Evidence continues to pile up for why patients need to read their own medical records. A new study finds it is distressingly common for primary care practices, especially big ones, to fail to inform patients about abnormal test results. The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and was reported by Nicholas Bakalar….
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Reading What Your Doctor Writes About You
Medicine continues to take small but encouraging steps to move out of the 19th century in communications with patients. The latest: an experiment at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital to let patients read on a secure website the notes that doctors write about them at the end of each visit. As reported in the Boston….
Continue ReadingToo Much Medical Care Is Dangerous and Expensive
A New Yorker article by Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, focused on why McAllen, Texas has higher medical costs than just about anywhere in the country. Dr. Gawande concluded that much of the problem could be traced to the very aggressive, intervention-oriented style of medicine practiced there — all stemming from the fee-for-service payment system….
Continue ReadingMany Patients Find Close Relationship with Primary Doctor Worth Paying For
It sounds like every patient’s medical fantasy: Easy access to your doctor 24/7, same-day appointments, thorough and unrushed examinations, little to no time in the waiting room. The only downside is expense: To get this kind of personalized care from a primary doctor, you have to pay an annual fee, and forget about insurance covering….
Continue ReadingHeart Failure: An Expensive Revolving Door
Nobody wants to go home from the hospital only to be readmitted within a few weeks. But that revolving door is very common in conditions like heart failure, where the patient’s heart muscle doesn’t pump effectively after it has been weakened by heart attack or other heart disease. The open secret of the hospital industry….
Continue ReadingDoctors Urged to Stop Accepting Gifts – A Step toward Eliminating Conflicts of Interest
An Institute of Medicine report released on April 28, 2009, denounces the adverse effects that the health care system suffers from the free gifts regularly pumped into hospitals, medical schools, and doctors’ offices, writes New York Times’ Gardiner Harris. The report strongly advises doctors to stop accepting the gifts. The report says that accepting gifts….
Continue Reading“Back in the Hospital Again” — A Result of Fragmented, Uncoordinated Care
Getting a loved one home from the hospital is always a relief for both patient and family, but the weeks immediately after hospital discharge are fraught with peril, as many families don’t discover until the patient has to be readmitted for a new problem. This is especially common with Medicare patients: an alarming one in….
Continue ReadingThree Things All Patients Need to Know
One of the true pioneers of modern medicine is Dr. Thomas Sarzl, who performed the first liver transplant and who developed many of the procedures that have made transplantation a safe lifesaving treatment for thousands of people. Dr. Sarzl is still active at age 83. He was interviewed recently by another transplant surgeon, Dr. Pauline….
Continue ReadingAnnual Inspection May Reduce Deaths from Oral Cancer
One of the less common forms of cancer, oral cancer was diagnosed in about 35,300 Americans last year and caused the death of 7,600 people. Although oral cancer is one of the easiest to detect and diagnose, the five-year survival rate is only 59%, and more than 60% of cases are diagnosed in the late,….
Continue ReadingMaking Surgery Safer by Using Checklists
An international research team has shown that death and complication rates from surgery can be dramatically improved by using simple checklists to make sure that safety measures are taken before, during and after each operation. The research project, involving nearly 8,000 patients at eight hospitals around the world, was done as part of the World….
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