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.” –…
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Me, the Writer's Manual?
Here is a link to my guest spot on You, The Owner’s Manual radio show, hosted by New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Roizen. It is a lively interview, worth listening to if for no other reason than Roizen’s great taste in writing: “I really enjoyed the book,” he said to me at one…
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Does Obamacare Interfere with the Doctor Patient Relationship?
Q: Much of the debate around health care reform has centered on whether the government or the individual will control health care decisions. Is that a valid argument? Most medical decisions are between clinicians and their patients, and will continue to be that way as the federal health reform law is implemented. Medicare bureaucrats aren’t…
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Video Introduction to Critical Decisions
Here is my latest Critical Decisions video. This one gives a broad introduction to the reasons I wrote the book.
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Why It's a Mistake for Doctors to be Color Blind
The role of race in college and graduate school admissions remains controversial in the U.S. In fact, the Supreme Court is currently taking up a challenge to a University of Texas program that considers race in its admission decisions. Critics of race-based admissions question whether educational institutions would serve the goals of affirmative action better by…
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CASES: When Bad Advice Is the Best Advice
“CASES: When Bad Advice Is the Best Advice” – The New York Times
