May 14th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in News
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A recent audit of nine NYC’s Health and Hospitals Corporation found City Comptroller Liu described as dangerous delays in women’s health care. It takes too long for women to get screening and diagnostic mammograms.
The 2009 audit found women at Elmhurst Hospital had the longest waits – 50 working days (that would be 10 weeks, i.e. 2.5 months) for diagnostic mammograms, on average. You can find more details here.
According to the Times’ coverage:
Ana Marengo, a spokeswoman for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the public health system, said that the comptroller’s data was outdated…
At Elmhurst, she said, the wait as of December 2010 was 20 days for screening and 23 days for a general diagnostic test, as opposed to an urgent one. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
April 28th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in News, Opinion
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A few days ago I read that Dr. Lazar Greenfield, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, resigned as the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons over flak for authoring a Valentine’s Day-pegged, tacky, tasteless and sexist piece in Surgery News. The February issue is mysteriously absent in the pdf-ied archives. According to the Times coverage: “The editorial cited research that found that female college students who had had unprotected sex were less depressed than those whose partners used condoms.
From Pauline Chen, also in the Times:
It begins with a reference to the mating behaviors of fruit flies, then goes on to discuss studies on the menstrual cycles of heterosexual and lesbian women who live together. Citing the research of evolutionary psychologists at the State University of New York, it describes how female college students who had been exposed to semen were less depressed than their peers who had not, concluding: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.”
Not that I’m OK with any of this, as I’ve known the ickiness of older male physicians who don’t even realize when they’re being inappropriate. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
July 18th, 2010 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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Today I refer you to an excellent post by Peter A. Lipson, M.D., at the blog Science Based Medicine entitled “HuffPo blogger claims skin cancer is conspiracy.”
The post focuses on an article by someone who contends that the link between sunlight and skin cancer is a conspiracy by dermatologists and the cosmetic dermatology industry. Dr. Lipson’s highly insightful analysis about the “interview” process and how doctors must act these days on behalf of their patients concludes:
This article shows a misunderstanding of journalistic ethics, medical ethics, and medical science. It’s a disaster. And it’s no surprise that it’s in the Huffington Post.
While this is a medicine story, my question relates to why an organization with a lot of great front-page news so frequently posts medical articles that are wrong and, sometimes, downright dangerous.
Read the article first, then read Dr. Lipson’s analysis.
Disclosure: I am an occasional contributor to Science Based Medicine but, like all contributors there, receive no compensation.
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
June 14th, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion
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Just when I’ve lost hope that mainstream media will stop perpetuating the myth the more medicine equals better care, the Associated Press came up with this excellent piece. The article states, rightly, that “anywhere from one-fifth to nearly one-third of the tests and treatments we get are estimated to be unnecessary,” and that, “it may lead to dangerous side effects.”
Regular readers of this blog should be familiar with those concepts. I wrote recently that patients often reject evidence-based medicine. One reason is that there aren’t enough clinical guidelines available for patients to make an informed decision. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
June 14th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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In recent days, news readers/viewers/listeners have been bombarded with news from the big American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago. But how does some of this stuff become news? Read an excellent post by an excellent reporter, Ron Winslow of the Wall Street Journal, to see some of the crazy, ugly sausage-making that goes on in the manipulation of the media. In the example Winslow raises, what may be packaged as news really isn’t “new” — which is often the case.
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
