Physicians can ’t do everything for everybody in every visit
How long does it take to diagnose guttate psoriasis versus pityriasis rosea? Swimmers ear versus a ruptured eardrum? A kidney stone? A urinary tract infection? An ankle sprain? So why is the typical “cycle time,” the time it takes for a patient to get through a clinic such as mine for these kinds of problems, […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 28, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/a-country-doctor" rel="tag" > Hans Duvefelt, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Physician Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Brief is Good
By HANS DUVEFELT, MD
How long does it take to diagnose guttate psoriasis versus pityriasis rosea? Swimmers ear versus a ruptured eardrum? A kidney stone? A urinary tract infection? An ankle sprain?
So why is the typical “cycle time”, the time it takes for a patient to get through a clinic such as mine for these kinds of problems, close to an hour?
Answer: Mandated screening activities that could actually be done in different ways and not even necessarily in person or in real time!
Guess how many emergency room or urgent care center visits could be avoided and handled in the primary care office if we wer...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 28, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Hans Duvefelt primary care Source Type: blogs
What causes kidney stones (and what to do)
Stone disease has plagued humanity since ancient times. Kidney stones have been identified in Egyptian mummies. The Hippocratic oath describes their treatment: “I will not use the knife, not even verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.”
Who gets kidney stones and why?
The lifetime risk of kidney stones among adults in the US is approximately 9%, and it appears that global warming may be increasing that risk. (As the climate warms, human beings are more likely to get dehydrated, which increases the risk of stone formation.) There are four major types of kidney stones: cal...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 17, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Kevin R. Loughlin, MD, MBA Tags: Health Healthy Aging Kidney and urinary tract Source Type: blogs
Smartphone Camera Utilized to Analyze Urine Dipstick Color Changes
When I look to the future of home-based, consumer-oriented lab testing, I tend to think mostly about lab-on-a-chip using mocrofluidics (see:INTRODUCTION TO LAB-ON-A-CHIP 2015 : REVIEW, HISTORY AND FUTURE). Often forgotten has been dipstick technology that has been used for many decades for urinalysis and pregnancy testing. Now comes news that an Israel-based company is using smartphone cameras to more precisely interpret the color changes in dipsticks (See:Healthy.io uses your smartphone's camera for medical lab testing at home). Below is an excerpt from the article:Dip.io uses a smartphone and a dipstick to perf...
Source: Lab Soft News - April 6, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Diagnostics Food and Drug Administration Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures Medical Consumerism Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Test Kits and H Source Type: blogs
10 Things a Person Living with Dementia Would Tell You If They Could
Here are ten communications tips that can help Alzheimer's caregivers improve their daily life.Sometimes it helps to look at each situation from the perspective, or from out of the eyes of the person living with dementia.What's the Difference Between Alzheimer's and Dementiaby Alzheimer's Reading RoomSubscribe to the Alzheimer's Reading - This is a Free Service - Join NowDotty's Ten Tips for Communicating with a Person Living with DementiaYou know what makes me feel safe, secure, and happy?A smile.Did you ever consider this?When you get tense and uptight it makes me feel tense and uptight.Instead of getting all bent o...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - April 2, 2019 Category: Neurology Tags: alzheimer's Alzheimer's Dementia alzheimer's stages alzheimers awareness alzheimers care alzheimers communication care of dementia patients dementia care health how to care memory loss Source Type: blogs
Is the ketogenic diet dangerous?
Answer: No—unless you do it for more than a few months. After a few months, the upfront metabolic and weight benefits will begin to reverse and new health problems arise. We know this with confidence. I raise this question once again because more and more people are coming to me reporting problems. It may take months, even years, but the long-term consequences can be quite serious.
Achieving ketosis by engaging in a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat lifestyle is—without a doubt—an effective means of losing weight, breaking insulin and leptin resistance, reversing type 2 diabetes and fatty liver, redu...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - March 12, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: ketones bowel flora ketogenic ketotic undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Become more than a clinician. Be a healer.
When a patient goes to the doctor, they usually have a specific health problem in mind. Sometimes, the treatment is straightforward; a urinary tract infection warrants antibiotics. A laceration can be sutured. Other issues, however, are more complex. For example, communicating a terminal diagnosis to a patient. Consoling his grieving widow two months later. In […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 6, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/sarah-fraser" rel="tag" > Sarah Fraser, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Physician Practice Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Bodily Fluids As The Basis For Digital Health
Blood, saliva, urine, sweat or even ear wax can carry valuable information about an individual’s medical state. Until now, even simpler tests on such bodily fluids had to be carried out at medical facilities, but with the recent uptick in the development of digital diagnostic technologies, more and more solutions appear on the market which enable the patient to do such tests at home. Here we take a look around the bodily fluid business.
From bloodletting to digital sweat measurement
Blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm. Although it
doesn’t sound appealing, the ancient Greek already thought that bodily fluids ma...
