The Courage of Corporate America is Needed to End America ’ s Opioid Crisis
By RYAN HAMPTON
A Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll published in July found that three in ten U.S. adults (29%) said they had someone in their family who struggled with opioid dependence. Also surprising, and encouraging, was the statistic that 90% support increasing access to opioid use disorder treatment programs in their communities.
As a person in recovery from opioid use disorder and advocate, my read on this data set is that the public support is there. Now more than ever, we need leaders in healthcare, public policy, and corporate America to have the courage to advance effective treatment options. T...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 11, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy addiction Albertsons DEA Opiods Ryan Hampton Source Type: blogs
Occlusion myocardial infarction is a clinical diagnosis
Written by Willy Frick (@Willyhfrick). Willy is a cardiology fellow with a keen interest in the ECG in OMI.A woman in her late 70s presented with left arm pain. The arm pain started the day prior when she was at the dentist ' s office for a root canal. Her systolic blood pressure at the dentist was over 200 mm Hg. She was given nitroglycerin which improved her blood pressure, and she completed the procedure. Her arm pain abated. The pain returned that evening and woke her from sleep. She eventually fell back asleep, and woke up feeling normal the next day (the day of presentation). After dinner the day of presentatio...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - December 11, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Willy Frick Source Type: blogs
Self-management skills that are not top of the pops
When I carried out my informal survey of the pain self-management skills people had used in the past week, there were no real surprises. Movement, activity management (pacing – and I will have more to say about this in a couple of weeks!), sleep, attention management and doing something fun were all at the top of the list. Others were lower down and while they don’t get to shine as much, I’m not so sure they are as seldom used as this wee survey suggests.
At the bottom of the list is having hands-on treatment for relaxation or to feel good. OK, perhaps understandable because the whole ongoing debat...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 10, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Occupational therapy Psychology Research Resilience/Health Science in practice assertiveness Clinical reasoning pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
America ’ s pain management nightmare: How the DEA shaped the opioid epidemic
First, it’s essential to understand that your prosecution doesn’t define you as a person. Most likely, the DEA never bothered to speak with you before deciding to arrest and prosecute you. Even if they did, the decision to prosecute you had been made long before any conversation took place. Your prosecution is the result of
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America’s pain management nightmare: How the DEA shaped the opioid epidemic originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 10, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: L. Joseph Parker, MD Tags: Physician Pain Management Source Type: blogs
Syncope While Driving. Activate the Cath Lab?
A 50-something had syncope while driving. He was belted and it was low speed. He had a prehospital ECG. He was ambulatory at the scene. He has a history of STEMI and heart failure. The medics stated he had been nauseated and diaphoretic, but he did not have any chest pain or SOB. They recorded a prehospital ECG:What do you think?I read this blinded, with no clinical information, and read it as inferior OMI. There is STE in inferior leads with a large T-wave and reciprocal ST depression in aVL with a reciprocally inverted T-wave. It is all but diagnostic of OMI. The on...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - December 9, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
" A patient just arrived as a transfer for NSTEMI. "
Conclusion: Our THANKS to Dr. Frick for his detailed and highly insightful presentation. CREDIT to him for masterful correlation of clinical events to each ECG — that thoroughly supports his explanation of the successful treatment received by this patient with evolving LAD OMI.QUESTION: Isn ' t it so much EASIER with the lead-to-lead comparison facilitated by Figure-1 — to see the subtle-but-important evolution of ST-T wave changes that so closely correspond to clinical events? (Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog)
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - December 7, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Willy Frick Source Type: blogs
Physician well-being: Overcoming administrative hurdles
Representatives of a battered and stressed Canadian medical profession gathered in Montreal and virtually last week for the 7th annual Canadian Conference on Physician Health (CCPH) – the first such meeting in four years and the largest to date. One of the main pain points identified as facing individual physicians is the burden of administrative
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Physician well-being: Overcoming administrative hurdles originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 6, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Pat Rich Tags: Policy Practice Management Source Type: blogs
How Digital Health Companies Attract Software Engineers: Goals
Companies creating health care applications, digital fitness solutions, and other health-related software compete fiercely for technical staff. An article by Developers.Net cites various statistics suggesting that demand outstrips the supply of programmers by hundreds of thousands of people. Other disciplines (such as needed for data science and machine learning) are also hotly contested.
