What should your doctor have learned in medical school. What should medical schools teach? Physicians I’ve talked to have said medical school is brutal. The amount of knowledge that students need to learn is immense. According to a recent poll up to 25% of medical students are thinking about quitting. One of the biggest stressors is the sheer volume of material that students must master.
Wednesday Links
- Why Medicare’s negotiated prices may not help patients. Formularies, step therapy and more.
- Blood supply has steadily decreased for over a decade, reaching critically low levels in the past two years.
- Another study on site neutral payments: Medicare Part B spending would have been $7,750 less for a hypothetical breast cancer patient.
- Opinion: Bidenomics is driving up the cost of health care.
Tuesday Links
- “Many older people are one medical emergency away from a court-appointed guardian taking control of their lives.”
- The hypothalamus, a cone shaped part of the human brain no bigger than an almond, affects whether we feel hungry and helps control our metabolism. (NYT)
- Kansas and Virginia Medicaid programs paid MCOs for beneficiaries who were dead. (InsideHealthPolicy paywall)
- Solution to rural health care: telemedicine. But you need an internet connection.
Drowsy Driving is a Public Health Hazard
By now everyone knows that driving under the influence is bad. Indeed, nearly one-third of all traffic fatalities involve a drunk driver. More than half (56%) of drivers involved in an injury or fatal car crash were on at least one drug (including alcohol) at the time that impaired their ability to drive. When I took flying lessons, we were warned that OTC cold medicines and flying is not allowed. The FAA has an explicit list of medication types that pilots cannot ingest while flying. An FAA study found the most common drug in the body of pilots involved in fatal aviation accidents was diphenhydramine (brand name Benadryl).