Full Table of Contents
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Abbreviated
Table of Contents

Home Page
Patient Safety
Silence vs
    Safety
Silenced
White wall
    of Silence
Silencing
Conflict Of
    Interest
Psychology of
    Providers
Subjectivity
Blacklisting  
Nurse survey
Loyalty
Mobbing and
    bullying
Trust Us
Defensive
    documenting
Report Rate
Risk
    managemnt
SOAP
Management
Hospitals
Crime in
    medicine
Sexual Abuse
Liability
    Limitations
Free Speech
    for Patients
Exploitation

OSMB Medical
    Boards
Mammography
solutions
Medical errors
Medical Complaints
One number
Links

Injured patients who want to help and be heard, click here.

Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would choose newspapers.

In medicine we have government without newspapers. Patients cannot find out what they need to know to make informed choices. No one in medicine records or reports the information patients need to know the most. So patients will have to do it.

Notes_14

Medical Statistics

Assume that there is a disease that effects only people over 60 years old. It is studied in a community in which people live to be 75 years old. People who don't go to doctors regularly tend not to get diagnosed until they are in their 70s. People who do go to doctors regularly get diagnosed in their 60s. When people are diagnosed with it in their 60s, they are put through a regimen of treatments and therapies that are expensive and time-consuming and have nasty long-term side effects, but the 5-year survival rate is 100%, because they all live to be 75.

The people who do not go to doctors regularly and do not discover they have the disease until they are in their 70s do not endure the expensive and debilitating treatments and suffer no long-term side effects. But the 5-year survival rate of that group is 0% because they all live to be only 75.

The conclusion of the people earning livings by diagnosing this condition is more diagnosing is the answer - screening should be universal. Everyone should be required to be checked for it early, because when it is diagnosed early enough there is a 100% survival rate.

The conclusion of the people earning livings by treating it is that it is a 100% effective life-saving treatment. Everyone who is diagnosed with it should pay for and endure the expensive and debilitating treatments. It is a no-brainer.

Too bad patients are not allowed to read the experiences of other patients, amass data, and avoid bad medicine.

If you think things don't work this way, you probably work in medicine, and that's why things work this way.

The head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Dr. Donald Berwick is a professor of health care policy at Harvard. He heads the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit consulting firm. He was quoted in the New York Times on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 in an article by Milt Freudenheim called, "Tool in Cystic Fibrosis Fight: A Registry."

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ADR
Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients

A Meta-analysis of Prospective Studies

by Jason Lazarou, MSc; Bruce H. Pomeranz, MD, PhD; Paul N. Corey, PhD
JAMA. 1998;279:1200-1205
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/279/15/1200

The Caduceus
In Roman iconography, the caduceus was often depicted being carried in the left hand of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, gamblers, liars and thieves. It was confused with the traditional medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius, which has only a single snake and no wings. The rod of Asclepius is an ancient Greek symbol associated with healing the sick through medicine.

Some scholars suggested that the symbol once represented a worm wrapped around a rod. Parasitic worms were common in ancient times and were extracted from beneath the skin by winding them slowly around a stick. Physicians may have advertised this service by posting a sign depicting a worm on a rod. The worm was mistaken for a snake in the Middle Ages.

Copies and pasted from:
http://doctorblue.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/blog-overview-replace-the-caduceus/

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Canadian Health Care

"The Supreme Court of Canada declared in June 2005 that the government health care monopoly in Quebec is a violation of basic human rights."

This is a July 8, 2007 piece by Sally Pipes in The New York Daily News that challenges Michael Moore’s “Sicko” movie assertions.

In “Sicko,” Michael Moore uses a clip of my appearance earlier this year on “The O’Reilly Factor” to introduce a segment on the glories of Canadian health care. I am a new American, but I grew up and worked for many years in Canada. And I know the health care system of my native country much more intimately than does Moore. There’s a good reason why my former countrymen with the money to do so either use the services of a booming industry of illegal private clinics, or come to America to take advantage of the health care that Moore denounces.

Government-run health care in Canada inevitably resolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago – she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest quality care in the government’s eyes – I can honestly say that Moore’s preferred health care system is something I wouldn’t wish on him.

In 1999, my uncle was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. If he’d lived in America, the miracle drug Rituxan might have saved him. But Rituxan wasn’t approved for use in Canada, and he lost his battle with cancer.

But don’t take my word for it: Even the Toronto Star agrees that Moore’s endorsement of Canadian health care is overwrought and factually challenged. And the Star is considered a left-wing newspaper, even by Canadian standards.

Just last month, the Star’s Peter Howell reported from the Cannes Film Festival that Mr. Moore became irate when Canadian reporters challenged his portrayal of their national health care system. “You Canadians! You used to be so funny!” exclaimed an exasperated Moore, “You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?”

Moore further claimed that the infamously long waiting lists in Canada are merely a reflection of the fact that Canadians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, and that the sterling system is swamped by too many Canadians who live too long.

Canada’s media know better. In 2006, the average wait time from seeing a primary care doctor to getting treatment by a specialist was more than four months. Out of a population of 32 million, there are about 3.2 million Canadians trying to get a primary care doctor. Today, according to the OECD, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 major industrialized countries in doctors per thousand people.

Unfortunately, Moore is more concerned with promoting an anti-free-market agenda than getting his facts straight. “The problem,” said Moore recently, “isn’t just [the insurance companies], or the Hospital Corporation and the Frist family – it’s the system! They can’t make a profit unless they deny care! Unless they deny claims! Our laws state very clearly that they have a legal fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders … the only way they can turn the big profit is to not pay out the money, to not provide the care!”
Profit, according to the filmmaker-activist, has no place in health care – period.

Moore ignores the fact that 85% of hospital beds in the U.S. are in nonprofit hospitals, and almost half of us with private plans get our insurance from nonprofit providers. Moreover, Kaiser Permanente, which Moore demonizes, is also a nonprofit.

What’s really amazing is that even the intended beneficiaries of Moore’s propagandizing don’t support his claims. The Supreme Court of Canada declared in June 2005 that the government health care monopoly in Quebec is a violation of basic human rights.

Moore put me, fleetingly, into “Sicko” as an example of an American who doesn’t understand the Canadian health care system. He couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve personally endured the creeping disaster of Canadian health care. Most unlike him, I’m willing to tell the truth about it.


http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/2007/07/moore-lies-about-healthcare/

Semmelweis Society
Quote from founder is at this link:
http://medicalboardreform.tribe.net/thread/6d2e9303-36a5-43dc-b161-887b827e397a

(On this site the quote is on the links page under Semmelweis.)

Discussions about how to fix health care:

I’ve been in the discussion when I was the only one in the group who wasn’t a physician or nurse. I’ve been in the discussion when all the others were relatives of victims, but not victims themselves. I’ve been in the discussion with victims with fresh injuries and old injuries, small ones and life ruining ones, intentional and unintentional ones. For as much as can be understood about the ocean by looking at one drop of water, it is rare for any of these people to see much beyond their own reflection on the surface of that drop of water.

By whitewashing history, it continually distorts the public policy debate.
  -- Michael Millenson: The Silence

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Silence versus Patient Safety
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The White Wall of Silence versus Patient Safety
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Medical Complaints - How to

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