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…
In research I have had the pleasure of conducting with Darin Zahurenic, we are starting to find concerning data about the variability in how neurologists and neurosurgeons treat people who have strokes caused by bleeding in their brains – or what doctors call intracerebral hemorrhage. Darin recently presented some of this research at a medical…
Your father’s rheumatoid arthritis medicine was working well, fighting off that otherwise debilitating illness. Then he found out that Medicare would no longer pay for the drug. Your aunt’s multiple sclerosis was flaring and her neurologist recommended a promising new treatment. But she learned that she would have to try, and “fail,” on two other…
In response to the New England Journal article I published with Yousuf Zafar and Amy Abernethy, Newsweek chimed in this week with a report on the topic, including some thoughtful commentary from other medical experts. I thought it was worth pointing you towards this article, in part to remind you that Newsweek still exists, and…
Imagine picking up a telephone and hearing your doctor tell you there is a “999 out of 1,000 chance that you’ll be dead within a decade.” That’s what Leonard Mlodinow experienced in 1989, when his routine HIV test didn’t turn out the way he expected. Mlodinow tells this story in his 2008 book, The Drunkard’s Walk,…
Could ACOs be costing us money?