By Evan Falchuk

According to news reports actor Michael Douglas, perhaps most famous for his role of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, is suffering from stage IV throat cancer.

He started complaining about symptoms to doctors earlier this year.  His doctors didn’t find anything to explain the problem until months later, when they discovered a walnut-sized tumor in his throat.  Even though doctors had originally told him they couldn’t find anything wrong, Douglas and his wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones were sure something wasn’t right.

Still, after months of feeling the pain creep up on him, of having a dry throat and hoarse voice, the news of his cancer came as little surprise to both Hollywood stars.

“It wasn’t a huge shock. I knew something was up. He knew something was up,” said Zeta-Jones.

It’s an all-too familiar story.  Being a rich and famous celebrity can make you special.  But when it comes to the right care, you’re as ordinary as the next guy.

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By Evan Falchuk

If you’re into health care consumerism, and you like, well, me, you will enjoy my guest blog post at CDHC Solutions Magazine.

CDHC Solutions focuses on consumer-driven health plans.  Consumer-driven plans are a form of “high deductible” health coverage that is more popular than ever.

For whatever you want to say about these plans, one thing is clear: they don’t solve the fundamental problem of patients not having enough time with their doctors.

Here’s a taste of what I wrote:

Researchers have been trying to pinpoint the impact of this time starvation on the quality of medical care, and they’re finding disturbing results. A recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that because of time pressures and related factors doctors deliver “error-free” care as rarely as 22% of the time. The researchers called this a “failure to individualize care,” which is a nice way of saying the doctors just weren’t paying enough attention to the needs of their patients.

Read the whole thing here.

By Evan Falchuk

ABC News reports on the murky world of discount medical plans.  They scored a series of quotes from me, including this one:

If your gut tells you that you need to wonder about what you’re hearing, it’s a bad sign. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Read the whole thing.

Elsewhere, David Williams of the Health Business Blog now has the transcript of our podcast up on his site.  He’s split up the interesting discussion into two parts, with the first part here and the second part here.

By Evan Falchuk

David Williams, the Charlie Rose of the health care blogosphere, recently interviewed me.

You can listen to the audio of our wide-ranging talk on David’s always-interesting Health Business Blog.

We talked about health care reform, health IT, social media, health care quality, patient navigation, and the role of Best Doctors.

Give it a listen, and visit back to David’s blog regularly.

What’s your opinion on the subjects we talked about?

By Evan Falchuk

How often do people get the wrong diagnosis?

Too often.

There are things you can do help protect yourself.  Things like, asking questions, being sure everything makes sense to you, not doing anything you’re not sure about.

At Best Doctors, helping people do this is what we do every day, and so I want to tell you a story.  It’s about my brother.

I want to tell it to you it because it will help you understand the important work we do here, and because of something very special that happened for him this weekend.

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By Evan Falchuk

You have a right to your medical record.

It’s true – the record of every test and procedure you’ve had done, any films or studies, your doctors notes.  It’s all yours if you ask for it.

But it’s not that simple.

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By Evan Falchuk

According to the Annals of Internal Medicine, doctors make the wrong medical decisions surprisingly often.

Using a “mystery patient” technique – in which actors pretended to be patients – researchers found that doctors made errors in complicated cases in 60% to 90% of cases.  Sixty to ninety percent. In uncomplicated cases, they made errors in nearly 30% of cases.

As one study participant put it, “I was shocked.”

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By Evan Falchuk

If a web site touted misleading health care information, you’d hope the government would do something about it.  But what do you do when the government is the one feeding the public bad information?

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By Evan Falchuk

When health care reform became law, HR and benefits professionals I spoke with had two reactions: surprise and annoyance.  Surprise, because they thought reform was dead; annoyed, because the law was full of provisions that didn’t make sense to them.

But it was partly their own fault.

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By Evan Falchuk

Yesterday, the Senate yesterday rejected the so-called “doc fix.”   This means that doctors taking Medicare patients will now get 21% less pay for their work.

How’s that getting involved in politics working out for you guys?

Not so good.

But there’s a larger issue here.  Why do we keep trying to control health care costs by just mandating that less money be spent?

It’s failed for decades.  But like a losing gambler that is convinced that if he just keeps doubling down, he’ll finally come out ahead, people keep trying.  Read More