This morning in the Chicago Tribune’s business section appeared an article entitled “Just What the Doctor Ordered” that included an interview with Dr. Howard Bauchner, the new editor for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He plans to pursue a strategy of “intelligent innovation” for the journal:
Dr. Wes
The cost of safety
At a time where the nation is struggling with a debt crisis driven in large part by the cost of our health care entitlement programs Medicare and Medicaid, the press reports of larger hospitals with fewer beds continue:
Rebuttal: The New England Journal of Medicine’s justification of medical “mystery shoppers”
Don’t just do something, stand there!
It’s the hardest thing in the world for a doctor to do.
How to teach Facebook to an eighty-five year old
I got off the phone yesterday with my 85-year old mother following her fifth Facebook training exercise. Only now can I say I feel she might find this interesting after all.
Our polite new world of rationing
“To ensure rational and responsible dissemination of this new
technology (transcatheter aortic valve replacement [TAVR]), government,
industry and medicine will need to work in harmony.”– David R. Holmes, Jr., MD, FACC
President, American College of Cardiology
Contingencies
* Bzzzzzaaaaapp *
Suddenly, the light went out. There was complete and utter darkness. Then, about 3 seconds later, the lights returned. My computer with its flat screen poised before me, remained dark. I hesitated a moment, then pushed the power button. Within a few more moments, the computer restarted. All seemed intact.
But what if it wasn’t?
Change You Can Count On: Insurers Buying Hospitals
It started with the Stark Law that physicians couldn’t buy hospitals to block self-referral, but we have no problem with insurers owning hospitals.
If state and federal regulators sign off on the plan, Highmark officials say the deal will allow them to move away from traditional fee models that reward providers for providing unnecessary procedures and services.
Regulations Gone Wild
Lost and found: The Case of the Missing Pager
It happens to every doctor at some time in their busy career: the missing pager. Usually, discovering the locale of the digital disrupter is quite simple: you simply page yourself provided, of course, that the contraption is not on "vibrate" mode.
And so it was with me some time ago.
Medical education: The unintended consequences of free medical school
Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.
They paved paradise,
And put up a parking lot.”
-from “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell
An opinion/policy piece appeared two days ago in the New York Times entitled "Why Medical School Should Be Free." Hey, why not? If it’s free it’s for me!