September 2nd, 2011 by GruntDoc in News
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The headline is disingenuous: yes, there’s a Med School headed for Austin. Congrats, Brackendridge!
Kinda amusing tale after the quote:
Lawmakers and local leaders are hopeful a plan unanimously adopted at Thursday’s University of Texas System Board of Regents meeting means they could finally get what they’ve long been waiting for: a new medical school.
One of the elements of the plan outlined by Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa is to “advance medical education and research in Austin.” Even before Thursday’s meeting ended, state Sen. Kirk Watson issued a press release reading between the lines, calling for the creation of a flagship health science center and medical school in Austin. “Within the next 30 days, I plan to offer a path – and a challenge for our community – to build on [Cigarroa’s] statement so we realize these goals that so many of us have shared for so long,” Watson said. “It’s time for Austin to come together and act, creating a flagship initiative that can fortify our future and lead the world in the fields of medical education, healthcare and bioscience.”
via Is the UT System Preparing for a New Medical School? — Higher Education | The Texas Tribune.
For those interested in the funny politics of a med school in Austin, you have to look back to the 1970′s. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
August 16th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Opinion, Research
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Association of Hospitalist Care With Medical Utilization After Discharge: Evidence of Cost Shift From a Cohort Study.
That’s the title of the latest medical study making the viral rounds. I had an opportunity to read the study in full. I called Happy’s hospital library and Judy had the pdf article in my email in less than 24 hours. Now, that’s amazing. Thanks Judy for a job well done. You deserve a raise.
Presented in the August 2nd, 2011 edition of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, Volume 155 Number 3 Page 152-159, the study concludes that decreased length of stay and hospital costs associated with hospitalist care are offset by higher medical utilization and costs after discharge.
In summary, hosptitalist patients had an adjusted length of stay 0.64 days shorter and $282 less than patients cared for by primary care physicians, but total 30 day post discharge costs were $332 higher. These additional charges were defined as 59% from rehospitalization, 19% from skilled-nursing facilities, and 22% from professional and other services.
OK fair enough. Let’s come to that conclusion. Let’s say Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
August 4th, 2011 by GruntDoc in Health Policy, Opinion
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In one of those things I don’t really get*, Texas requires a separate license from an unrestricted medical license to prescribe narcotics. As the price of this extra license has always seemed to be more ‘cover the cost’, nobody has seriously objected. It’s $25, in case you’re interested.
Since it’s a State license, it’s required if your job could even perceivably need to prescribe narcs in a hospital. (So, Radiologists and Pathologists are usually exempted). It’s never been an issue, as long as you don’t screw up.
Until now.
From the Austin American Statesman: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
August 2nd, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion
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In the Clinical Encounters case featured here two days ago, I presented the story of a psychiatrist who goes for a urological procedure and discovers that one of his former patients is the nurse assisting. People wrote in to suggest ways he should handle this awkward situation and I was struck by the idea that some suggested he tell the urologist that he knows the nurse in a social setting (because he can’t tell the other doc that the nurse was his psychiatric patient) and the assumption that the urologist would be understanding, and that perhaps the urologist should have policies in place in case of such events.
Do surgeons think this way? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
July 18th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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Yesterday’s post was not really about Avastin, but about medical journalism and how patients’ voices are handled by the media.
L. Husten, writing on a Forbes blog, cried that the press fawned, inappropriately, over patients’ words at the FDA hearing last week, and that led him to wonder why and if journalists should pay attention to what people with illness have to say, even if their words go against the prevailing medical wisdom.
There’s a fair amount of controversy on this. For sake of better discussion in the future, I think it best to break it up into 3 distinct but inter-related issues:
1. About health care journalism and patients’ voices:
A general problem I perceive (and part of why I started blogging) is how traditional medical journalists use patients’ stories to make a point. What some of my journalism professors tried to teach me, and most editors I’ve dealt with clearly want, is for the reporter to find a person with an illness, as a lead, and then tell about the relevant news, and provide some expert commentary – with at least one person speaking on each “side” of the issue, of course – and then end the story with some bit about the patient and the future.
I argue that this form of medical journalism Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
