No-fault malpracticeThe patient comes out ahead in many cases: "All patients who suffer a treatment injury caused by medical care are eligible for no-fault, government funded, compensation (with no need to prove negligence). Claims are usually decided within a matter of days, and the package of care includes financial compensation as well as free treatment, rehabilitation, home help, childcare, and so on."
Contrast that to what happens (more...)
Losing weight, without even tryingOur car dependent society contributes to the obesity epidemic: "Recently, in a span of 3 weeks, I went from being somewhat out of shape to being reasonably in shape. I lost about 1.5 kilos, my posture improved, my skin got healthier. What exercise regime did I follow to accomplish this? I stayed in a rental house in the Netherlands for 3 weeks. In other words, I carried lots of stuff around and rode a bicycle about 10 km a day, just in the normal course of living."
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Night floatFrequent NY Times contributer Sandeep Jauhar has a piece in Slate talking about night float, where interns take a 12 to 14 hour shift overnight to cross-cover the entire hospital.
Sometimes the problem of caring for another doctor's patients can lead to medical errors:
The nightmare of night float raises a central question about work limits for interns: Is it better to be cared for by a tired resident who knows your case or a rested resident who does not? While capping resident's work hours seems like a no-brainer, the very real downsides of doing so has been underpublicized.
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The epidemic of anger towards doctorsWhy patients so eager to hate the physician profession: "I suspect the payment system has something to do with it. When patients don’t know what we charge for things (we are not allowed to disclose our fee schedules), they assume we are milking the system for all it’s worth. The fact that the majority of transaction happens below the surface devalues the visit."
Nice post from Dr. Rob. I'd like to add that the media tends to hype cases that portray physicians negatively - it sells more papers. Stories where patients are satisfied with their care and happy with their physicians make for boring headlines.
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The real Medicare mythArnold Kling argues that the administrative savings from a single-payer system is minimal and superficial:
After [getting rid of private insurance administrators], costs might be less than the existing system. By a small amount. For a short time. But innovation in health care management and administration would slow to a crawl. Health care providers would need permission from Washington to try anything new. In the long run, administrative costs will be higher than they would have been under private health insurance.
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Electronic records and economic senseStanley Feld has been doing a series on why physicians are slow to adopt electronic records.
The common perception is that they are expensive or ludditic doctors are desperate to cling to paper charts.
The main problem is that the current crop of EHRs are simply not ready for prime time. I recently read a story where doctors have their staff print out a patient's electronic record for every encounter, then handwrite a note and have the staff scan it back into the computer.
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Two recent posts by Matthew and Bob Wachter on the crisis in primary care sparked great debates in the comment sections.
Matthew's inference that Medicare's bankruptcy will be fast upon us if everyone with brain cancer received an experimental surgery like Sen. Ted Kennedy recently had evoked this response from Bev. M.D.
For my health policy course at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, our midterm assignment was writing an Op-Ed. It was a challenging assignment for the two-thirds of my class who are doctors, nurses or medical students, but for a journalist it wasn't so bad. Here's my essay. I'm interested in your feedback and critiques of my logic.
By choosing to forgo universal health insurance coverage, the United States chooses to ration care in the most irrational ways.
Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., a nonprofit health plan that covers more than 1 million New Englanders. Baker blogs regularly at Let's Talk Health Care.
I was in a meeting the other day when someone said -- mostly in exasperation -- "Everyone’s for affordable health care for everyone, but no one cares very much about dealing with the cost of health care.”
I’m sure that truer words have been spoken, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. It’s too bad. Somehow, we’ve divorced the coverage/affordability question from the cost question, and we pay for it - everyday.
Insidermedicine
I would like to thank Insidermedicine for their continuing sponsorship at Kevin, M.D.
Insidermedicine (www.insidermedicine.com) is a physician-led news organization that allows you to keep on top of the latest medical information by watching unique videos that are created each and every weekday by Insidermedicine's team of medical experts. Their goal is to reach patients, medical doctors and students around the world to ensure that each is receiving a daily 'evidence based' health and medical update.
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