“A group of docs who want to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of primary care tinkered with some Top 5 lists for of dos and don’ts for pediatricians, family doctors and internists.
After testing them a bit, they published online by the Archives of Internal Medicine. Most of the advice falls in the category of less is more.
So what should family doctors not be doing? The Top 5 list for them goes like this:
1. No MRI or other imaging tests for low back pain, unless it has persisted longer than six weeks or there are red flags, such as neurological problems.
2. No antibiotics for mild to moderate sinusitis, unless it has lasted a week or longer. Or the condition worsens after first getting better.
3. No annual electrocardiograms for low-risk patients without cardiac symptoms.
4. No Pap tests in patients under 21, or women who’ve had hysterectomies for non-malignant disease.
5. No bone scans for women under 65 or men under 70, unless they have specific risk factors.”
“Some marketers of weight-loss products containing acai berries are also purveyors of news you shouldn’t use, the Federal Trade Commission says.
The FTC has asked federal courts to put a stop to the activities of 10 different outfits that the commission alleges use “fake news websites” to tout acai berry weight-loss products.
Chances are you’ve stumbled across the sites, which often sport the logos of major mainstream news organizations, such as ABC, CNN and Consumer Reports. (See this example posted by the FTC.)
Take, for example the FTC’s complaint against Beony International LLC, a company based in San Diego.
The company allegedly ran sites with names such as “News 6 News Alerts,” “Health News Health Alerts,” and “Health 6 Beat Health News.” The sites feature purportedly objective investigative reports of acai products by reporters, who supposedly tried the stuff “and experienced dramatic and positive results.”
The blog post also includes links to examples and complaints posted by the FTC, a Consumer Reports feature on acai scams and this Better Business Bureau video warning about free trial scams.
Unfortunately, every day in our nationwide scan of health news stories, we see REAL news stories that look like advertising. So advertising that is made to look like news is not surprising.
Thanks to Scott Hensley over at Shots, NPR’s Health Blog, for highlighting this sad but funny video on where we’re going with healthcare. Scary what happens when theory meets reality:
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
“Between the Internet and all the data insurance companies and the government collect on doctors, you’d think it would be a lot easier than it used to be to find a good one. But it’s not.”
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
