With more than 10,000 boomers retiring each day and more seniors ending up at some point in their lives in nursing homes, regulators need to step up their oversight of elder care facilities. But there’s disturbing information they’re failing at this crucial task, allowing terrible abuses of older Americans who also may be evicted unfairly….
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Plastic surgery patients don’t need surgeons who are social media clowns
Social media have become a “circus” for some plastic and cosmetic surgeons to clown around in unprofessional ways, including: videos in which one doctor has cradled fat removed from a tummy-tuck like an infant and put a baby face on it using a Snapchat filter. Other costumed surgeons have posted visual displays of themselves dancing….
Continue ReadingPediatricians may be the Rx for rising tide of tats, piercings, scars in youths
Could pediatricians accomplish what many parents cannot? Can they talk to rebellious youths about the body adornments that are all the rage now, and get kids to consider the health risks and long-term issues surrounding trendy tattoos, piercings, and body scarring? In case you’ve fallen like Rip Van Winkle into a long doze or you’re….
Continue ReadingIn hospitals, angry guys with guns (even with badges) are a bad idea
Medicine and law enforcement can be a combustible combination, as a widely publicized incident in a Utah emergency room has reminded. The ugly incident has underscored the importance of hospitals keeping big, upset guys with guns cordoned off from caregivers, as well as the importance of front-line medical personnel knowing, respecting, and protecting patients’ privacy….
Continue ReadingNursing homes, where more of us will go, fail to properly report abuse cases
With more Americans than previously thought needing care in the nation’s nursing homes, will more of us start to pay greater attention to the unacceptable and under-reported elder abuse occurring there? And with calamities like Hurricane Harvey fresh in mind, will more sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, and other friends and loved ones take….
Continue ReadingRavages of opioid drug abuse epidemic worsen, grow ever more complex
The myriad problems tied to the nation’s opioid drug abuse epidemic seem only to worsen and grow more complex by the day. They are, recent news reports say: contributing to new outbreaks of syphilis, a destructive and deadly sexually transmitted disease that is tough to contain and whose cases had dwindled until fairly recently; leading….
Continue ReadingNew disclosures deepen scandal over DC hospital’s risky obstetrics care
Doctors and hospitals across the country push the frontiers of medical science every day, finding new ways to improve health care and to change and save lives. But at the same time, some of medicine’s basics—like delivering babies safely and protecting mothers’ well being—also keep getting botched, especially for poor and black women. It’s a….
Continue ReadingWhy you will see many fewer erectile dysfunction ads this fall: a story of crazy costs
This fall’s National Football League games will be markedly different in an unexpected way that also offers insight into the nation’s skyrocketing costs of medical care. The makers of the erectile dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis are yanking $50 million in advertising from TV broadcasts of NFL games, their top contact point with male consumers. Indeed, the….
Continue ReadingHere’s why you’re getting those unsolicited mailings about clinical trials
When consumers around the country started getting letters from a company that they had never heard of, inviting them to participate in clinical trials for medical conditions that they hadn’t disclosed to many or didn’t even have, the alarms started to sound, quietly at first but with increasing urgency. Were doctors, hospitals, or other providers….
Continue ReadingInvestigation uncovers troubling numbers of sexual assaults in nursing homes
It’s one of the more disturbing, revolting, and painful health care investigations put out by a news organization in recent times. It’s disheartening but it also demands action: So, what steps will federal, state, and local authorities take now that CNN has reported that thousands of sick, disabled, and defenseless patients, most of them women,….
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