Making Cigarette Smoking Uncool
Pause to consider the logic here. We decide it is not a good idea to let the government ban this product, or to require a doctor’s prescription to consume it.…
Is Medicare A Good Deal?
Think about everything you will pay to support Medicare: the payroll taxes while you are working, the premiums during retirement, and your share of the income taxes that subsidize the…
Extra Pounds at Midlife May Boost Dementia Risk Later
According to Health Day News, being overweight during middle age may increase your risk of developing dementia. Swedish researchers suggest that being overweight at midlife increases the risk of dementia…
Medtronic, Infuse and the Senate Finance Committee
Spinal fusions jumped 1,500% among Medicare patients between 2002 and 2007. The explosion had nothing to do with changes in prevalence of the conditions for which the complex surgery is…
Sepsis: A Challenge for Patients and Hospitals
I thought I'd carry through on Infection Control again this week and share some new data I recently came across on Septicemia, commonly known in the hospital as, Sepsis. This…
Fed Gov’t Approves Covert Study of Access to Primary Care
The federal government is planning what has been termed as a “stealth survey” of predominantly primary care delivery systems in order to determine access-to-care data. The Obama administration is hoping…
SCOTUS Rules on a Couple of Important Pharma Cases
Clarence Thomas wrote for the 5-4 decision in which companies were shielded from lawsuits by consumers suffering from adverse effects of certain drugs. Anthony Kennedy, the SCOTUS justice often seen…
Do Overworked Medical Interns Cause Medical Errors? Let’s Sleep on It.
As of this writing, 5 air traffic controllers have been found asleep at the switch. By the time this piece is posted, several others may have joined the slumber party.…
Bacteria and Mobile Devices
I really see us moving beyond COWs (computers-on-wheels) and an explosion in use of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc) in healthcare environments. But, I would be remiss if the Environment of…
Healthcare Data Security: How Bad is it?
It is really bad, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute (available here with registratio It is really bad, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute (available here with registration).…
