A new report from George Mason University of Virginia and the Urban Institute finds that the uninsured pay $30 billion each year out of pocket for health care costs. Others who provide for the uninsured are the government, physicians who donate time and forgo profits, and private charity. The lead researcher points out that failure….
Continue ReadingArchives for August 2008
New Ovarian Cancer Test Raises Doubts Among OB-GYNs
A new LabCorp blood test called OvaSure is aimed at early detection of ovarian cancer, but OB-GYNs doubt its efficacy and safety, as false positives might lead to unnecessary surgery and extreme anxiety. Ovarian cancer often goes undetected until later stages, by which point it can be too late to treat it effectively. A test….
Continue ReadingInsurance Companies Deny Doctors’ Orders; Patients Suffer
The Toledo Blade has a good article with stories from patients whose crucial treatments, ordered by doctors, have been denied or delayed by insurance companies. It begins with the harrowing story of Randy Steele, who died after the kidney-liver transplant that could have saved his life was stalled by his insurer. Even if patients do….
Continue ReadingHospital Death Rates Available Online
USA Today has published the government’s best estimates of death rates due to heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia for every American hospital for the past two years. The article has links to the pages where the death rates are published. As USA Today points out, this information was previously inaccessible to most patients. From….
Continue ReadingCDC Declares Salmonella Outbreak Finished
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have declared that the damaging and costly salmonella outbreak, which started in April and resulted in 1,442 reported illnesses across the country, is now over. From the article: Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and….
Continue ReadingDoctors and Women Patients
Tara Parker-Pope has a blog post about how doctors will treat women of childbearing age as “pre-pregnant,” focusing on their reproductive capacities to the detriment of their overall health. Obviously reproductive matters are an important part of overall health and can influence many other medical conditions. But so can a lot of other common issues:….
Continue ReadingDr. John Hickner on Test Results and Avoiding Injury from Miscommunication
The NY Times Well blog has a podcast of Dr. John Hickner, professor of family medicine at the University of Chicago, discussing why patients should always call their doctors to follow up after having a medical test done. We have previously discussed the issue of medical test results getting lost in transmission: the patient will….
Continue ReadingCommon Testing Mistakes at the Family Doctor’s Office
A new study from the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care, and discussed in the NY Times Well blog, reveals common testing mistakes by primary-care doctors. Of course, the same kinds of errors can happen in hospitals and other health care settings. Out of close to the 1,000 mistakes experienced by 590 patients, the….
Continue ReadingRules for Doctors and Patients
Tara Parker-Pope recently wrote two articles discussing fundamental rules for doctors and for patients. The rules for doctors can be boiled down to respect for the patient’s feelings and understanding that they did not come to the office in order to waste the doctor’s time for the sheer pleasure of it. Dr. Robert Lamberts, who….
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