The ads are striking: Handsome, smiling people, very much alive, victors over cancer — thanks to their choice of a prestigious cancer center for their treatment. But are they true? The cancer centers — with brand names like Sloan-Kettering and Massachusetts General — cannot prove that the patients are alive because of something unique about….
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A Small Step Forward in Curbing Drug Industry Influence on Doctor Education
Most doctors have to take regular continuing education courses to maintain their medical licenses. But what if the courses have a hidden agenda — promoting the drugs of a sponsoring manufacturer? That hidden influence has occurred far too often for the comfort of patient safety advocates, who want prescribing doctors to receive fair, balanced and….
Continue ReadingDiscipline of Dangerous Doctors Is Still in Critical Condition in Texas
State medical boards are important agencies that can take away a license from a doctor who is dangerous to patients because of drug addiction, ethical lapses or incompetence. Routinely, however, the boards turn out to be focused more on protecting wayward doctors than protecting the public from malpracticing doctors. Here is how a new article….
Continue ReadingInfection Control: A Hospital Executive Speaks Out
The CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is speaking out about his hospital’s efforts to prevent deadly infections. The question is: How come few other hospital executives are talking about their efforts? Are they not making vigorous efforts? Or are they obsessed with secrecy, as so many in the medical industry are?….
Continue Reading“Ghostbusters” Are Weeding Out Fake Authors at Medical Journals
A few brave medical journal editors are cracking down on the common practice of drug companies ghost-writing articles for authors who are willing to lend their names to drug industry propaganda. But at other journals, editors seem to have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. For patients, it is vital that the truth come out…..
Continue ReadingDoes My Doctor Have a Conflict of Interest? Why You Should Care
Whether or not a patient should get an expensive imaging scan or some other elaborate and expensive test is not always clearcut. But what should be clearcut is that doctors should not have a thumb on the scale when they’re balancing harms versus benefits. The balancing ought to be focused entirely on what’s in the….
Continue ReadingPatient Injuries and Deaths in Hospitals Are Under-Reported and Covered Up
One hundred thousand preventable deaths from medical errors in hospitals each year: That is the usual statistic cited by patient safety advocates. It comes from a 10-year-old report issued by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. The fact is, though, that the death and injury rate could be substantially higher. No….
Continue ReadingA Good Sign of a Doctor to Avoid
Web sites are proliferating that offer candid — sometimes brutally so — reviews by patients of doctors. The sites include Angie’s List, RateMDs, Yelp, DrScore and Vitals.com. Now some doctors burned by reviews are striking back. A growing number of them are asking new patients to sign up-front agreements promising not to post anything about….
Continue ReadingHow to Learn from Medical Mistakes
A column in the New York Times by Pauline Chen, M.D., relates how a colleague of hers named “Ed” crashed and burned on his way to becoming a general surgeon, seemingly because of his difficulty in learning from his own mistakes. The blog comments by both doctors and patients are revealing. Many make the point….
Continue ReadingHow Can We Reduce Hospital Infections?
Several letters to the editor in the New York Times have good thoughts on the critical topic of reducing hospital-acquired infections. It’s important not just to exhort hospital administrators to try harder, but to set up incentives that reward safety and punish harm. One incentive not discussed in these letters is a national mandatory disclosure….
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