You know the one: “How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way On Health Care“, by Karen Tumulty and Michael Scherer. It’s worth reading if you’re not familiar with the issue, but there are a couple of aspects important to patients that the authors don’t quite spell out. First, this bit:
But there’s a dilemma: policymakers want to [...]
Thu, October 22 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Among the problems that arose during my appointment with Dr. Jamfingers was my lack of medical records from previous surgeons. In particular, the fact that I did not have any records of my most recent colonoscopy was a problem. He decided I had to get a whole new battery of tests, which he wrote down [...]
Tue, September 15 2009 » Uncategorized » 4 Comments
Dr. Wes waxes optimistic on the state of American politics:
With the deeply personal debate on health care and its associated reform costs, our need for honesty and successful policy to save our country is suddenly more important to us than the comfort of bedtime stories. This is political maturity.
[...]
We are now (as voters) in a [...]
Wed, August 26 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
I woke up this morning and realized that my COBRA payment is due, and even if I get it to the mail today, it won’t arrive until early next week. ADP, the company that processes my premiums, has a long history of cutting me off if my payment isn’t received on the first of the [...]
Thu, July 30 2009 » Uncategorized » 2 Comments
Tomorrow’s the big day: they’ll be “Putting Patients First” at the National Press Club. The last panel of the event is on specialist care; it includes Dr. Rich from Covert Rationing, Dr. Wes, and Kim from Emergiblog (yay, nurses!). This, then, is my final set of questions:
1) Since I know the answer to all my [...]
Thu, July 16 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
Arun Mohan and Gordon Moore have an op-ed worth reading at The Health Care Blog.
Health information technology offers great promise to patients. Patients can access their medical information online, communicate with doctors by email, schedule appointments through the web and take advantage of numerous tools to manage their own illnesses. They can become equal partners [...]
Thu, April 30 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Ruthann Russo at Disruptive Women says patients should maintain their own electronic records:
For the average healthcare consumer, the message is to act now on obtaining their health information and keeping it in an electronic format to be shared with all providers who treat you. The personal health record (PHR) is not a substitute for the [...]
Fri, April 3 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
There’s been a fair amount of hand-wringing about online doctor reviews lately – mostly provoked by the man-bites-dog doctor-sues-patient story from California and the patient-gag-order story. If you can bear it, I want to go back to a quote from the latter article:
“I think the real problem is that the info may not be all [...]
Thu, March 12 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
I usually skip the interviews on the Daily Show, but Monday’s guest was interesting: Harold Varmus, Nobel Prize winner for medicine, former head of the NIH, all around übernerd, and now a co-chair of President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The interview is worth watching in full, but I want to point out [...]
Wed, March 4 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
In this recent post, I concluded that health care comparison tools aren’t very useful to patients: “It’s not that we don’t want the information: we do. It’s just not there.”
The main reason the information is so spotty is that the medical profession has a vested interest in avoiding that sort of transparency. Maybe part of [...]
Tue, March 3 2009 » Uncategorized » 2 Comments
A novel crime against decency by Duncan Cross
