As their roles change, Pharmacists need new Regulations, Norms, and Freedom from Corporate Interests

Pharmacists play an essential role in the healthcare system today, one that is ever-expanding.  They check for drug interactions, watch for signs of opioid over-prescribing, and try to determine whether a drug for one condition prescribed by one doctor will negatively impact the patient because of another diagnosis the patient has.  In hospital units, their roles have become yet more complex- often serving on various quality committees, managing daily dosages of medications like warfarin and vancomycin, and more.  I rely upon them in the hospital daily- to catch mistakes, and to advise on drug dosages and choices.  Many in the community give flu vaccinations, and some are even trying to gain "provider" status under Medicare, allowing them bill directly for treating patients.  This has been accompanied by a drastic change in the preparation of the average pharmacist- where once it was a 5 year bachelor's degree, now it is a graduate degree- a change recent enough that as of 2014, over 60% of pharmacists practicing had trained under the old system.

The Resident: Learn the Lessons, Laugh at Everything Else

A new medical TV show, The Resident, made a big splash in the social media- largely for a perceived negative portrayal of physicians.  One EM physician even published a long editorial on NBC news condemning it as reducing trust in the entire medical profession.  The creator of the show, Amy Holden Jones, has been viciously attacked on twitter for the show, and even accused of causing patient deaths by decreasing trust in the medical establishment.

A Response to the Volume Pledge

Dr. Pronovost is a leading figure in the patient safety movement, and is someone I greatly admire.  His work with surgical checklists is touted by Dr. Atul Gawande as having saved more lives than any researcher in the past decade.  However, I disagree with his latest initiative- to get hospitals who perform certain procedures at very low rates to stop performing them altogether.

On the surface, it seems like a perfect idea- hospitals that perform few surgeries of a certain type usually have worse outcomes and higher patient mortality than hospitals that perform many of them, a fact that has been known for decades.  However, the issue is more complex than it first appears.

When will the Medical Bureaucracy learn that Performance Metrics in Healthcare can be Lethal?

Yet another scandal regarding performance incentives in healthcare has surfaced.  This time, the area is transplant medicine.  It was reported that the demands by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) for extremely low complication and death rates (with the threat of loss of accreditation and shutting down of the program) has led to thousands of kidneys and livers being discarded while tens of thousands languish in waiting lists, desperate to escape the living hell that is dialysis.

Ebola, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, and Medical Errors

Ebola is in the United States!  Everybody (please don't...) panic!  Quarantine all Texans!  Though that might be a good idea anyway (just kidding).  More on Ebola in general in another post if I have time.

First off though, we've found out more information about the sequence of events leading to the hospitalization of the patient, Thomas Duncan.  Apparently, he came to the hospital, told people he'd come back from Liberia, and was still discharged home.  He was only admitted 2 days later when his nephew called the CDC.  The tale reveals a fascinating story of medical quality and system error.

Why Your Doctor Doesn’t Work For You

Many doctors are ambivalent about the Affordable Care Act. This is not due to the primary aims of the bill- after all, more people with health insurance means more paying patients, so what’s not to like? Rather, doctors are worried about the other, less publicized pieces of the bill, and related changes to Medicare and Medicaid that have quietly reshaped medicine- and often not for the better.

The Political Picking of a Surgeon General

There's a bit of buzz in the news recently over President Obama's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy.

Are CT Scans Giving Us All Cancer? If So, Who Should We Sue?

Two doctors, a cardiologist and a radiologist, published an Op-ed in the NYT about how CT scans are giving us all cancer.  They cite a claim that in 2007 the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated that CT scans will cause an estimated 29,000 excess cancers and 14,500 excess deaths.  They extrapolate that this means 3 to 5 percent of all future cancers may result from exposure to medical imaging.

This to me is rather overblown.  CT scans are getting better and better, and get better images while using lower and lower doses of radiation.  The percent of cancers from medical imaging is a highly controversial topic, with recent estimates (from an admittedly biased source) coming in at .04%.  Apparently, the higher estimates from the NCI are based off of post-WW2 cancer rates in survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.