Anmol Madan, co-founder and CEO of RadiantGraph, says that tech experts might need to accept a pay cut to work for a small digital health company. Startups just can’t compete with major employers such as Google on salary and benefit...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - December 5, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: C-Suite Leadership Career and Jobs Health IT Company Healthcare IT Anmol Madan Darena Solutions Dedalus Developers.Net Digital Health Software Developers Health IT Deveopment Health IT Programmers Health IT Software Developers Heal Source Type: blogs
The Most Overhyped Technologies in Healthcare
The hype about technological development in healthcare should not blind us in terms of the probabilities and possibilities of today’s healthcare and the future of medicine. To remain objective and conscious but still optimistic, let’s look at the most overhyped technologies and keep in mind the realistic development opportunities in healing.
You know the saying: the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the optimist says it is half full, and, well, the cynic asks who drank the other half? I’m truly an optimist – especially when it comes to the future of medicine and healthcare, but we need to ask the uncom...
Source: The Medical Futurist - December 5, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: berci.mesko Tags: Future of Medicine 3d printing robotics virtual reality wearables GC1 hype organs Source Type: blogs
My Cancer Story
By JEFF GOLDSMITH
On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.
I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when ca...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs
Patients are Not “Consumers”: My Cancer Story
By JEFF GOLDSMITH
On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.
I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when ca...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs
OMI in a pediatric patient? Teenagers do get acute coronary occlusion, so don't automatically dismiss the idea.
Acute coronary syndrome in a pediatric patient?Written by Kirsten Morrissey, MD with edits by Bracey,
Grauer, Meyers, and Smith An older teen was transferred from an outside hospital
with elevated serum troponin and and ECG demonstrating ST elevations. The patient was obese and had a medical history of only recurrent tonsillitis status post tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy but was otherwise healthy and fully vaccinated. He reported 1.5 days of chest pain that started as substernal and crushing in nature awakening him from sleep and occasionally traveling to right side of neck. The pain ...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Bracey Source Type: blogs
“ S/he ’ s just not taking the message on board ” – A word to clinicians
I’ve heard it many times, probably said it myself some years back. You’ve presented an idea to the person, but they just don’t seem to be ‘getting it.’ What to do, what to do?
The context of this kind of problem is often when someone’s pain isn’t settling down, or when some kind of self-management strategy is being recommended. To the clinician, the message is probably quite logical: “Here’s some information about pain that I am telling you about” and the unspoken assumption is that the person ought to listen carefully, maybe ask some questions, but essentially...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 4, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Back pain Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping Skills healthcare Occupational therapy pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Narcan: Widening access to overcome opioid overdoses
I often recommend books or podcasts for you when they address timely topics in mental health. The May 4, 2023, episode of The Daily podcast was one such episode that I think you should listen to. On that episode, Jan Hoffman, a health law and affairs reporter for The New York Times, was interviewed about
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Narcan: Widening access to overcome opioid overdoses originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 2, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Greg Smith, MD Tags: Meds Pain Management Source Type: blogs
The Impact of Healthcare Professional ’ s Sports and Fitness Activities on Personal and Professional Life
In 2010, a third of the world’s population was considered physically inactive. Back then it was estimated that approximately 5 million deaths were attributable to physical inactivity, making it the fourth leading cause of mortality worldwide.
To address this global issue, a whole society approach consisting of “policy and environmental changes” to make physical activity “an easier choice for leisure and transportation purposes”. An example of this is the recent proliferation of bike lanes in many of our cities. We also need to adjust our social and cultural norms to promote physical activit...
Source: The Orthopedic Logbook - December 2, 2023 Category: Orthopaedics Authors: Remo Aguilar Tags: Habits Health fitness physical activity physical inactivity Physician Health sedentary Sports Source Type: blogs
