June 17th, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Research
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On June 11, 2009, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared that the H1N1 flu that was then spreading around the world was an official pandemic. This triggered a series of built-in responses in many countries, including stockpiling anti-viral medications and preparing for a mass H1N1 vaccination program.
At the time the flu was still in its “first wave” and the fear was that subsequent waves, as the virus swept around the world, would become more virulent and/or contagious –- similar to what happened in the 1918 pandemic. This did not happen. At least our worst fears were not realized. The H1N1 pandemic, while serious, simmered through the winter of 2009-2010, producing a less than average flu season, although with some worrisome difference. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
June 16th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, True Stories
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Why do we physicians chart the way we do? Hopefully, we do it perfectly well and have no concerns at all. But where I practice emergency medicine, we are approaching maximum inefficiency in charting.
It all became much clearer when we started using our new EMR system. Let me make it clear, I’m not against EMR. In fact, typing and templates work better for me than dictating. My dictations were usually a mine field of blanks and misunderstood words.
Furthermore, if I wanted to use it, we have a new voice recognition dictation system in addition to our templated chart. Though admittedly, the voice recognition program clearly hates some of my partners, as evidenced by the way they grasp the screen and yell at it (‘Chest Pain, not west rain!’) and by its inexplicable use of profanity in the occasional chart.
But I digress. The problem as I see it is the evolution of the medical record. Why does the medical record exist? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
June 16th, 2010 by SteveSimmonsMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays, True Stories
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I believe that those controlling the purse strings are steering modern medicine towards the practice of seeing patients more as the sum of their medical problems than as individual people. Patients have become streams of data as opposed to real human lives.
Consider the dynamics of a family: a wife may worry about her husband while their child adores a father she instinctively knows to be irreplaceable. Modern medicine, however, may only see a diabetic with hypertension and a cholesterol-level running too high. The computers programmed for those advocating the power of data to revolutionize medicine would boil this man down to his “meaningful” essence — numbers, for the above imaginary man: 250.00, 401.0, and 272.0. Read more »
June 14th, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Quackery Exposed
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Some things are just part of the problem in healthcare. The company Medical Justice is one such thing. I’ve written about them before. Medical Justice sees the medical malpractice crisis and devised a solution: Muzzle the patients. It’s as misguided as it is ridiculous.
Medical Justice says doctors need to stop their patients from saying bad things about them. They charge doctors hundreds — even thousands — of dollars a year to help do this.
Under one of their programs, they give doctors contracts to use with their patients. The doctor tells the patient that they must agree to the terms of the contract before the doctor agrees to see them. Okay, so there are lots of forms that patients need to sign when they go to the doctor. What makes these so different? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
June 14th, 2010 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Research
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In a recent article, the editors of the Archives of Internal Medicine make the case that too much unneeded care is being delivered in physician’s offices these days. According to the authors, “patient expectations” are a leading cause of this costly problem.
Their solution? Get physicians to share with patients the “evidence” for why their requests are crazy, wrong, ill-informed or just plain stupid. But getting patients to buy into the “less is more” argument is a daunting task as most physicians already know. The problem is complicated by the fact that patients have a lot good reasons for not buying it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
