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 »
November 2nd, 2009 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Humor
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PLACE OF OCCURRENCE, HOME ICD-E849.0
6:00 AM
Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button. CIRCADIAN RHYTHM SLEEP D/O IRREG SLEEPWAKE TYPE ICD-327.33
6:30
- Alarm goes off for third time. Ready to hit snooze button, but knee in ribs from wife prevents more snooze button procrastination. CONTUSION OF CHEST WALL ICD-922.1, ADULT MALTREATMENT UNSPECIFIED NEC ICD-995.8
- Feeling tired, go to make a pot of coffee. CAFFEINE ADDICTION ICD-304.40
- Fill bowl with Lucky Charms and start eating. UNSPECIFIED NUTRITIONAL DEFICIENCY ICD-269.9, HYPERGLYCEMIA ICD-790.29
6:45
- Realize that coffee pot needs to be turned on for it to make coffee. ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER, ADULT ICD-314.00, LISTLESSNESS ICD-780.79
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*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
