Some doctors crave distinction.
They carefully place their many diplomas and certificates on their wall to signal to patients that they are high achievers who can be trusted with surgical instruments and drugs that can cure or kill you, depending on how they are dosed.
Michail Sorodsky craved the distinction of being a doctor. Instead, he now has the distinction of being thrown into jail with a massive bail: $33 million.
With over 60% of Americans looking to the internet for health information, the question for those of us who care about health is, "how do we increase the chances of people finding good information?" There are a few components to this question. First, what kind of information is available? Second, how is it found? And third, who is producing it, and for what purpose? Here are a few observations which are, unfortunately, not yet supported by data, but may serve as a starting point for future discussion.
Between 2001 and 2006, the number of visits paid to emergency rooms in the United States increased annually by nearly 12 million, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in April 2009. In addition, the average time ER patients waited before being seen by a physician rose from 46 minutes in 2003 to 56 minutes in 2006. Although fewer hospitals reported having to divert ambulances to other facilities because of overcrowding, those that did reported spending more hours on average on diversion.
This story is about the angst and frustration experienced while not having health insurance followed by the serenity experienced after completing a surgical procedure because I was covered with medical insurance
Dr. Patrick Dean has pulled off a magic trick to make Houdini proud.
The founder and president of GI Pathology, a national testing laboratory based in Memphis, Dean has practiced medicine without a license in at least two states. Practicing without a license is often a career killer for a physician. Not so with Dean.
A little known Oregon law requires hospitals to provide written notification of serious adverse events to all victims (or families of victims). The law is largely ignored; last year 40 such written notifications were recorded, though national studies of medical errors predict there likely were over 1,000 such events at Oregon hospitals.
Clair Jordan, the executive director of the Texas Nurses Association for the past 30 years, has seen nurses in a lot of difficult situations.
Nurses have one of the toughest jobs in health care.
Anyone who has delivered a baby in a hospital knows how much work they do, only to see all the credit go to the doctor who comes in for the final few minutes. How many photos have you seen of a nurse holding a brand new baby?
This post discusses physician Eric Goosby's book about living with the HIV virus.
Sheila Himmel, an award-winning food writer and restaurant reviewer for the San Jose Mercury News, loved to eat. Then her daughter became anorexic, forever changing Himmel's relationship with food and her identity as a journalist. In Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia, Himmel and her daughter Lisa examine how their family coped with Lisa's serious eating disorder.
