“No single law—no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this.” These were President Obama’s words to the people of Newtown, Connecticut, where last week 20 […]
Category: US healthcare
Richard Smith: The case for slow medicine
The characteristics of health systems are complexity, uncertainty, opacity, poor measurement, variability in decision making, asymmetry of information, conflict of interest, and corruption. They are thus largely a black box and uncontrollable, said Gianfranco Domenighetti of the Università della Svizzera Italiana at a meeting in Bologna on La Sanità tra Ragione e passione (Health through […]
Martin McKee: How should the United States respond to gun crime?
A few days ago a disturbed young man in Newtown, Connecticut, shot his mother before going to the primary school where she worked to murder 20 children, aged between six and seven years old, and six staff. The immediate response was disbelief and shock at yet another mass shooting in America. But this was followed, […]
Trish Groves: Get the gun out of the house
About 15 years ago I sat in on the superb Doctoring programme at UCLA that taught medical students the art of medicine through role play with actors. One scenario featured a teenage boy whose behaviour was causing concern at home and school. I don’t remember all the details of the case, but the gist was […]
Ed Silverman on the Sunshine rule in the US
Any day now the Obama administration is expected to release the long delayed Sunshine rule which will determine how drug and device makers are to gather and publish data containing their financial relationships with physicians. At least that is what many companies and consumer advocates are hoping, but a strain of anxiety is noticeable among […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: To screen or not to screen—mixed messages on mammography
You might not know this, but I am over 40 and I am a woman. In the US having breasts and being over 40 means something to doctors and patients. It is a healthcare trigger to start having annual mammograms. If you are reading this in the UK, Canada, or Europe, you might be surprised […]
Douglas Noble: US healthcare and the Harkness fellowship
Having decided to write a blog during this academic year living in the US, I hadn’t anticipated my tardiness would be because moving the family overseas was vastly more effort than I anticipated. A stroke in a family member at home came suddenly and unexpectedly, and a hurricane hit the city I’m currently calling home. […]
Trishan Panch: More disruption please?
As an NHS GP I learned that healthcare is fundamentally locally provided and delivered through fostering long term relationships. However, the convergence of mobile technology and big data have the potential to profoundly change the way care is delivered. Should existing power brokers see this as an opportunity or a threat and what does this […]
Edward Davies: The American Heart Association and why the world needs journals
You would sometimes be forgiven for thinking that we are now living in the last days of the traditional medical journal. Everything from payment models, to access, and even peer review is up for grabs. Editors are a needless middleman, messing with the researchers’ genius and peer reviewers merely inflict their own bias on the […]
Gabriel Scally: Sweet black angel
Back in my early days as a radical medical student (a small, select group in the Belfast of the early 1970s) one of the international figures I admired greatly was Angela Davis. I was amazed and delighted to find her billed as the main speaker at the closing session of the American Public Health Association’s […]