Tag: United States
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The ultimate challenge in controlling healthcare costs: reducing needless care
Efforts to reduce overuse of health care services run counter to the dominant financial incentives in our fee-for-service system, challenge the cultural assumption that more is better, and raise concerns about stinting on necessary care. That quotation is from a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. It points out the often quoted…
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In vitro fertilization and the business of making babies: hype vs. hope
(Guest Post: What follows is a fascinating and enlightening essay and book review by Maggie Mahar, who blogs on healthcare policy issues at her excellent blog Healthbeat, posted here with her permission.) Miriam Zoll’s Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies is in part a moving memoir, in part a troubling expose of…
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Injuries from bottles, pacifiers, and sippy cups: silly fear or a real risk?
There is a somewhat interesting article in the most recent issue of the journal Pediatrics; at least the title is interesting. It’s called “Injuries associated with bottles, pacifiers, and sippy cups in the United States, 1991-2010. I occasionally have wondered how common it is, for example, for a toddler running around with a pacifier in…
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Safe transport for critically ill and injured children
Critically ill or injured children often develop their problems far from where they need to be in order to get the care they need. A common scenario is for a child to be brought initially to a facility such as a general community hospital, where they are stabilized and receive initial therapy. Following this, however,…
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How are doctors trained anyway? (Part 1: the historical background)
A couple of conversations I’ve had with patients’ families over the past month have made me realize that many folks don’t know how our system produces a pediatrician, a radiologist, or a surgeon. And a lot of what people know is wrong. Physicians are so immersed in what we do that we forget that the…
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Government payment for health care: the long view perspective
With all the arguing about how to pay for healthcare it’s useful to step back and take a long, comparative view. To do that takes both knowledge and experience. Victor Fuchs, distinguished professor of economics and healthcare policy at Stanford, has both of those qualities, and recently shared his perspective in an excellent editorial in…
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US health care stacks up poorly with other countries. Again.
A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund highlights what Americans experience in what passes for our healthcare “system” — higher costs, higher risks, and more stress. You can read about it on Chris Fleming’s excellent Health Affairs blog here, or else see the full study published here, in the journal Health Affairs. The study surveyed…
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How are doctors trained, anyway? (Part 1 — the past)
A couple of conversations I’ve had with patients’ families over the past month have made me realize that many folks don’t know how our system produces a pediatrician, a radiologist, or a surgeon. And a lot of what people know is wrong. Physicians are so immersed in what we do that we forget that the…
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Teenage drinking and the PICU
Every PICU cares for teenagers who are injured in car accidents. Many times these adolescents have been drinking alcohol. We also see teens in whom alcohol has led to a variety of other injuries besides car accidents. So underage alcohol use is a PICU issue. What do we know about it? You can find some…
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The problem of finding which medical treatments work
One thing everyone agrees on is that our economy cannot sustain the amount of money we spend on healthcare. That was clear even before the Wall Street meltdown, and it’s even more true now. The United States spends 16% its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare, a figure half again that of the next highest…