Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a meaningful holiday season and that your personal family dramas were not too overwhelming. As many of you know, the suicide rate increases over the holiday season. Most suicide victims are depressed. A few have other mental health diagnoses, such as panic attacks or...
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This is normally a season to be thankful for our blessings, especially in America. With the recent tragedy, I especially feel it inappropriate to add negativity to the world by complaining about the healthcare system. So hug your children. Tell them you love them. Be thankful for the blessings of this...
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Answer me this: If you went to any healthcare facility – family medicine clinic, urgent care center, an ologist’s office, an ER, whatever – with a knee you just injured playing sports, and they ordered a CAT scan of your chest and expected you and your insurance company to pay the...
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A major study was just published in Lancet that addressed the issue of whether or not diabetes screening in primary care improves major health outcomes. This was a 10-year randomized controlled trial!! In other words, this study is the granddaddy of them all in terms of the rigor of its methods....
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I had some fun last week with a true patient care experience from one of my family physician colleagues. While the content was unusual and humorous, the case raises questions about the greater issue of support for the work of family physicians, and the lack thereof by all the payers, both...
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The following story is true. My imagination isn’t rich enough to make up this stuff. A colleague told me about this clinic encounter. A 60-year-old man came to clinic to talk about several issues. He had the insight to state that he was depressed. His parents died 5 years previously; therefore...
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Several physicians contribute regularly to BMJ. One of my favorites is a GP in Glasgow named Des Spence. Through their writings, I have gained a glimpse of the challenges faced by GPs in the UK, and the broader culture in which they work. In two of his columns this summer, he...
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A study about quality of life for patients with terminal cancer was reported by Medscape News. I won’t repeat the whole article here, but let me let you in on a few of their insights. Said the director of a Center of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, “Physicians who claim that there...
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We now have even more proof that the annual physical, health check, health maintenance visit, or whatever else you want to call it, is essentially useless. The Cochrane Collaboration recently published a review of the topic. They performed a meta-analysis of 14 randomized controlled trials of annual checkups of 180,000 adults...
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I had a technical glitch with my blog site. I hope it’s all fixed now. I just read the most amazing article on the effect of health insurance costs on family income 😉 These two brilliant researchers started with cost data from the managed care era — the last time healthcare...
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