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Think Generics Will Lower the Cost of Chemo? Think Again
ByadminChemotherapy drugs have become ridiculously expensive. Many new drugs come to market costing more than $100,000 per patient for a full course of treatment. Often, patients have to pay a significant portion of these costs. For example, a 20% co-insurance rate, typical for basic Medicare coverage, leaves patients responsible for more than $20,000 of chemotherapy costs,…
American Physicians Lack Diversity— Here’s One Way to Change That
ByadminAfrican Americans make up 13% of the country’s population, but only 4% of American physicians are black. This lack of racial diversity in the profession is tragic, denying this prestigious career to many worthy people and undermining the health of many African Americans, who are more likely to receive important medical services when they’re cared for by black…
When Bad Advice Is the Best Advice
ByadminEighteen years out of training, and I still find myself struggling to understand the moral imperatives of medical practice. Not long ago, as part of my hospital duties, I cared for a man who could no longer swallow. This dysphagia was his only medical complaint, one that had sneaked up on him over the course…
New podcast on research ethics and stubbornness
ByadminCheck out my latest podcast, which accompanies a new article I co-authored with Robert Silbergleit. In the article, and in the podcast, I discuss a problem plaguing clinical research: that doctors are sometimes not convinced by previous research, and thus want to see more evidence before changing their practice, but at the same time experts,…
Autonomy, paternalism and understanding
ByadminI gave a talk Wednesday as part of an ethics series here at Duke. Here is one take on my presentation. See if you can spot the Far Side reference!
When The Doctor Is A Sieve, It Strains All Our Resources
Byadmin2In residency, we had a term for ER docs who always seemed to find an excuse to admit patients to the hospital. We called them sieves. Recent evidence suggests that sieves in the ER drive up costs, workloads, and hospital utilization; but they do not save lives.
