Fight Health Worries|Healthy Living Techniques

This is just a quick mention of a new way to search for articles and posts at the Medical Quack.  Down along the right hand side if you scroll down or see the tag cloud and want to search, click on one of the words.  This is pretty unique as it gives you some real interesting and nicely formatted results to look at.  I have been blogging now about 3 years and theres all kinds of information stuff all over the place in the current and archived posts.  This is what the cloud looks like along with how the results format.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Council of Medical Specialty Societies got some good press for its new code of ethics regarding medical associations’ interaction with industry.  Two of the best skeptical bloggers about health care dissected the code, suggesting it will not be as tough as it was cracked up to be.  See these posts by Dr Daniel Carlat on the Carlat Psychiatry Blog and by Dr Howard Brody on the Hooked: Ethics, Medicine and Pharma blog. Read the rest of this entry »

You may already be familiar with the law suit and finally tools are here to help out.  I briefly looked through some of the information and in some cases if you are a member of an IPA, they could be handling some of the paper work for you so best is to check and see what is happening at that level.  It also looks like they will calculate for you the amount that is due with selecting an automated calculation.   The link below shows the initial announcement from December 2009.

Read the rest of this entry »

Walgreens is really on the move with getting into the screening mode here and collecting healthcare data combined with involving their pharmacists with additional patient consulting.  Just recently United Healthcare announced a pay for performance program employers who can have their employees enroll with Walgreens to consult for additional information and classes if the Ingenix data algorithms they run indicate a consumer is at risk of developing diabetes.  Not sure what the parameters are of at risk yet as this is not for people that are already diagnosed as diabetic.

Read the rest of this entry »

How does it feel to be in a trial?  This video touches on some of the good and bad and the communication between the patient and the site.  Dan talks about documentation that might be missing, like missing some adverse affects of the drug in the trial.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Health Care Renewal, we noted many legal settlements and criminal convictions in cases alleging unethical behavior by health care organizations.  Some organizations have settled, and/or pleaded guilty, and/or been convicted numerous times.  And we have said repeatedly, (e.g., here) such legal actions will not deter unethical behavior by health care organizations until the people who authorize, direct or implement bad behavior fear some meaningfully negative consequences. Relatively small fines imposed on large corporations pain workers on the line and stockholders while sparing the richly paid top hired management and the boards that will not reign them in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rachel Maddow captures some GOP member suggesting how patients can pay for their healthcare, get a boatload of Lipitor for a chicken, I dont think so but these folks are giving alternatives for those who cant pay cash for care today and granted there are some isolated cases but this is still more like charity in reality with or without the chicken.  How many doctors are paid with chickens today?  Bring a chicken to the doctor she says. 

Read the rest of this entry »

As a physician, not being a big fan of cigarette smoking, I would have found little to criticize had anyone showed me the Smoke-Free Initiative at the University of Michigan, as promoted by the University President, Mary Sue Coleman. 

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a very lengthy section that goes over recalls put out by the FDA.  It entails many procedures and outlines what is needed to be done.  The part of this that I am concerned with is the red tape procedures and lack of automation and the fact that sometimes with all of this, products get missed and patients are implanted with devices that have been recalled.  Why is this important?  Some of those patient die needlessly!  You can take your choice here, spend perhaps hours going all over the web for information or have the ability to scan that stent that takes less than a minute and one could be presented a screen that says do not use recalled or could include new safety information just released. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Drug delivery methods are on the move for change, not only this device but many others, and why?  For compliance and data reporting they want devices that report data trails.  We are back to data, data and more data as the device turns. 

Read the rest of this entry »