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Study Shows That Medicare Pays More For Patients Cared For By Hospitalists

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*

Being A Doctor In 2011: Things Have Changed

Close your eyes and think of a doctor. Do you see a Marcus Welby type? A middle-aged, smiling and friendly gentleman who makes house calls? Is his cozy office staffed by a long time nurse and receptionist who knows you well and handles everything for you? If that is what you envision, either you haven’t been to the doctor lately or you are in a concierge practice where you pay a large upfront fee for this type of practice. Whether you live in a big city or a rural community, small practices are dissolving as fast as Alka Selzer. Hospitals and health systems are recruiting the physicians, buying their assets (unfortunately not worth much) and running the offices.

Doctors are leaving small practices and going into the protection of larger groups and corporations because of economic changes that have made it harder and harder for small practices to survive. The need for computer systems, increasing regulations, insurance consolidation, skyrocketing overhead and salaries coupled with low reimbursement has signaled the extinction of the Marcus Welby practice. Some older doctors are finishing out their years and will shutter their offices when they retire. Young to middle age physicians are selling out to large groups and new physicians would never even consider this type of practice. They are looking for an employed model from the outset.

Every doctor I know who is currently in private practice is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

UnitedHealth Group Releases A Somewhat Inadequate Report On Modernizing Rural Health Care

The UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization released a white paper today on Modernizing Rural Health Care.  To quote from the UHG presser,

  • [The paper] projects an increase of around 5 million newly insured rural residents by 2019 – even as the number of physicians in rural America lags
  • Quality of care is rated lower in rural areas in 7 out of every 10 health care markets; both physicians and consumers in rural areas more likely to rate quality of care lower than those in urban and suburban markets
  • Innovations in care delivery – particularly telemedicine and telehealth – can absorb future strain on rural health care systems

The paper inventories the current state of health care for the 50 million Americans living in a rural setting — and it’s not pretty.  The question, of course, is why does rural health compare unfavorably to urban health metrics, and what can be done to improve matters? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*

Patient Empowerment Has The Potential To Be Problematic

Let me say first that I am a practicing primary care doctor who is very much focused on patient centered care.  Though I cannot go back to being a patient who is unaware about what a doctor does, the terminology she uses, or what the importance of certain test results are, I can empathize with the overwhelming amounts of information, challenges, and stressors patients and families can have in navigating the healthcare system to get the right care.  This is the reason I wrote my book.

However, over the past few months I’ve noticed a particularly disturbing trend.  Patients are not consulting doctors for advice, but rather demanding testing for diagnoses which are not even remote possibilities.  A little knowledge can be dangerous particularly in the context of little to no clinical experience.  Where many patients are today are where medical students are at the end of their second year – lots of book knowledge but little to no real world experience.

More patients are becoming the day traders of the dot.com boom.  Everyone has Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*

Take An Active Role In Your Own Health: It Can Save More Than Just Your Life

Sometimes you need a published study to tell you what should be obvious in the first place.

This time, researchers have discovered that:

When physicians have more personalized discussions with their patients and encourage them to take a more active role in their health, both doctor and patient have more confidence that they reached a correct diagnosis and a good strategy to improve the patient’s health.

Really?

But wait, there’s more. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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