Quote of the Day

“Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people.”
– Helen Keller

“Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people.”
– Helen Keller
Atul Gawande has received appropriate praise for his new book. Read it if you haven’t. Meanwhile, here is one of my favorite paragraphs from the book, to whet your appetites: Even as our bones and teeth soften, the rest of our body hardens. Blood vessels, joints, the muscle and valves of the heart, and even…
Here is a nice, cautionary article from Consumer Reports reporter, Donna Rosato, on the downsides of high deductible health insurance plans: High deductible health insurance plans were supposed to help consumers cut healthcare costs. The idea was that since consumers would have to pay a large chunk of their own money for medical care before…
Here is a very interesting essay in the Arkansas Business Journal, which ties our research on physician patient conversations into a broader message about the importance of good communication in business. Glad to see our work is having an impact. Considering all of the technical advances and new complexities in marketing today (such as social,…
Recently, Dr. R. Adams Dudley, director of the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value, circulated a picture illustrating rapid growth in the use of tests and other imaging procedures between 2000 and 2013. I thought it deserved further circulation. It reveals 60-80% expansion of testing and imaging, with only – only? – a 40% increase in…
Aggressive control of blood pressure has saved millions of lives, and has prevented millions of people from experiencing heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure, among other things. Admittedly, controlling blood pressure is not the sexy part of medical care, but when primary care doctors like me help people get their blood pressure under control, we…
In The Theory That Would Not Die, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne brings to life many famous scientists and statisticians, the one of the moments that struck me most was when she described one of those people as he faced his death. That person was Jerome Cornfield, a prominent statistician at the NIH. Cornfield had been diagnosed…