August 13th, 2010 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Humor
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Happy: Ma’am, I noticed you have an allergy to prednisone listed.
Ma’am: Oh, I can never take prednisone again. I’m allergic to it.
Happy: Really? Huh. What happened when you took prednisone?
Ma’am: It made my tongue swell up really bad.
Happy: Huh. What did they give you to reverse the allergic reaction?
Ma’am: Some sort of steroid through my IV.
I’m thinking this qualifies as a raging case of systemic fibromyallergia.
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
May 12th, 2010 by AlanDappenMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays, True Stories
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A common problem in healthcare is the number of times that small adjustments are needed in a person’s care. Often for these little changes, a physical exam and face-to-face time have nothing to do with good medical decision making.
Yet the patient and doctor are locked in a legacy-industrialized business model that requires the patient to pay a co-pay and waste at least half of their day driving to and from the office, logging time in a waiting room, and then visiting five minutes with their practitioner for the needed medical information or advice.
Today I’d like to visit the case of a patient I’ll call “DD,” who I easily diagnosed with temporal arteritis (TA) through a 15-minute phone call after she’d spent four weeks as the healthcare system fumbled her time with delays and misdirection via several doctors without establishing a firm diagnosis. Read more »
