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
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.
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.”
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. (more…)
By Evan Falchuk
Some things are just part of the problem in health care. The company “Medical Justice” is one such thing. I’ve written about them before.
Medical Justice sees the medical malpractice crisis and devised a solution: muzzle the patients.
It’s as misguided as it is ridiculous.
By Evan Falchuk
I gave a speech yesterday at the Midwest Business Group on Health’s 30th Annual Conference. The MBGH is one of the country’s leading organizations on health care, and its members include the leading innovators and thought leaders on health care in America. It was a privilege to present to them.
I spoke about why health care just isn’t a consumer business, in spite of all of the efforts to turn people into health care “consumers.”
Read the text of my remarks below the fold, it was a very interesting day.
By Evan Falchuk
The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog says that cancer lab tests “aren’t always right.”
They report on reports issued by two professional societies that point out that as many as 20% of a certain kind of test are inaccurate. According to the Health Blog the problem is the tests “aren’t black and white, and rely on a pathologist’s judgment.”
Now, judgment is a critical factor in most everything in medicine, but perhaps nowhere else are the consequences of incorrect judgment so serious as in pathology. As Dr. William Osler famously observed: “As is your pathology, so goes your clinical practice.”
But how widespread is this problem?
By Evan Falchuk
The Jobbing Doctor, a primary care doctor in the UK, writes today about the British version of what Americans call “Pay for Performance,” or “P4P.”
He says something I’ve said many times before (like here, here, and here). Which is this: incentives fail because they try to treat medicine as an assembly line process, when it’s not.
But what’s most interesting about his post is that it could have been written by a doctor from anyplace on the planet Earth.
By Evan Falchuk
The American Cancer Society says that men over 50 need to seriously consider whether they really ought to get screened for prostate cancer. According to them, the risks of getting tested may outweigh the benefits of detecting the cancer, especially for younger men. They say it’s a “complex issue,” but they understate how complicated it really is.
Like the recent controversy over breast cancer screening, the new recommendations add to the swirling morass of conflicting messages and priorities around health care in America.
By Evan Falchuk
Japan is completely different from the United States. But it’s exactly the same.
I’m talking about health care, of course.
Japan is a country of about 130 million people, and one of the richest countries on Earth. They enjoy a system of universal health care coverage, and some of the best doctors in the world. But there are problems.
