I’m a news junkie. My homepage is set to Google News headlines. I read the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BoingBoing and anything that shows up in my feed reader under a variety of custom-configured search parameters. And say what you will about Twitter as a tool for outbound communications, but the hive [...]
Clarifying Complex Ideas
Category Archives: healthcare
Broken Hearts
I’ve spent the last three weeks debating about whether to talk about broken hearts, and wondering how personal this blog should get. I’ve decided that in the end, keeping people healthy is more important than opening old wounds.
This isn’t a story of failed romance. It’s the story of women, heart disease, the importance of taking [...]
Girls, Sex and Vaccines
I was at the store today when I overheard two women talking. “Our pediatrician wants Sarah to get that Gardasil vaccine,” the first one said. “And I said absolutely not. She’s 9 years old. I am not giving her a shot for a sexually transmitted disease. That’s absurd. She [...]
The Left Brain/Right Brain Mammogram Debate
Like many women, I was shocked by this week’s announcement that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routine mammography for women 40-49. I’m a rational, reasonable person, persuaded by hard clinical data, and yet I couldn’t help but think about the women that I’ve known who’ve survived breast cancer because a lump was [...]
Making the Most of the Time You Have Left
“Nobody wants to die a slow, lingering death. But many Texans do. Half die in hospitals. One in five passes away in intensive care units. Often, their last months of life are expensive, painful exercises in medical futility.” So reads the introduction to “At the Edge of Life,” a five-part series examining the lives touched [...]
AMWA Conference
I’m leaving on a jet plane today, heading to Dallas, Texas for the annual American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) conference. I get to spend four days learning about topics like statistics, regulatory aspects of the drug development process, virology, epidemiological research and health policy reform.
My inner med geek is very excited.
The Cost of Readmissions
As politicians jump on the healthcare reform bandwagon, there is an increased and renewed interest in keeping costs low. When a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that approximately 20% of Medicare patients are readmitted to hospitals within a month of discharge, it didn’t escape anyone’s attention.
In the current model [...]
HITECH Puts New Emphasis on Healthcare Security
How safe is your patient information? According to Premier, Inc., approximately 10 million patient records were breached between 2005 and 2008. The average cost of each breach reaches into the millions.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) includes new provisions regarding protected health information (PHI). HITECH goes beyond [...]
Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare
I’m not, by nature, a germophobe. I am perhaps irrationally understanding of the number of creepy crawly germy nasties out there, and in general believe that my exposure to these germs makes me stronger, not weaker.
The exception to this rule is the doctor’s office or hospital. It doesn’t matter why I’m there, [...]
War: What is it Good For?
I was speaking with a cardiothoracic surgeon recently, and he brought up the topic of war. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “but it does wonders for advancing medicine.”
It was a perspective that I hadn’t previously considered. Estimates suggest that greater than 90% survival rate for soldiers injured in recent combat. Compare [...]
