories
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It’s a post you’ll see periodically: Blogger goes on vacation and goes dark from his blog and Twitter. This spawns the requisite post detailing how nice it was to be away. Refreshed and all the stronger, we hear about the lessons from playing parchese, listening to the crickets sing, and ignoring the purr from Tweetdeck.
[Recently] I have been on vacation, but I didn’t necessarily unplug. I screened for critical emails once a day. I had prewritten and scheduled a couple of posts, but they didn’t require much maintenance. Besides that, I was too busy boogie boarding, kayaking, and eating crab cakes to really look at Twitter. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
August 13th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Humor, Opinion, True Stories
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My car was making a chirping noise when I drove forward and a high-pitched whine when I went in reverse, so I took it into the mechanic and, while he’s under the hood, for some long-deferred routine maintenance (an oil change).
So when the phone rang, I was expecting him to tell me I need new brakes. Nope, it’s the pharmacy, which can’t refill a prescription. I have to see the doctor in person. I’m not sick, but I’d deferred my routine maintenance for too long. In this case, because I’m on a maintenance drug, he needs to check my blood pressure (which by this point was rising). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
August 13th, 2010 by DavedeBronkart in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, True Stories
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Next in our series on my experience with OpenNotes, a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.
This item has nothing to do with OpenNotes itself –- it’s what I’m seeing now that I’ve started accessing my doctor’s notes. In short, I see the clinical impact of not viewing my record as a shared working document.
Here’s the story.
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In OpenNotes, patient participants can see the visit notes their primary physicians entered. Note “primary,” not specialists. I imagine they needed to keep the study design simple.
So here I am in the study, going through life. Five weeks ago I wrote my first realization: After the visit I’d forgotten something, so I logged in. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
