Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
What’s clear is that depending on how investigators adjust or manipulate or clarify or frame or present data – you choose the verb – they might show differing results. This doesn’t just pertain to data on trauma and helicopters…
If a drug helps, keep it going; if it hurts, stop. There are so many algorithms in medicine, and molecular tools, but maybe the bottom line is how the, one, your patient is doing.
Profit is not what medical care is about, or should be about. What we need is a simple, national health plan, available to everyone, with minimal paperwork and, yes, limits to care.
“Goal Play!” articulates how positive, team-oriented guidance and genuine concern for employees’ well-being can have a positive impact on the lives and careers of valued health care workers and their patients.
In this new climate of shame, it’s easy to imagine a girl might feel really, really bad about herself simply for being sexually active.
Counterfeit vials were sold and distributed to more than a dozen offices and medical treatment facilities in the U.S. This event, which seems to have affected a small number of patients and practices, should sound a big alarm.
The unreasonable price of the medical records, combined with the delay in receiving them, exemplifies unnecessary harms patients encounter in an outdated, disjointed health care system.
Methotrexate has been used in cancer wards for over 50 years. And like other beyond-patent meds, it’s become less profitable to manufacture MTX compared to much costlier new agents.
This week the NIH launched a new website, NIH Clinical Research Trials and You. In a Feb 6 press release, NIH Director Dr. Francis S. Collins said “The ability to recruit the necessary number of volunteers is vital to carrying out clinical research.” The idea behind the website is to help patients understand how clinical research […]
The current debate about the individual mandate reminded me to post this – About a year ago, I had the opportunity to hear Wendell Potter, author of Deadly Spin – an insider’s sharp critique of the insurance industry, speak at a meeting of the New York Metropolitan Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Despite […]
Last week’s NEJM delivered an intriguing, imperfect article on a new approach to treating hepatitis C (HCV). The paper’s careful title, Preliminary Study of Two Antiviral Agents for Hepatitis C Genotype 1, seems right. The analysis, with 17 authors listed, traces the response of 21 people with hepatitis C (HCV) who got two new anti-viral agents, with or […]
Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a special Big Issues health care section. A post on their blog caught my attention: Should Patient Have Electronic Identification Numbers? The idea is that people who use health care would each be assigned a universal patient identifier, or UPI. This unique number would link to a person’s health records. […]
Tomorrow the American Society of Clinical Oncology* will host its 9th annual GI Cancers Symposium. Bloomberg and the LA Times have already reported findings of a paper, still in abstract form, to be presented on Saturday. The drug of interest is regorafenib, a pill that loosely inhibits quite a few kinases – enzymes critical in […]
Dr. Donald Berwick left his position last week as head of CMS. He said this, as quoted in the WSJ’s Washington Wire, yesterday: “Maybe a real death panel is a group of people who tell health care insurers that is it OK to take insurance away from people because they are sick or are at […]
Over the weekend I developed another bout of diverticulitis. Did the usual: fluids, antibiotics, rest, avoided going to the ER, cancelled travel plans. One of my doctors asked a very simple question: is this happening more frequently? The answer, we both knew, was yes. But I don’t have a Personal Health Record (PHR) that in […]
Today’s breaking breast cancer news is on Avastin. The FDA has just announced, formally, that it will rescind approval for the drug’s use in people with metastatic breast cancer. Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg writes this her statement: I know I speak on behalf of the many physicians that have been involved with this issue here […]
A funny thing happened at my doctor’s appointment on Friday. I checked in, and after confirming that my address and insurance hadn’t changed since last year, waited for approximately 10 minutes. A worker of some sort, likely a med-tech, called me to “take my vitals.” She took my blood pressure with a cuff that made […]
Something I learned at the MBCN conference is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA, a.k.a. HCR), will require that private insurance companies cover the routine costs of medical care for patients participating in approved clinical trials. Medicare does so already, said Dr. Tatiana Prowell, an oncologist on the Johns Hopkins […]
A few days ago I had a colonoscopy to evaluate some gastrointestinal problems. Subjective summary: Yuck. Downing 3 liters of Nu-Litely, a hyper-osmotic colonic cocktail prep, does not make for a pleasant Sunday afternoon, evening or night. As for the procedure itself, I don’t know how Katie Couric did it on TV. But what made the […]
Today I visited my internist for a checkup and flu shot. We talked about how I’m doing, and she examined me, and we discussed what procedures I ought have done and not done. She’s been my doctor since the summer of 1987, when I was an intern at the hospital. We reviewed so much that […]
