Most people are aware of the increasing scrutiny of hospital performance in terms of patient safety. Better infection control and attention to readmission rates are among the criteria by which hospitals are measured and, in the case of Medicare, sometimes reimbursed. But ambulatory facilities don’t fall within traditional hospital oversight, and a recent post on….
Continue ReadingArchives for April 2012
Protecting Yourself from Dangerous Medical Devices
The invasive medical devices known as transvaginal mesh, metal-on-metal hip implants and the Lap-Band gastric band have gotten quite a bit of attention lately, most of it bad. We’ve written about all of these products, and they remain prominent poster children for poor regulatory oversight thanks to a recent investigation by Consumer Reports. It concerned….
Continue ReadingDoctors Die More Gently Than the Rest of Us
Late last year, Zócalo, an online public square that encourages the exchange of ideas, published an essay called “How Doctors Die,” by Dr. Ken Murray, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California. Personal, heartfelt and utterly illuminating, the essay describes how our culture extends the lives of the elderly and the terminal….
Continue ReadingMedical Boards Advise Fewer Tests for Many Patients
Maybe the national conversation about the rationing of health care finally is moving to a more thoughtful plane. Maybe, instead of incendiary language, half-truths and mistruths, Americans, with the help of the medical establishment, are beginning the think rationally about rationing. As widely reported last week, a panel of physician groups representing the American Board….
Continue ReadingPlanning for the End: An Essential Piece of Quality Health Care
Our own mortality lurks offstage, way offstage we hope, and yet one piece of it is something we can and should bring onstage: a plan for safe, high quality and humane medical care at the very end. Because if we don’t plan now, things could go dreadfully off the tracks later, at a time when….
Continue ReadingFDA Ordered to Step Up Efforts Against Antibiotic Use in Animals
A couple of months ago, we wrote about the overuse of antibiotics, and how the FDA had curbed use of some of them in livestock. The concern was that inappropriate use of antibiotics can encourage development of drug-resistant bacteria-the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” scenario. Last month, a federal judge ordered the FDA….
Continue ReadingCongressional Refusal to Consider Medical Cost Hurts Everyone
As the Supreme Court begins to grapple with the Constitutional challenges to the Obama administration’s health-care reform legislation known as the Patient Safety and Affordable Care Act (ACA), Republicans in the House of Representatives continue to object. In the words of Fiscal Times correspondent Merrill Goozner, writing on his GoozNews blog, the GOP “took another….
Continue ReadingAdmitting Errors Is the Right Thing to Do
Early in life most of us are taught to tell the truth. Its corollary is to admit when you’ve made a mistake. In the world of medical malpractice, however, these simple life lessons are complicated. One reason is because confidence-and, often, its uglier relation, arrogance-is characteristic of many good doctors. Arrogant doctors don’t want to….
Continue ReadingAricept 23—A Misleading Drug Enabled by the FDA
In some ways, Alzheimer’s is like arthritis. Its symptoms can wax and wane, making it difficult to determine if a particular treatment is successful. Who’s to say if a symptom subsided because a drug worked or because it was going to diminish anyway? And, like arthritis, Alzheimer’s cannot be cured, only moderated. That can lead….
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