While I was on vacation, I spoke with reporter about a topic near and dear to my heart – importance of getting clinicians to talk about health care costs with their patients. The reporter put together a very nice piece on the topic, which I thought I would share with you: Doctors Aren’t Grasping For…
About one in fifty people reading this essay will be diagnosed with kidney cancer at some time in their life. In fact, one out of one people writing this essay has already been diagnosed with kidney cancer. (I had a small tumor removed from my left kidney not long after I turned 50.) But how many people…
I thought I would pass along this hilarious cartoon, suggesting a new way to “nudge” patients to use fewer antibiotics. Of course that nudge requires your doctor to be Batman, and Batman to be a pretty assertive type of physician: (Click here to view comments)
In the wake of my recent New York Times op-ed, and other writing about patient out-of-pocket costs, I was interviewed by Tammy Worth, a writer at Renal and Urology News. She did a great job of exploring this controversial topic. Here is a sneak peek at her article, followed by a link to the full…
Physicians need to broach discussions about out-of-pocket costs with patients the same way they discuss a treatment’s side effects, public policy professors wrote. “Admittedly, out-of-pocket costs are difficult to predict, but so are many medical outcomes that are nevertheless included in clinical discussions,” Peter Ubel, MD, of Duke University’s School of Public Policy, and colleagues wrote….
In the ICU, accurate and timely knowledge of patients’ oxygen levels is crucial. But some machines used to assess oxygen levels are less accurate when patients have dark skin tones. Read more here