Dr. Wes
Hybrid operating rooms
The siren song of continuous improvement
This is what medicine has become in the eyes of our regulators:
Federal health officials are seeking physicians and other health professionals for a program to develop leaders in health care innovation.
Bucking the established
"Out with the old, in with the new!"
Who’s your doctor? Do you have one?
When doctors occupy health care
As Occupy Wall Street protests spread across the nation, I can’t help but wonder if the same movement could occupy health care.
After all, the basic tenants of the movement involve protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government. In the "Occupy" movement, there is a feeling there’s an inside game and the game is rigged.
New marchers, old school
New marchers, old school
Seen at yesterday’s "Occupy Chicago" march on State Street:
Joining the fishbowl
It’s a strange thing, this practice consolidation.
Imagine: one minute the guys over there are your competitors, then the next thing you know, they’re part of your group.
Before, you were SURE you offered patients something better (at least that’s what you told yourself). Now, they are us. How does one differentiate themselves any longer? Can we? Should we?
The challenges of gorilla echocardiography
If you thought human echocardiography was tough, imagine what it’s like to perform an echocardiogram on a gorilla while it’s awake:
Using wooden sticks, Niehoff and Evans touch the bars where they want Kwashi to place his hands. The gorilla complies.
"Good boy," Evans says, slipping grapes into the gorilla’s mouth.
Heart attacks are not just for the elderly: Student’s sudden cardiac caught on camera
She was only 12 years old when her sudden cardiac arrest was captured on a school security camera. Thankfully, she was saved by the quick actions of a few teachers and the school’s automatic external defibrillator:
One for the price of two
If you want to grow the expense of health care delivery in America very quickly, then create two government agencies to do the same job.
From the 28 September 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, we read about a small paragraph in our new health care law that created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). From that same article, here’s the PCORI’s mission:
National consolidation of heart programs: A new paradigm?
With the announcement of Cleveland Clinic offering cardiothoracic surgery services to Charlotte, North Carolina after their collaboration with Central Dupage Hospital in Illinois, a new cardiovascular surgery paradigm is taking shape: