Compassionate use: the use of a new, unapproved drug to treat a seriously ill patient when no other treatments are available. The primary way for a patient to gain access to a medication not yet approved by the FDA is by being a part of a clinical trial. Clinical trials are set up to learnRead more
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more on Hope Dr Leslie Blackhall, a palliative medicine physician at University of Virginia gave a wonderful TEDx Talk: Living, Dying and the Problem with Hope it’s worth watching. Read more
To continue to the discussion from the previous post. Templates and checkboxes at the heart of the electronic medical record (emr), no matter how targeted or data driven just do not provide the whole story. To the human mind, it’s often just data overload. There needs to be something that ties all the information togetherRead more
In today’s electronic medical records, non-physician providers have to complete multiple assessment templates as a means of documenting the care and condition of patients. So basically patients are broken down into small snippets of information as determined by each template. Typically these templates are made of check off boxes or simple drop down boxes toRead more
Dr Jessica Zitter authored an important opinion piece published in the June 30th NY Times. Entitled: The Lifelong Mistreatment of Black Patients she delves into this uncomfortable and important topic by describing her patient with end stage lung disease, who was now ventilator dependent. He and his family were facing a heartbreaking decision: proceed to tracheostomyRead more
Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First was signed on June 24, 2019 with great fanfare. a few more comments… A noteworthy sentence from the executive order states: “Shoppable services make up a significant share of the healthcare market”. is this truly the case? The executive orderRead more
Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First was signed on June 24, 2019 with great fanfare. Its proponents tout this as the latest of many reforms by the current US administration “to transform our healthcare system into one that delivers affordable and accessible healthcare, and puts AmericanRead more
to continue the theme from an earlier post… Our current healthcare delivery system is made up of many silos. And while they are all tasked with helping patients/families, it sometimes feels as if they are working at cross purposes. Not surprisingly, a consequence of this is the inadvertent sending of mixed messages. Not a trivialRead more
Last year in my post The Power of the Personal (Aug 2018) , I discussed how personal photos or other home memorabilia can provide comfort to hospitalized patients and also remind providers that there is so much more to their patient than their current illness. My belief is that this promotes empathy and understanding, beneficial toRead more
When I first started in medicine (I graduated from medical school in 1986), things were simpler. Notice I didn’t say things were better. Compared with today everything in medicine was less complicated. For one thing, patients didn’t have the number of co-morbidities that they have today, so in general, the average hospitalized patient wasn’t asRead more
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