Update: Social justice of AF care, NOAC monitoring, population health and two new podcasts

Hi All, Here is a short update of the past week. The first thing to say is the Atrial Fibrillation Care: Put the Catheter (and Rx Pad) Down post has gotten a lot of attention. It stayed on the most popular list all week. It has over a 130 comments, and I have received many emails on it. It is a big moment in AF care. I would also point you to an interview I did with Dr. Prash Sanders from Adelaide. Prash is the senior researcher on the LEGACY trial. His team’s work has been most responsible for the change in thinking of AF care. The title of the post: LEGACY PI Throws Down the Gauntlet to US Physicians Is AF care fair? One aspect of AF care that I discussed recently with one of my partners was the notion of social justice. An AF ablation costs $100,000; a redo ablation costs $100,000. That is a lot of money. And now we know that in most cases, lifestyle changes either eliminate the need for procedures or render them more likely to succeed. So…how fair is to spend $200,000-plus to treat a patient with AF? Think of what could be accomplished if that much money was used to care for the needy in our community? Is it right or just to allocate that many resources to a disease that is most often due to life’s excesses? Population Health? This leads me to population health–a hot topic in the hospital these days. The thinking goes that hospitals will be charged with delivering health to the population it serves. That is funny. As if health comes from hospitals....
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs