The Health Care Blog

This Visit May Be Recorded

By ALAN SCHWARTZ and SAUL WEINER In their 1993 book, Reinventing Government, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler entitled a section “what gets measured gets done.” Unfortunately, when it comes to improving health care quality, safety, and costs, we often fail...

Published Mon, Dec 21 2015 9:19 AM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized

All I Want For Christmas: Seven Things I Wish My EMR Could Do

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD Dear Santa, I’ve been a very good doctor all year. I have checked all my boxes and aced all my Meaningful Use requirements. This year, I’m not asking you for anything fancy. I just thought you might be able to instill some kindness...

Published Sat, Dec 19 2015 2:45 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Hans Duvefelt

A Little Context in the Workplace wellness Debate

By HARRIS ALLEN Ms. Dentzer has once again offered a constructive course correction with her commentary on the most recent public installment of the workplace wellness “debate” at the Population Health Continuum’s November 2015 conference. Few have done...

Published Sat, Dec 19 2015 9:37 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Harris Allen

It’s Still the Prices, Stupid!

By STEVE FINDLAY Oh, for heaven’s sake! Just when we thought we knew one important path to retraining healthcare costs—by mimicking what communities with lower Medicare costs do — along comes a study that blows that idea out of the water. The landmark...

Published Fri, Dec 18 2015 11:24 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Steve Findlay

“Roads? Where we’re Going, We don’t Need Roads.”

By HANNAH GALVIN, MD When I was 10, Marty McFly rode a hoverboard through a 2015 Hill Valley’s Courthouse Square, and I knew what I wanted from Santa that year. Needless to say, I was disappointed that Christmas morning in ’89. Fast forward to the real...

Published Fri, Dec 18 2015 10:05 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Hannah Galvin

The Magical World of ACA Funding

By ANISH KOKA, MD Congressional leaders just agreed to a budget that would keep the government open through September 2016. I was happy to hear the government was not going to shut down. I was much less happy to hear about the fate of provisions supposed...

Published Thu, Dec 17 2015 2:42 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Anish Koka

An Open Letter From the Massachusetts Medical Society on Meaningful Use

By MASS MED SOCIETY On behalf of the 25,000 physician, resident and medical student members of the Massachusetts Medical Society I am writing to provide our comments on Stage III Meaningful Use as it relates to the Medicare Access and Child Health Reauthorization...

Published Thu, Dec 17 2015 12:33 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Physicians, Meaningful Use, Hayward Zwerling, Attestation, Massachusetts Medical Society

Saving Normal

By SAURABH JHA, MD The iconoclastic psychiatrist Thomas Szasz said that mental illness was metaphorical, not real, because mental diseases lacked biological substrates. The absence of a substrate predisposes psychiatry to overdiagnosis and avoiding overdiagnosis...

Published Wed, Dec 16 2015 1:51 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Saurabh Jha

Why Doctors should Recommend Quantified Self Technologies for Their Patients

By MOLLY MALOOF, MD The United States population suffers from staggering numbers of lifestyle related diseases. We know the situation is not improving. Recent research found that over half of the country has prediabetes or diabetes. The facts don...

Published Wed, Dec 16 2015 11:50 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Small Practice, Molly Maloof

Genetic Testing: The New Frontier of Wellness Madness

By AL LEWIS The Wall Street Journal just reported that Genetic Testing May Be Coming to Your Office Soon. This is all well and good, assuming employees would want their health insurer’s buddies collecting their DNA for no good reason, handling it, selling...

Published Wed, Dec 16 2015 9:31 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Al Lewis

The Right Not to Know

By BENJAMIN E. BERKMAN While promising to eventually revolutionize medicine, the capacity to cheaply and quickly generate an individual’s entire genome has not been without controversy. Producing information on this scale seems to violate some of the...

Published Tue, Dec 15 2015 2:33 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Benjamin E. Berkman

Physician Burnout Rates Top 50% in latest Mayo Study

By DIKE DRUMMOND, MD Over 50% of US Physicians now suffering at least one symptom of burnout. Depression and suicidal ideation rates even more concerning. For a while now I have been suspicious that physician burnout rates are increasing here in the USA...

Published Tue, Dec 15 2015 10:14 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Dike Drummond

The Profitability (or Not) of Harming Patients

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON When the government announced recently that a patient safety partnership with hospitals had saved 87,000 lives and nearly $20 billion over four years, there was an oblique reference to the role played by “financial incentives....

Published Mon, Dec 14 2015 2:47 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Michael L. Millenson

HEART for the Stage 3 API

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD It is imperative that we support the interoperability components of Meaningful Use Stage 3. The promise of reform to justify our massive investment in MU must be supported by broad, patient-centered interoperability mandates so that...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2015 9:12 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB

This Is America: You Don’t Have to Do Anything

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD “I just want you to know, I won’t have a colonoscopy”, my new patient said with some amount of fervor in his voice. “And I don’t want to take a lot of medications.” I looked him straight in the eyes and said “This is America, you...

Published Sun, Dec 13 2015 10:34 AM by THCB

Filed under: NEJM, Uncategorized, Patient-centered care, MD, Amy Compton-Phillips, Hans Duvefelt

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