February 9th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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I am mad at congress.
I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans, I am sick of healthcare being treated as a political football. How much more of a crisis do we need before we actually start working on a solution? Why does each party have to sit on its side of the aisle shooting spitballs at the other? Each side has its pet issues that are tied to contributors, supporters, and lobbyists. Each side will work to see the other side fail even if the other side is right. Each side seems unable to do anything unless there is political value in it. Power is more important than service, and power is a short-term project. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
February 9th, 2010 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Kevin Pho, MD, primary care physician in Nashua, N.H., blogs at KevinMD.com, member of USA TODAY’S board of contributors and a guest to the Health in 30® Radio Show, writes about the importance of doctors engaging in social media to communicate with patients.
He writes in an op-ed in USA TODAY “Doctors ignore Internet at their own peril” on January 27, 2010:
“Raise your hand if you’ve ever left a physician’s office without fully understanding what the doctor just told you. According to The New England Journal of Medicine, half of patients admit to not understanding what their doctor told them during an office visit.
As a primary care physician, being unable to clearly communicate with patients is frustrating. The typical, 15-minute office visit often is not sufficient for a thorough discussion. A better way to connect with patients is needed.”
Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
February 9th, 2010 by DrRichardCooper in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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Commenting on the President’s budget, an editorial in the Times on Feb 2nd juxtaposed three of our nation’s dilemmas: the deficit, jobs and health care.
“President Obama got his priorities mostly right. The deficit, compared with what it could have been, is $120B. That’s a lot of money. But it’s not too much at a time of economic weakness, when deficit spending is needed to put Americans back to work.”
“Medicare and Medicaid will cost $788B; that should be another reminder of why the country needs health care reform.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at PHYSICIANS and HEALTH CARE REFORM Commentaries and Controversies*
February 9th, 2010 by PhilBaumannRN in Better Health Network, Opinion
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- Image via Wikipedia
Was your company blogging ten years ago? If not then why? Google made it easy for you and now you’ve lost ten years of priceless link juice. Given the fragmentation of media in the last ten years, it’s clear now just how relatively little work you actually had to do back then. But that’s in the past. Still, I have bad news for you: what you have to do now is far harder than it was ten years ago. Let me explain.
CONTENT FRAGMENTATION AND SOCIAL DISTORTION
As the Web expands and proliferates novel media, messaging becomes increasingly diffuse and fragmented. The Web creates new opportunities and destroys old standards. It disrupts communication patterns, rattles social structures and ruptures attention spans. Ten years ago, you could leverage your audience-building skills for acquiring and retaining customers. You could even have learned and mastered a skill which traditional marketing didn’t really demand: conversational aptitude. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
February 9th, 2010 by DaveMunger in Better Health Network, Research, True Stories
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Yesterday I introduced my friend Charles Roth. Charles was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2003 and was already in bad shape. He had been tested as healthy the previous year, but the disease struck quickly, hospitalizing him for a week and keeping him out of work for a month and a half. He returned to work but repeated illnesses due to AIDS meant that by 2006, he was unable to work full-time. A bank executive, Charles still tries to find occasional contract work or odd jobs like résumé writing and tax preparation, but with the recession, these jobs are low-paying and hard to come by. For the most part he makes do with a tiny state disability check and food stamps.
So how typical is Charles’s case? We’ve all heard of success stories like Magic Johnson, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 and still has not developed AIDS. But clearly neither case tells the whole story. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Daily Monthly*
February 8th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News
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The federal government may be stalled on health care reform legislation, but the executive branch has been expanding its stake in paying for care.
Yesterday, QD reported that federal and state governments will pay for more than half of the health care purchased in the U.S. by 2012, and likely even sooner. Today, Medicare’s actuaries announced that growth in national health expenditures (NHE) outpaced growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) last year. The recession, H1N1 programs and federal subsidies for COBRA benefits all contributed to the largest one-year increase in history, from 16.2% of GDP in 2008 to 17.3% of GDP last year.
In 2010, NHE growth will decelerate to 3.9% while GDP is anticipated to rebound to 4% growth. But, and this is a big caveat, much of the projected slowdown in NHE growth is attributed to the 21.3% slashing of Medicare physician payment rates called for under current law’s Sustainable Growth Rate provisions. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
February 8th, 2010 by DrDavisLiu in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Some patients love their vitamins, spending hundreds to thousands of dollars annually. At times, they will even forgo proven medical therapy. As more Americans go without health insurance coverage while others face higher office visits and copays, increasing numbers of patients are seeking alternative, natural therapies instead of medical care. Are vitamins really the scientific breakthrough and secret that doctors refuse to recommend or are they simply marketing hype? As any medical school student will tell you, the correct answer to any question is: it depends.
For certain groups, pregnant women, patients with macular degeneration, and vegetarians, vitamins and minerals may be recommended as research finds them helpful. Prenatal vitamins have more folic acid which has been found to decrease the risk of neural tube defects in the fetus. Vegetarians may need to supplement their diet with vitamin B12, iron, and vitamin D, which are absent in their food choices. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
February 8th, 2010 by DrCharles in Better Health Network, True Stories
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On the way to the funeral you wonder how you’ll be received by the grieving. Although you are confident that your care for the deceased was sincere, professional, and adept, you still question if others will so assume. There is silence in the car. This is a trip you make alone.
You manage a bitter smile as you recall stories the patient shared in unguarded moments, behind the door of a small examining room. How he beamed with content at the thought of his grandchildren; how her eyes glowed as she remembered the view from the Eiffel Tower; how the tears and sobs and memories of a lost child wracked his otherwise impenetrable façade. Sometimes you knew his spirit as well as you knew his medical illnesses, and often he hoped you would tend more to the former. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles*
February 8th, 2010 by Debra Gordon in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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A couple of recent news stories reminded me of the dirty little secret about healthcare that no one wants to talk about, the proverbial elephant in the room. All those pills, surgeries, x-rays, medical care? It costs money!
Yes, Virginia, quality medical is not a right, not guaranteed in the Constitution, not something good-hearted corporations and companies, whether for-profit or not, are obliged to hand out like candy corn at Halloween. It costs money. Billions of dollars a day.
This appears to be something we all forgot in the warm fuzzy moments of watching military transport planes fly critically ill people out of Haiti to Florida hospitals. Who was going to pay for all this medical care? For the months of hospitalizations and rehabilitation these people were going to require? When the state of Florida, rightly so, asked the same question, prompting the halting of those military convoys, it ended up on the receiving end of a world-wide outpouring of boos and hisses. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Debra Gordon's Musings on Medicine and Health Care*
February 8th, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, News
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The NBC Today Show aired a segment on the Stereotaxis robotic system for performing catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation using magnetically-steered ablation catheters yesterday (video here). It sure generated a lot of buzz around our hospital. While I share the reporters enthusiasm for all the gadgets and gizmos (what doctor-engineer wouldn’t like such neat toys?) the enthusiasm should be tempered with a strong dose of reality regarding this technology and any atrial fibrillation procedure.
First is the claim that the patient will be cured with “85-90%” certainty. While these success rates have been reported using this technology for the much simpler atrial flutter ablation, this level of success has not been substantiated in meta analyses of atrial fibrillation ablation studies to date: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
I am mad at congress.
