December 25th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in News, Opinion
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I admittedly snorted out loud when I read a New York Times article earlier last week regarding increased physician distraction due to electronic devices, especially with the advent of the smartphone with its emails, text messages, calls, and other alerts that ping intermittently throughout a typical work day.
There is no question that electronic devices distract physicians as the article pointed out… But that’s like complaining about a leaky faucet when there’s a flooded basement and a hole in the roof.
The bigger problem that should be mentioned is hospital bureaucracy which probably creates just as much if not more unintended distractions for physicians and nurses.
What many patients and lay public may not realize is that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 18th, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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For a while now we’ve been talking about issues related to psychiatry and electronic medical records. Roy is very interested in the evolution of EHR’s.
I don’t like them. I think they have too many problems still, both in terms of issues of efficiency and time, and how they divert the physician’s attention away from the patient, and they focus medical appointments on the collection of data– data that is used in a checkbox form: patient is not suicidal and I asked, whether it was clinically relevant or not– and will therefore serve as protection in a lawsuit, or demographic information used by insurers, the government, who knows.
From a privacy standpoint, I think they are appalling. If you are a patient in the hospital where I work, you get Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
December 13th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Research
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A study published in the journal Academic Pediatrics reveals that 93% of California children’s hospitals offered unhealthy food to outpatients, visitors and staff in the cafeteria and snack bars. Said another way, only 7% offered healthy food. What did these foods consist of to be called “unhealthy”? Try fried food, sweetened beverages, burgers and lots of sugary sweets.
The study found that 81% of the cafeterias placed high-calorie, high-sugar items like ice cream right by the cash register, a well known marketing plan to tantalize and increase selection. Forty four percent didn’t even offer low calorie salad dressing and fewer than 1/3 had no nutrition information.
Health care workers, like the rest of America, suffer from increasing obesity. One study showed over 54% of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
December 10th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Medblogger Shout Outs, Research
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An interesting blog article from the folks at Compete came to my attention recently. Compete for those who don’t know is a fantastic analytics site to see how ANY website is doing in terms of popularity (number of visitors in a given time period). The basic data is free. For more in depth information, there’s a charge.
For example, for our practice’s website, here is the Compete data I pulled which is pretty accurate based on my own analytics information:
My nearest local competitor in terms of website popularity is the hospital, Fauquier Health System: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 10th, 2011 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Health Policy, Opinion
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How do companies curb health care costs?
Do healthier employees lead to increased productivity? Several progressive companies believe so and have committed to providing employees with programs to help engage them in a healthier lifestyle.
As part of the incentives to lead a healthier lifestyle some employers have instituted a penalty and reward system tied to the companies’ benefits. For example, smokers may incur a significant surcharge to the cost of their health insurance plan while nonsmokers could see a reduction in cost.
According to an article in The New York Times, a growing numbers of companies including Home Depot, PepsiCo, Safeway, Lowe’s and General Mills are seeking higher premiums from some workers who smoke, similar to Wal-Mart’s addition of a $2,000-a-year surcharge for some smokers.
Escalating health care costs Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
