Last week found me in the beautiful snow-scape of State College, Pennsylvania, speaking to the Pennsylvania Mountains Health Alliance, a consortium of 15 regional hospitals. There were a number of highlights… not the least included enjoying snow that we don’t see much of in South Carolina, having a great dinner with a number of the CEO’s […]
I read with great interest a recent editorial by Dr. Scott Haig, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons who also is in private practice in the New York City area. The piece appeared in Time online and you can read it here.
I saw a reflection of […]
I’ve enjoyed hearing the healthy debate over Michael Moore’s newest movie, Sicko, and the discussions it has spawned. Fact is, not many of us have experienced healthcare in another country and when we do, it’s the healthcare an American experiences, not necessarily what a citizen of that country experiences. I don’t believe all Cubans experience […]
Ex-Surgeon General , Richard Carmona, MD, has testified that the president’s administration had muzzled him on a number of healthcare topics because he alleges topics that didn’t fit in ideologically, theologically, or politically, were “often ignored, marginalized, or simply buried.” The current Surgeon General nominee, James Holsinger, Jr., MD is being grilled over if he’s […]
Despite my background as a traditionally trained M.D. in western medicine, I think I’m pretty tolerant of diversity in healthcare. I do know enough to know that none of us knows enough to have patient treatment all figured out. Actually, I’m more than tolerant… I’m downright accommodating for a wide variety of non-western healing sciences. […]
This is not what I intended to write for today.
This week I’m attending my annual National Speaker’s Association meeting in San Diego and I was working on the article I planned to write on the USAirways flight from Charlotte to California. With ipod music piped through noise reduction headphones I was typing away when Russell […]
One of my blog readers shared an email he received from Doctors For Medical Liability Reform about Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News broadcast from a maternity ward in Philadelphia, (my Medical School Hometown), days before escalating medical liability concerns contributed to forcing the ward to close it’s doors. The story also goes on to tell […]
In Marc Seigel, MD’s book, False Alarms: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear, Dr. Seigel relates that despite the hype in the media about exotically terrifying diseases, like mad cow disease, is misplaced with the public. Your risk of contracting mad cow makes the odds of winning the Powerball Lottery seem attainable!
I remember one […]
There are different “languages of healthcare.†Clinicians speak patient language but often don’t speak the healthcare language of regulation, quality, or finance. It pays to understand and effectively translate from one dialect to another. For instance, “medical necessity†may sound “clinical†but it’s really financial. For CMS, “medical necessity†doesn’t mean something that’s “medically necessary,†[…]
Headlines in multiple newspapers proclaim “Doctors admit to bribes!” Read on, and you discover that, HORRORS, Doctors allowed a healthcare sales representative to BUY THEM A LUNCH. Goodness Gracious!!!! What will be next? Candidates running for public office being given obscene amounts of money by people who would like to see them elected for self-serving […]
