There’s a blackout, a planned blackout to cut the fire risk to your community just west of Sacramento, and now you are faced with a decision: do you keep your refrigerator full of vaccines running, or do you keep the community’s electronic health care records online? Your backup generator can’t do both.
When Michele Goldberg finished medical school in Los Angeles, she says she was burdened with “insane” debt. But she still wanted to work with underserved populations, which the lower pay makes difficult for new doctors and other care providers exiting school. Recent graduates from medical programs often have massive loans to pay off on top of the several years of lost earning potential while they focused on their education.
A doctor’s subtle facial cues — an encouraging smile, or perhaps a wince — can influence a patient’s own beliefs about whether a treatment will work and can even help induce a placebo effect, a new study suggests.
When oncologist and cancer researcher Harvey Preisler was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1998, he wanted one person to oversee his care. “I trust only your judgment,” Dr. Preisler told his wife, Dr. Azra Raza, an oncologist. Despite her hesitations, from that moment on Raza became the point person for her husband’s care.
A health care algorithm makes black patients substantially less likely than their white counterparts to receive important medical treatment. The major flaw affects millions of patients, and was just revealed in research published this week in the journal Science.
Too little attention is paid to documentation, coding, and billing in many medical practices. For patients, documentation simply means that your doctor is providing an account of your visit in your medical record. However, documentation and coding can affect revenue, quality of care, and possibly expose clinicians to legal consequences.