Here’s an eye-opening post from the New York Times. From the outside, England’s National Health Service appeared to be the ideal venue for a unified system of medical records for an entire country. It’s funded from one source — the U.K. government — and there’s a well-established hierarchy among doctors and hospitals. However, even under [...]
Each week, we select an article from an influential journal that has broad implications for healthcare and has just become available for free online.
Like many Americans, I’m frustrated and astonished at how slowly and poorly U.S. clinicians are moving toward the long-awaited, completely logical electronic health record. And, like many Americans, I’ve assumed that if only there were a [...]
Each week, we select an article from an influential journal that has broad implications for healthcare and has just become available for free online.
This newly available paper jumped out at me because it asks questions about something I’ve seen for a long time in the workplace and around my neighborhood: If people in their late 40s or early 50s [...]
“A watershed event in health care accountability,” is how the New England Journal of Medicine characterized the news that Consumer Reports is publishing ratings of 221 U.S. cardiac surgery programs on the outcomes of their coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures.
The consumer magazine has teamed with the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) to rate heart surgery [...]
Each week, we select an article from an influential journal that has broad implications for healthcare and has just become available for free online.
A few weeks ago, one of my posts discussed the discouraging notion that social attitudes lead to less-effective diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis. So, even though there are ever-improving ways to treat TB, patients often don’t get the [...]
Why are we still hearing about infections caused by healthcare, rather than cured? Ever since the Institute of Medicine issued a groundbreaking report in 1999, healthcare workers, policymakers, and the general public all have known that simple oversights and mistakes in hospitals and other facilities can cause a huge number of potentially deadly infections. Yet [...]
Each week, we select an article from an influential journal that has broad implications for health care and has just become available for free online.
The interesting word in this article title is economic. All over the developed world, the cost of health care is putting tremendous pressure on the overall economy, whether in the form of personal expenses, insurance [...]
Every week, we feature an important or interesting book that has recently been reviewed by our experts or has just been published.
OK, so this is a modest book and probably not a masterpiece. It’s interesting for two reasons, though.
First, it covers a topic that few people had even heard of until several years ago — [...]
As highlighted in our welcome message, of the many factors that influence a successful outcome in the delivery of health care, I believe that the interaction between the healthcare professional and the patient is the most important factor in achieving the desired outcome of improved health.
So what does the patient want in a typical encounter [...]
It’s all about transparency these days – in government, in banking, and, of course, in healthcare. A recent New York Times story reports on several efforts to build online comparison tools consumers can use to determine costs of various nonemergency medical procedures — such as colonoscopies — before making the appointment.
Health insurance companies, physicians, and hospitals [...]
