NIH Update: Resistance Against New Conflict of Interest Rules Continues

The New England Journal of Medicine this week has a good summary by Robert Steinbrook of the latest developments at the NIH. In particular, ...

HCA leads campaign to curb doctor-owned hospitals

An interesting article on the competition between physicians opening specialty hospitals owned by themselves and corporate medicine. Big-bus...

Health Care Renewal Bloggers to Speak

Kim Atwood and Tim Gorski will be speaking at a conference entitled "Curing the Ills of Alternative Medicine and Questionable Mental He...

How Academic Health Centers' Advertising Put Their Interests Ahead of Those of Patients

An important article was just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine on the use of advertising by academic health centers (AHCs). [L...

From Harvard: Bigotry, the Disabled and Slippery Slopes

The Philadelphia Inquirer has not replied to me nor, as far as I know, retracted its statement published on two consecutive days that in eut...

Pain Management Caught in the Cross-Fire

An op-ed in the NY Times about how doctors (and patients) are caught in the cross-fire when the issue is control of pain. Zealous enforceme...

Doctors call dehydration a 'peaceful' way for normal people to die?

In the Philadelphia Inquirer article " Doctors call dehydration a 'peaceful' way to die " (Sat, Mar. 26, 2005), staff writ...

Survival of AHCs: Why Do They?

In a series of interviews conducted last year (2004), Drs. Hamilton Moses and Samuel Thier, along with David Matheson, Esq., asked 23 leader...

The Costs of Computer Based Medical Technology

My take on Arnold Kling's article on the " Myth of Massive Health Care Waste " has generated quite a bit of discussion on Klin...

Now, doctors DO things with computers

In my writing I've long called for substantive leadership roles and titles for medical informaticists in healthcare, where the attitudes...

Now, doctors DO things with computers

In my writing I've long called for substantive leadership roles and titles for medical informaticists in healthcare, where the attitudes...

Wash. Post on Cedars-Sinai CPOE failure

For anyone who doubts clinical IT is an area where angels fear to tread, there's this story in the Washington Post: Cedars-Sinai Doctors...

Clarification on VA Hospital System IT initiatives

In response to my postings on the Penn CPOE controversy such as here , where I included a reference to the Bay Pines VA Hospital IT system f...

Massive Health Care Waste? - Follow-Up

For Kling's response on the EconLog blog to the post below about waste in health care, go here . (For some comments on his Tech Central...

Is Massive Health Care Waste a Myth?

There is an interesting contrarian piece on the costs of health care by Arnold Kling on Tech Central Station , which was also picked up by T...

BC/BS employs non-credentialable person to do their credentials

I couldn't invent a better story. BC/BS of Mass,( and many other health plans across the country) use a credentialing service for radiol...

On the Terri Schiavo case

On the Terri Schiavo case, I post a question above and beyond its being taken over from clinicians (as seems to occur in healthcare more oft...

My opinions on Penn CPOE controvery published in Health-IT World

My opinion piece on the JAMA article on the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania's CPOE system problems has been published in Heal...

What Mercy Will the Uninsured Patients of Mercy Health Systems Get?

A story from Arkansas about hospitals billing uninsured patients at higher "rack rates" than they bill insured patients contains s...

Generous CEO Compensation and Corporate Governance

Re some previous posts in which we noted that managed care CEOs who publicly champion cutting health care costs often seem to command dispro...

AMIA on the JAMA CPOE article controversy

A reasonable assessment of the recent CPOE controversy by Don Detmer, MD, the President and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Associ...

Students Warned of Lawsuits for Failing to Tell Patients That They Are Fat

From the Washington Times , trial lawyer and George Washington University Professor John Banzhaf III warned students attending the American ...

BJC HealthCare Drops United Healthcare Contract Over "Garbage In, Garbage Out" Pay for Performance Plan

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the area's largest hospital system, BJC HealthCare, is terminating its contract with the Unite...

Telemedicine in Decline?

Telemedicine in Decline? What does that even mean? Decline from what? Did we ever really have it? Nonetheless, the National Health Service o...

Hospital Leaders Leery of Error Reporting

I've observed, and lecture on, the behavorial "drivers" of stakeholders in clinical IT such as the EMR. In my talks I speak of...

HealthLeaders Magazine: Do MDs or MBAs Make Better Leaders?

My belief is that physicians with appropriate cross-disciplinary expertise make better leaders than MBA's (in informatics, computer pers...

New Study Shows Limited Use of Electronic Medical Records

Do we here have an estimated cost of the sociotechnical and organizational factors that impede Healthcare IT success? See following two ar...