What difference makes a difference? We often encourage patients to make small behavioral changes, in the hope that even one step in the right direction is at least small progress. However, when it comes to medical care, and testing in particular, I think we forget that some changes are not really changes at all. As […]
Category: US healthcare
Jeanne Lenzer: Clinton and Trump on healthcare
The Presidential Debate That Wasn’t The 90 minute presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ended last night without a single word about healthcare. Yet two-thirds of voters said “the future of Medicare and access and affordability of healthcare are top priorities for the candidates to be talking about during the 2016 presidential campaign.” [1] […]
Catherine Hough-Telford: How have pediatricians’ experiences of vaccine delays and refusals changed?
It’s unbelievable that one of the most remarkable innovations of our time—one that has prevented millions of deaths—has come under so much fire by a cacophony of misinformed voices in recent years. As the saying goes, vaccines have become a victim of their own success. The relative rarity of vaccine preventable diseases in the US, […]
William Cayley: What is your story?
Much has been written in recent years about “narrative medicine” or “narrative based medicine,” and there has even been discussion of how to integrate “narrative” and “evidence based” medicine in both journal articles and books. Most of this work (very helpfully) focuses on the narratives of patients: who they are as people, how their sufferings affect them, how […]
Jeanne Lenzer: Donald Trump on Dr Oz—the greatest non-evidence based show on earth
Late night comics will love Donald Trump’s latest act of showmanship: the neatly choreographed moment when he pulled out his “medical record” from his jacket pocket on The Dr Oz Show last night. The show and this big reveal garnered plenty of headlines: now everyone knows that Mr Trump is overweight, verging on obese; that […]
William Cayley: Systems wisdom
In a recent BMJ blog Steve Ruffenach made some excellent points on the importance of balancing “accept” and “except” in approaching “Tech” in medicine. However, as we continue to feel the pressure of realizing “meaningful use” of electronic medical records (often with attendant requirements for documentation, reporting, and ad-nauseam clicks of different buttons in each patient’s chart), I’ve […]
William Cayley: Where is our faith?
One of my favorite radio pundits is EJ Dionne, so I was intrigued to read in my morning paper his opinion piece, asking “where are our faith leaders?” In short, he argues that in today’s society discussions about religion have mainly been subsumed under political discussion of issues about which religious people care (or are about which they […]
Elizabeth Loder: Should orange be the new black for price-gouging pharma execs?
One thing’s for sure: Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, looks good in orange. She’s the subject of a recent New York Times article that opens by declaring “America has a new pharmaceutical villain.” (Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who raised the price of an essential toxoplasmosis drug by 5000%, is the old […]
William Cayley: Happy to be healthy
Drawing on a variety of demonstrated correlations between happiness (or “wellbeing”) and health, John Appleby recently argued that “improving individual, and hence national, wellbeing might best be achieved through improving people’s health.” While I appreciate any suggestion of policies or interventions that might boost health, I also think it worth considering whether the argument may […]
Suzanne Gordon: Encouraging all members of a medical team to speak up
The oval, mahogany table dominates the center of the large conference room. A number of chairs circle the table and dot the perimeter of the room. Every week, a group of high level hospital administrators, physician leaders, and leaders of other professional and occupational disciplines—physical therapy, social work, clinical directors of nursing, housekeeping, etc—gather in […]