I have 2 stories to tell. One was a patient I saw, the other, a family physician colleague. I won’t say which is which. A middle-aged woman showed up in an ER complaining of lower abdominal pain. Other acute details really don’t matter much. The physician and nurses were suspcious for...
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A report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that for the first time ever recorded, the mortality rate of middle-age whites in the U.S. has been increasing the last two decades. “After 1998, other rich countries’ mortality rates continued to decline by 2% a year. In contrast, US white...
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I’ve read several articles recently reporting on a shortage of geriatricians. The writers have some clear misunderstandings of who actually cares for our elderly and where they come from. Susan Jaffe writing for Kaiser Health News stated that the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) estimates that the nation will require 30,000 geriatricians...
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I’ve written many times about how the march of healthcare hyperinflation continues apace, meaning that the inflation rate for healthcare and health insurance continues to be greater than the general inflation rate (most recent post on the topic by me). Another report sheds more light on how this is affecting all Americans...
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A colleague recently told me of a patient encounter he had in an emergency room. When he picked up the chart, it described the patient as a 62-year-old woman complaining of epistaxis, or a nosebleed. He walked into the room and saw a perfectly well appearing 62-year-old woman. There was no blood on her clothes and none...
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Let’s start with some supposed good news. The headline recently read Jobless rate is lowest in more than 7 years. It’s officially at 5.1%, compared to 10% in 2009. But dig deeper. If people who can only get part time work and other people on the fringes of the job market are...
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Let me translate the title. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services was directed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to implement the Patient Centered Medical Home model in 500 Federally Qualified Health Centers. It didn’t work. The rationale was the usual mixture of “care coordination,” primary care...
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According to an article in Health Data Management, the Center for Brain Health at NorthShore University Health System in the Chicago area will use the organization’s electronic health records (Epic) and “advanced analytics” to “get ahead” of the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. Many of the typical health scare tactics are in play...
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To finish out a long title, let’s throw in insurance company executives, hospital administrators, most U.S. health economists, and most doctors. Very few events in the advance of medical knowledge have a definite start date. Cost-effectiveness research is an exception. The very first cost-effectiveness studies in medicine appeared in the July...
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The AAFP’s Health is Primary document makes an unusually bold statement for a bunch of family physicians that payment reform is the key to all other reforms. This new-found courage to actually stand up for ourselves is refreshing, though I had some serious concerns with the document that were previously published, and...
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