What’s going on at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? It’s a federal agency with a $7 billion budget and more than 12,000 employees working across the nation and around the globe on everything from food and water safety, to heart disease and cancer, to infectious disease outbreak prevention. Its work and guidance on health….
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First-responders, trauma response wins praise in Texas church shooting
In the torrent of the relentless 24/7 news cycle, let’s not allow a new normal to prevail. We can’t forget that just days ago, a madman opened fire on a church in a small town south of San Antonio, Texas, killing at least 26 and wounding 20 or so. It was the worst mass shooting….
Continue ReadingLas Vegas tragedy helps highlight what’s right with nation’s health care system
Caregivers and the community in Las Vegas, Nev., deserve a salute for their response to the gun violence last week, which could have overwhelmed a less-prepared community’s medical system. Las Vegas isn’t a giant metropolis (pop. 2 million in its metro area), and, due to the high costs to operate such a facility, it has….
Continue ReadingCan VA’s struggles, successes help improve health care for us all?
Despite the barrage of terrible headlines about reported problems in its care, the VA, aka Veterans Affairs, “continues to perform as well as, and often better than, the rest of the U.S. health-care system on key quality measures [including] patient safety, patient satisfaction, care coordination, and adherence to evidence-based medical practices,” a new study of….
Continue ReadingHospital safety and access are still big problems
Hospitals can be risky, troubled, and even downright scary spots, as some recent news and other reports indicate: Inspector general slams DC VA Medical Center Almost 100,000 patients of the VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C., have been put at unnecessary risk because hospital staff and administrators, a government watchdog said, failed to “ensure that….
Continue ReadingPsychedelic drugs gets serious clinical consideration in PTSD, cancer care
Mental health experts aren’t suffering Sixties flashbacks. But they are seeing a new day for Molly (aka MDMA, Ecstasy, or 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) and magic mushrooms (psilocybin). These hallucinogenic drugs are getting serious consideration in helping those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression and anxiety due to cancer. The federal Food and Drug Administration, which won’t….
Continue ReadingBaltimore confronts an epidemic of gun violence
A lethal epidemic is sweeping Baltimore neighborhoods, costing taxpayers millions of dollars, as well as demoralizing caregivers who struggle with its casualties daily. Researchers, tragically, are barred from developing detailed data about this scourge to try to curb its increasingly deadly harm. Kudos to the Baltimore Sun and reporter Justin George for investigating for a….
Continue ReadingA little Rx for all the awful headlines: four stories of remarkable resilience
The events of recent days ─in Texas, Louisiana, and Minnesota─ have been so tragic that it’s easy to despair. Here are four health-related people stories worth reading to remind us of humanity’s enduring better side: In the horrors of Syrian combat, medical Samaritans strive to maintain some kind of care First, let’s stipulate that there’s….
Continue ReadingWaiting List for Vets Seeking Health Care Grows
Last year the country was shocked to learn the extent of the systemic problems the Department of Veterans Affairs had in delivering adequate health care generally, and, specifically, the grossly long periods vets had to wait to get an appointment. It’s not getting better. Department officials told the New York Times that the number of….
Continue ReadingVA Illegally Substituted Cheaper Drugs in Psychiatric Care
Substituting one drug for another – say, a generic version for a brand name – often is perfectly fine in terms of what’s best for the patient. But when a Veterans Affairs hospital in West Virginia replaced certain psychotropic drugs with older versions, it put patients at risk, because the priority wasn’t good care, it….
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