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Hospital Markets $99 Spiral CT Scan, Claims It Could Save Your Life

A hundred bucks doesn’t buy much these days. A crisp Ben Franklin can be exchanged for

  • 50 Big Macs
  • A Broadway show ticket
  • A night in a New York City hotel (just joking)
  • A college textbook (paperback)
  • Your life

Your life? Yes, 5 crumpled Andy Jacksons can save your life, as was reported earlier this year in a front page article in The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s only daily newspaper. University Hospital is now offering a $99 spiral computed tomography (CT scans) of the chest in individuals who are at increased risk of developing lung cancer. The rationale is that if cancers can be detected early, then the cure rate for surgical removal is very high.

Gary Schwitzer, medical blogger and press watchdog, tries to bring some balance to the distorted media coverage of CT lung cancer reportage.

The test is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at MD Whistleblower*

Boehner’s Announcement Means An Extension Of Current Medicare Payment Rates

Last week, Speaker Boehner announced that the House and Senate have agreed on a two month extension of current Medicare payment rates, the payroll tax cut, and unemployment benefits.

My understanding is that the agreement has the House accepting the Senate’s proposal to extend the payroll tax break, unemployment insurance benefits, and current Medicare payment rates through the end of February, along with an agreement with the Senate to appoint a House-Senate conference committee to begin negotiations on a longer-term extension. It remains unclear exactly when the votes in the House and Senate will take place, and at least in the Senate, it will require unanimous consent by all Senators. If it passes both the House and Senate, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*

Diabetes: An Expensive Disease

Back when I was a young bird with type 1 diabetes, insulin cost about $70 dollars per bottle.  (And I had to walk uphill both ways to the endocrinologist’s office.)  I had no concept of this cost, or how it played into my family’s finances, at the time.  I would just open the fridge door, grab the bottle, uncap the orange top to a 1cc syringe, and take the units my mom would yell to me from the kitchen sink.

“Two. Two of Regular should do it.  Rotate to your right arm this time, okay?”

“Okay!”  (And then I’d proceed to jab it into my left arm because I’m right-handed and also stubborn.)

Now, twenty-five years later, insulin has taken a bit of a price hike.  I just ordered a three month supply of Humalog from Medco and the total for the insulin came to six hundred and ninety-seven dollars.  For six bottles of Humalog that will be all gobbled up by early March.  (And thanks to a high, but manageable-on-paper deductible, we’re responsible for the full cost this round.)  Almost seven hundred dollars worth of insulin.

We’re lucky that we’re able to pay for that cost without panicking, but knowing what these bottles cost without the assistance of insurance makes me look at everything through a diabetes lens.  When three days are up on my insulin pump site, I am very aware of Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Combining Telehealth And Mobile Technology To Improve The Quality Of Health Care

Bill Crounse, MD, Senior Director, Worldwide Health, Worldwide Public Sector Microsoft Corporation shares his insights and describes four leading trends and technologies that will transform health and health care in 2012 and beyond.

These leading technologies include:  cloud computing, health gaming, telehealth services and remote monitoring/mobile health.

Telehealth, Remote Monitoring, Mobile Health

I’d like to focus on telehealth and remote monitoring/mobile health since I feel telehealth is the nucleus of patient care, and telehealth can help reduce health care costs, and improve quality health care for patients. Telehealth technology combined mobile technology such as smartphones will make monitoring patients conditions easier and more efficient, and “cheaper and more scalable.

Patient Quality Health Care

Through the Accountable Care Organizational Model (ACO), the core concept is to Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*

Study Shows That Most Women Do Not Choose Immediate Post-Mastectomy Breast Reconstruction

Despite the benefits of immediate post-mastectomy breast reconstruction, only a small minority of women, regardless of age, choose this option, a new study indicates. Research has shown that compared with a delayed procedure, immediate post-mastectomy reconstruction improves psychological well-being and quality of life. The new study, headed by Dawn Hershman, M.D., associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, indicates that only about one-third of women opt for the procedure, according to the American Association for Cancer Research.
Source: cosmeticsurgerytimes.modernmedicine.com/
cosmeticsurgerytimes/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=751765

Immediate breast reconstruction does lead to better results in patients with early stage breast cancer. That is a pretty much well known fact. This statistic of less than a third of women seeking this type of reconstruction in this light seems kinda sad, but keep reading: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*

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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