- Top NIH official, Fauci adviser admits hiding emails regarding COVID origins
- One-fourth of 40-year-olds in the US have never been married.
- What’s wrong with price transparency? It’s tied to insurance billing codes instead of meaningful bundles of services patients can understand.
- Reason for more wealth inequality: longer life spans. (WSJ)
- Study: estimated cost of CMS delay in approving the new Alzheimer’s drug: $13.1 billion to $545.6 billion.
- Does cold immersion therapy really work? Probably not.
Category: Direct Primary Care
Primary Care Physicians’ Changing Relationship with Patients
Does your doctor recognize you when you come in? Or does he or she merely scan your file quickly before stepping into the exam room? My dog’s veterinarian knows her history mostly from memory, but I’m not convinced physicians in large cities can have that close a relationship with their patients. It’s a little too much to expect that level of relationship in my opinion. It isn’t necessarily bad if our doctors only remember us contextually. That is, at the office they remember our history when prompted with a file but would not recognize us at the mall without a prompt.
NYT: We’re in a Golden Age of Medicine
The New York Times announced we’re in a Golden Age of medicine, saying:
We may be on the cusp of an era of astonishing innovation — the limits of which aren’t even clear yet.
Hype springs eternal in medicine, but lately the horizon of new possibility seems almost blindingly bright. “I’ve been running my research lab for almost 30 years,” says Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley. “And I can say that throughout that period of time, I’ve just never experienced what we’re seeing over just the last five years.”
Many Doctors Dislike Working for The Man
The practice of medicine has changed tremendously within my lifetime. A retired physician came to my office years ago lamenting that his esteemed profession had turned into a business over the course of his career. That raises something of an ethical dilemma: doctors want to practice medicine but some feel like they’re being forced to practice in ways they find objectionable.
The New York Times explained, “The corporatization of health care has changed the practice of medicine, causing many physicians to feel alienated from their work.”