A local reporter pulled another fast and loose assumption on unsuspecting readers recently, though this time I’ll cut her some slack. She was merely conveying a conventional belief shared by many other Americans. The story was very sad. A well-loved perfectly healthy minister, the Rev. Ken Diehm, became suddenly ill and...
Read More »

A study by the AARP in 2010 found that the cost of brand-name prescription drugs grew 8% in 2009, compared with the overall inflation rate of -0.3%.  Over a 5-year period, retail prices for 207 brand name drugs increased 41.5 percent by December 2009, compared to the general inflation rate of...
Read More »

Do you ever go to a website to see the satisfaction score your doctor or hospital is getting? If their score is below 4.5 would you stop seeing them? Some pundits expect patients to check out websites with quality ratings such as www.healthgrades.com and www.drscore.com to help them shop for doctors...
Read More »

Two more recent studies I didn’t mention last week documented how little influence electronic medical records (EMRs) had on outpatient care. One study measured 20 markers of quality between practices with and without EMRs over 255,402 national ambulatory patient visits. 19 of the 20 quality indicators were no different between the...
Read More »