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You Thought Innovation Was Hard, How about De-Innovation?
David Asch and I recently published an article in Health Affairs on the challenge of getting healthcare practitioners to stop doing things they are accustomed to doing, even when the evidence that those things are harmful becomes overwhelming. Here is a teaser from that article, and a link to the full piece: As hard as…
Do Oncologists Lie to Their Patients About Their Prognoses?
Andrews was easily the most anxious patient I took care of that month, a gray Michigan February (is there any other kind?) which I spent in the hospital caring for patients admitted to the general medical ward at the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center. (Andrews is a pseudonym, as are all the patients I blog about, unless…
On the Financial Burden of Paying for Medical Care in the US
According to a CDC study, about 1/3 of American families either struggled to pay medical bills in 2011 or outright couldn’t pay them! Not surprisingly, this problem is especially big for people with limited financial resources: Just another piece of evidence in favor of something I’ve been talking about lately when giving public lectures: that…
How Much Information Should Patients Get?
There is a good debate starting up on a website called Prepared Patient Forum, about how much information patients should get when facing important medical decisions. You might want to click on this link and join in.
What Mammograms Teach Us About Wildfires, Floods, and Tornadoes
In the wake of the horrific floods that struck Colorado recently, many people have debated whether global warming is to blame. The same goes for wildfires that hit that state this summer and for the massive tornado that struck in Oklahoma this spring. In the wake of that tornado, for instance, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from…
Who Pays Your Oncologist?
A recent economic analysis concluded that patients with metastatic cancer value their treatments significantly more than regulators recognize, with many expensive new therapies looking like veritable bargains to most patients.
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