Source: The Medical Futurist - February 27, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Future of Medicine Health Sensors & Trackers Portable Diagnostics blood bodily fluid digital digital health digital solutions digital tattoo saliva smart smart healthcare sweat technology urine Source Type: blogs
A conference where all the speakers are women - happening this week #YAMMM #manels #STEMDiversity #GenderBias
It was now six years ago that I wrote here wondering if it would be a good idea to have a conference where all the speakers were women.See The Tree of Life: A conference where the speakers are all women?I wrote about this because of the general issue with excessive numbers of conferences where most or all of the speakers were men. I had come up with a term for such meetings -YAMMM. Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting. I even made some little pics / images to represent such YAMMMs.And I blogged and Tweeted about such meetings a lot (and still do). See STEM Diversity posts and related links her...
Source: The Tree of Life - February 26, 2019 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
TestCard, a $4 Urine Test Read by Your Smartphone
Recently announced as one of the Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2019, TestCard is a UK-based company that allows users to turn their smartphones into a clinical-grade urinalysis kit.
The process starts with a postcard-like card mailed directly to the consumer. The card costs about $4 and contains three fold-out urine test strips, each with a QR code and several small, multi-colored square pads. A test strip is detached from the card and dipped in a urine sample, after which the accompanying mobile app utilizes the phone’s camera to scan and analyze the test strip. About 20 seconds later, the app displays the test ...
Source: Medgadget - February 6, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Cici Zhou Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Pathology Pediatrics Urology Source Type: blogs
Does hospital competition reduce rates of patient harm in the English NHS?
Competition and Markets Authority - Previous hospital mergers have reduced the number of distinct organisations offering publicly funded and provided care in the English National Health Service, reducing choice and between-hospital competition in some areas. This working paper tests the impact of variation in concentration on a new quality indicator: the prevalence of patient harm from falls, pressure ulcers, blood clots and urinary tract infections. It exploits a new source of identifying variation accounting for the multi-product nature of hospitals, using instrumental variables to address endogeneity. It fin...
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - February 5, 2019 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Competition and choice Patient safety Quality of care and clinical outcomes Source Type: blogs
Does hospital competition reduce rates of patient harm in the English NHS?
Competition and Markets Authority -Previous hospital mergers have reduced the number of distinct organisations offering publicly funded and provided care in the NHS, reducing choice and between-hospital competition in some areas. This research tests the impact of variation in concentration on a new quality indicator: the prevalence of patient harm from falls, pressure ulcers, blood clots and urinary tract infections. It finds that hospital mergers in concentrated areas without offsetting clinical benefits could significantly increase rates of patient harm.ReportCompetition and Markets Authority - publications (Source: Heal...
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - January 31, 2019 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Changing configuration of health services Patient safety Source Type: blogs
Reducing the Cost of Care; Provide Home Care for Sicker Patients with Remote Monitoring
Although changes often come slowly in healthcare, we are now in the midst of the following three major changes in the field: (1) reduction in inpatient admissions that is driving the growth of bedless or mini-hospitals; (2) provision of first-tier outpatient care in walk-in clinics such as CVS/MinuteClinics; (3) the transfer of some inpatient care to patients' homes, partly as a cost-reduction strategy. This latter topic was previously covered in one of my blog notes (see:Some Details about Hospital-at-Home (HaH) Services for Selected ER Patients) and also in a recent article (see:Commentary: Reducing the cost of...
Source: Lab Soft News - January 4, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Cost of Healthcare Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Quality of Care Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
MedPAC ’s Proposed “Reforms” Should Be Tested Before They’re Implemented: CMS’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program Is Exhibit A
This report card is grossly inaccurate even though it relies on medical records data as well as claims data.) By the late 1990s, conventional wisdom among health policy “thought leaders” had elevated readmission rates to the same status as mortality rates – it was a legitimate quality measure that could be safely administered to thousands of hospitals and millions of patients.
However, the conventional wisdom remained unproven by the early 2000s, and remains unproven to this day. “[T]he link between early readmission and quality of care is still uncertain,” is how five experts put it in a 2004 article. “[T]he a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 6, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medicare Politics ACA Affordable Care Act CHIP CMS Congress hospital readmissions Kip Sullivan MACRA MedPAC P4P Pay for Performance Source Type: blogs
Can an Alzheimer's Patient Wander and Die?
Alzheimer's patients often wander and get lost. This behavior can happen at any time or at any stage of the disease. Just because they have never wandered before, doesn't mean they won't do it in the future. Wandering can sometimes result in death.The Alzheimer's Association estimates that 60 percent of persons living with Alzheimer's or a related dementia will wander.Think about it - 6 out of 10.I can assure you if your loved one wanders away, you cannot locate them, and they are lost to you, it can become one of the most horrible and terrifying experiences of your life.Imagine your heart pounding, a sense of hopelessness...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - November 30, 2018 Category: Neurology Tags: alzheimer's wandering statistics alzheimers wandering education how to prevent wandering learning wandering tips Source Type: blogs
