How to Tell Someone That She Is Dying
“How to Tell Someone That She Is Dying” – The New Yorker
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Are Infertility Doctors Turning into Predatory Bankers?
Somewhere near where you live, a couple will discover this week that they are infertile and that if they want biological children of their own, they are going to need in vitro fertilization (or IVF). According to treatment protocol, the woman will need to take powerful medicines to ramp up her production of fertilizable eggs….
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Legends of the Fall Semester?
In case the Internet had any remaining credibility, as a source of truthful information, the MBA channel now lists me as a B School legend: The U.S. based website Poets & Quants has published a different kind of ranking. They haven’t chosen the best b-schools, but instead paid tribute to some of the best b-school…
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Sleepless in the hospital: Our own default
“Sleepless in the hospital: Our own default” – ACP Hospitalist
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Evaluating the Quality of Charter Schools and Tertiary Care Hospitals
If Americans judged the quality of hospital care the way Newsweek judges high schools, we would soon be inundated with “charter hospitals” that only treat healthy patients. As reported in The New YorkTimes , thirty-seven of Newsweek’s top 50 high schools have selective admission standards, thereby enrolling the cream of the eighth grade crop. That means…
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Contracts With Patients in Clinical Practice
“Contracts With Patients in Clinical Practice” – The Lancet
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Lifesaving Lessons from the Makers of Sprite?
It was the late 90s and HIV was spreading through South African teenagers like, well, like a sexually transmitted disease. Sleep with a South African at that time and you faced a one in six chance of having a close encounter with the virus. Frightening odds. But not frightening enough to curb teenage sexual activities….
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How Hospitals Get Away with Billing Medicare for Preventable Complications
The idea seems so simple: (A) When hospitals leave catheters in people’s bladders for too long, people get urinary infections. (B) Third party payers like Medicare and insurance companies are then billed for the cost of treating these infections. (C) If Medicare refuses to pay for these treatments, and force hospitals to bear the cost…
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ACA Boosts Shared Decision Making
Medicine, today, is supposed to be “patient-centered.” But sometimes the patients feel a little off balance. What can they do when everyone seems to be trying to push aggressive, expensive treatments on them? One solution — or a partial solution — is known as shared decision making, in which patients are given specific tools, such…
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Physicians and Patients Make Best Decisions Together
Imagine yourself in this patient’s situation. You have just found out you have cancer, and the next phrase out of your doctor’s mouth is “You’re going to die with this cancer rather than of this cancer.” Which word do you think will jump out of that sentence? “With”? “Of”? My money is on “die.” –…
