In This Issue

WebMD: Hype Alert

Best Internet Health Care Resources

Hype-Free Eating Advice

Check Out Our Previous Tips

Quick Links

Our firm's website

Read an excerpt from Patrick Malone's book:
The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care -- and Avoiding the Worst

Learn More 

Read our Patient Safety Blog, which has news and practical advice from the frontlines of medicine for how to become a smarter, healthier patient.

Essential Tips for Doing Your Own Health Care Research

Dear Patrick,

WebMD: Another Hype Alert 

Last month we reviewed a reviewer: HealthNewsReview.org., a web site that systematically and thoroughly reviews health news and rates the quality of the stories on a one to five star scale.  I gave it five stars for overall excellence.  

Shortly after that, the New York Times Magazine had a piece about WebMD, a popular website that the Times rapped -- rightly -- as "a hypochondriac time suck," and more importantly, tilted toward expensive prescription drugs. (Read the Times article here.) Too often WebMD has alarmist pieces that act as an extended Infomercial for the pharmaceutical products that sponsor the site.   

So we checked the reviews of WebMD articles on HealthNewsReview.

Sure enough, while there were times that the WebMD writers did a decent job covering an issue, there were many other times that the reviewers caught WebMD wholesale cribbing from industry press releases.  Click here to see a list of the WebMD stories with the ratings from the HealthNewsReview folks.

Nothing wrong with a bit of copy-and-pasting now and then. But when the press release is the ONLY SOURCE for  the article, shouldn't readers be warned that what they're reading is an Infomercial and not real journalism?   

Are there better options for your Internet health research? Indeed. Read on below...     

Here are some of my favorite free resources for unbiased, hype-free, non-commercial health information on the Internet.

MedlinePlus

MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from government agencies and private health care organizations. It was put together by the National Institutes of Health with the National Library of Medicine, which has long operated Medline, the premier search engine for the ever growing universe of medical journal articles from all over the world (16 million articles in 5,200 journals, at last count).

 

Medline-Plus has preformatted Medline searches to help you get started in researching your disease. MedlinePlus also has extensive information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive patient tutorials, and health news. 

UpToDate.com

This is a noncommercial collaboration that brings together 3,800 top experts in all medical specialties who write, edit, and peer-review a comprehensive set of articles on 7,400 medical topics. Hundreds of these topics written for patients are available free, but for detailed information you have to pay a fee.

 

MayoClinic.com 

 

This site got lavish praise from the same New York Times article that slammed WebMD. One caveat: MayoClinic takes drug company ads too; it's just that the line between news and advertising is a little less blurry than on the WebMD site.  

 

Harvard Health Reports  

 

Harvard Medical School's site for patients is chock full of useful, free special reports on a host of common health issues. You can also find a place on the same site to subscribe to the Harvard Health Newsletter and several other related newsletters.  Truth is that you'll get 99% of the up-to-date stuff you need from the free part of the web site.   

 

 

The Department of Nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health has put together a Healthy Eating Pyramid that beats the official government's diet guidelines in two ways: more up-to-date science and no agribusiness influence. Click here to read all about it.  

My patient safety blog had an article about the difference between the Harvard guidelines and the official USDA/HHS guidelines. Read it here.

For non-clickers, here's a quick summary of the Harvard diet advice:

Go with plants. Eating a plant-based diet is healthiest. Choose plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats, like olive and canola oil.

Cut way back on American staples. Red meat and processed meat, refined grains, potatoes, sugary drinks, and salty snacks are part of American culture, but they're also really unhealthy. Go for a plant-based diet rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. And if you eat meat, fish and poultry are the best choices.  

Past issues of this newsletter:

We're now in our second year of this newsletter. This is issue No. 14.  No. 13 opened the discussion of "separating fact from hype" in health care advice with a piece on HealthNewsReview, plus articles on the five most overrated prescription medicines and the Miranda warning you see on a lot of so-called natural health products.  Read No. 13 here.

Here's a rundown of our newsletters in 2010:

Our first newsletter focused on the problem of conflicts of interest in medicine -- what you need to know in general, and how to find out if your doctor has a conflict that might affect the quality of your care. Click here to see that newsletter again.

Newsletter No. 2 expanded the discussion into the related topic of why experience counts -- especially when choosing a surgeon.  We focused on the story of minimally invasive prostate surgery with the device called the da Vinci robot. We explained how the lessons apply to any kind of surgery or medical procedure. To see newsletter No. 2 again, click here.

Newsletter No. 3 talked about why "more is not always better" in modern medicine. We focused on cancer screening, especially for breast and prostate cancer, and why you can feel not so guilty if you're a little less aggressive about getting the test. (But if you have any symptoms, you shouldn't wait!)   Click here to read it again.

Newsletter No. 4 talked about choosing a hospital, and why the best known rating systems such as U.S. News & World Report may not be all they're cracked up to be. I give some tips about other ways to make sure your hospital is up to par.  Click here to read it again.

Newsletter No. 5 talked numbers -- how it's important for all consumers of health care who want to make informed choices to learn a little bit about how statistics are used -- and misused -- in health care. I introduced readers how to read medical statistics in a straightforward way. To read it again, click here. 

Newsletter No. 6: Back pain and heart disease: how less can be more. The simpler approaches can work just as well as or better than more complex kinds of surgery. Here's the link to see it again.

Newsletter No. 7: Preventive care: what every adult American needs.  Here's the link.

Newsletter No. 8: Colonoscopy: two questions you must ask to make sure you get a competent screening exam. These questions can be a real life-saver when you know how often colonoscopies miss life-threatening lesions.  Read more here.

No. 9: Why getting and reading your own medical records can save your life -- and how to do it. The link is here.

No. 10: The joys of being a health care skeptic -- or, Why statisticians are our friends. And more on why most published research eventually turns out to be wrong. The link is here.

No. 11: Part one of preventing injury in the hospital, discussing why 24/7 bedside coverage is essential, and focusing specifically on bedsores and falls.  Read it here.

No. 12: Part two of preventing injury in the hospital: infections, blood clots and wrong medicine/wrong dose problems. Here is the link.

To your continued health!

Patrick Malone
Patrick Malone & Associates