Doctor, First Tell Me What It Costs
“Doctor, First Tell Me What It Costs” – The New York Times
“Doctor, First Tell Me What It Costs” – The New York Times
Sometimes it is hard for hospitals to provide expensive care to poor patients. When a low-income patient needs $20,000 of chemotherapy, a hospital loses money if that patient cannot pay for the medicine, or pays through Medicaid, with its relatively stingy reimbursement. Fortunately, the federal government created a program for hospitals that care for a…
I like to think that despite being wealthier than most Americans, I remain immune to materialistic desires. I drive a 17-year-old Honda Accord and wouldn’t know designer clothes if you wrapped me in them, head to toe. But it turns out that I’m wrong. I’m not above materialism despite my wealth and social status. I’m…
Good medical outcomes often depends on good nursing care. When hospitals cut back on nursing care, patient mortality rates climb. If you want a good hospital, pick one that doesn’t skimp on the nurse-to-patient ratio. You should also look at the education level of nurses a hospital employs. Because not all nurses are equally skilled….
We all know what “a complainer” is: it’s a person who finds the dark side of everything, who turns a casual conversation starter—“How are you doing?”—into a somber soliloquy about all the (usually minor) problems making their life unbearable. Too often, people with chronic pain are viewed as complainers by friends, family, and even their…
I recently blogged about a study showing that the same information, when presented in a graph, is more credible to people. One of my friends pointed out that Monty Python figured this out a few decades ago. “In this graph, this column represents 23% of the population. This column represents 28% of the population, and…
I know, I know: correlation does not mean causation. But it is still suspicious that when industry employees join as co-authors in medical journals, the randomized trials they are writing about are more likely to show positive results – results that make industry products look good. At least that was the finding from a study…