October 13th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Hospitals that provide the lowest quality care at the highest cost care for more than twice the proportion of elderly minority and poor patients as the nation’s best performers, researchers found. And patients at the “worst” institutions are more likely than patients elsewhere to die of certain conditions, such as heart attacks and pneumonia.
These hospitals and their patients may be the ones most at risk under new Medicare payment arrangements that could cut payments to hospitals that fail to meet quality metrics, reported researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health.
The researchers examined how quality, costs and patients served correlated among 3,200 hospitals nationwide. They then identified 122 “best” hospitals, those that were in the highest quartile of quality and lowest quartile of risk-adjusted costs, and 178 “worst” hospitals, those in the lowest quartile of quality and the highest quartile of costs.
Hospital quality and performance data were Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
January 13th, 2011 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Book Reviews, Research
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One of our readers suggested that I review the book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, by John M. Barry. It’s not a new book (it was published in 2004) but it is very pertinent to several of the issues that we have been discussing on this blog, especially in regards to the current anti-vaccine movement. It’s well worth reading for its historical insights, for its illumination of the scientific method, and for its accurate reporting of what science has learned about influenza.
In the great flu epidemic of 1918, influenza killed as many people in 24 weeks as AIDS has killed in 24 years. It’s hard to even imagine what that must have been like, but this book helps us imagine it. It tells horror stories: Children found alone and starving beside the corpses of their parents in homes where all the adults had died, decomposing bodies piling up because there was no one left who was healthy enough to bury them.
Sometimes the disease developed with stunning rapidity: During one three-mile streetcar trip, the conductor, three passengers, and the driver died. In another incident, apparently healthy soldiers were being transferred to a new post by train: During the trip, men started coughing, bleeding, and collapsing; and by the time it arrived at its destination, 25 percent of the soldiers were so sick they had to be taken directly from train to hospital. Two-thirds of them were eventually hospitalized in all, and 10 percent of them died. The mind boggles. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
March 13th, 2010 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, True Stories
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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about being stricken with pneumonia and my reflections on what it must be like for people who live continually with chronic illnesses. I was surprised by the response from many readers, quite a few of whom I’ve never seen comment here, who voiced understanding and even relief that a “normal” would take the time to reflect on what their life might be like.
Well, my illness is continuing even longer than my pulmonologist had expected and this has evoked for me a whole new layer of emotions. I write the following not for sympathy or concern, but rather for the Medicine and Health channel of ScienceBlogs to give voice to those much worse off than I who may not otherwise have a voice in our national health care dialogue. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
February 14th, 2010 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, True Stories
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I have just a couple of thoughts today that I offer to the reader not for sympathy but, rather, for scientific observation and reflection.
I’ve been dealing with a case of bronchitis that became pneumonia. I tried to teach through it, do grant reviews, finish a book chapter, etc. but was finally ordered by my pulmonologist to recuperative bedrest at home for approximately four weeks.
When told I’d be confined to bed for a month, I thought that it would be great – that I’d get two papers and a grant renewal done and still have plenty of time for blog posts I’ve been wanting to get to, finish writing a couple of songs to take to the studio, get all the tax documents together, maybe learn a little CSS and webpage design and get around to a hosted personal website for the domain I’ve had for a year, etc. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
September 23rd, 2009 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, News, True Stories
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From today’s article by the always-interesting Sarah Avery at the News & Observer:
After several failed attempts to extract the item, Manley was referred to another doctor, who suggested removing the entire left lung. “I said, no, I wouldn’t be doing that,” Manley says.
That’s when he decided to seek a second opinion at Duke University Medical Center.
We’ve heard of “hot tub lung” and “popcorn lung” but my chest hurts just thinking about “jagged, fast-food implement lung.”
If this case does not make it into the New England Journal of Medicine, I will be disappointed.
Photo credit: Duke Hospitals via the News & Observer
Title quote: courtesy of Dr Momen Wahidi, director of interventional pulmonology at Duke
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
