A national study by HCD Research of more than 900 physicians showed that 30 percent of them would choose a new profession if starting over today. Those between 35 and 64 were most likely to say they’d choose differently.
The doctors said negotiated rates and malpractice suits were their top two reasons for doing something different.
The docs didn’t say what they’d rather do – but that might something to spark a conversation next time you’re visiting yours.
Beginning Wednesday, Lawrence Memorial Hospital will sell water in paper cartons rather than bottles to be more environmentally conscious. It says it will be the first hospital in the country to make the switch.
The Lawrence Journal World quotes hospital officials about all the reasons for the switch, including the ease of storing square cartons.
The only downside I can think of: They’ll never fit in car or gym cup holders.
As Carrie Rengers wrote last week and Bill Wilson mentioned on the blog yesterday, PBS’s “NewHour with Jim Lehrer” was in Wichita to do a story on burdens of health care on small businesses and their employees.
It was a well-done piece. A significant amount of the story focused on Tillie’s Flower Shop.
From owner Ken Denton:
For us, for example, the people that had the insurance here are people that really need it. And it’s the older group and it’s a group that utilizes it more than anyone else. And it drives the cost up. And the young people, who don’t necessarily need it, drop out.
If you missed the program, you can view it on the PBS Web site. Here’s a link to the video.
First, Wal-Mart, Target, Dillons and others said they’d offer certain prescription drugs for $4 for a 30-day supply.
The next big marketing move was offering 90-day supplies for $10.
Now comes Giant Food. Through March 21, it’s offering 14-day supplies of the most commonly prescribed generic antibiotics for free. “With cold and flu season in full-swing, we want to do what we can to help keep you and your family feeling your best during the winter months,” the company says.
And to keep you coming back.
Galichia Heart Hospital’s discounted fees are getting national attention.
In February, the hospital made news by announcing it would offer heart bypass surgery for a flat fee of $10,000, undercutting other hospitals’ charges by more than $20,000. And in April it treated its first out-of-country patient: a Canadian willing to pay cash for a hip replacement he would have waited months or years for back home.
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine noted those trends in its January issue on saving money. ” Forget traveling abroad to save on medical procedures. A trip to America’s heartland can be just as healthy for your wallet,” the article begins.
Nice to see us getting the attention.
Want to weigh in on what health care reform might look like after Jan. 20? More than 4,000 people already have, including former Sen. Tom Daschle, who will head Health and Human Services. He used a YouTube video on the change.gov Website to get the discussion going.
The site also has a word cloud, which searches for the most commonly used words mentioned in the discussion and arranges them by size according to their frequency. The biggest word on there: “insurance,” which is just a smidge bigger than “health.”
There should be some marketing potential here:
People who attend religious services regularly — and denomination didn’t matter — have a 20 percent overall lower risk of death than those who don’t, according to a new study by researchers from Yeshiva University, in the Bronx, and its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The results are an outgrowth of the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study following more than 90,000 women.
To be fair, physicians at the semi-annual American Medical Association took on some weightier issues, too. But among the actions they took Monday: Adopting a policy that says text messaging while driving is a public health risk.
They had to vote on that?
“Texting while driving takes the driver’s attention away from the road, which can lead to accidents,” physician Peter Carmel, a AMA board member, said in a news release. “A recent study found that text messaging while driving causes a 400 percent increase in time spent with eyes off the road. No one should have to worry that other drivers are focused on texting instead of traffic. This is about keeping people safe on our roads.”
Employer-based health insurance premiums are up 5 percent this year and have more than doubled since 1999 — a growth rate that far outpaces inflation as well as any increase in workers’ wages over the same period, according to an annual employer survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, which polled nearly 2,000 employers.
The Miami Herald points out that the news is even more stressful for small employers.
Meanwhile, a growing number of workers at smaller firms are getting less coverage for their money as health plans with high deductibles and fewer benefits become more prevalent.
The portion of workers with single coverage who pay a deductible of at least $1,000 has jumped from 10 percent to 18 percent in the past two years. Among smaller firms with three to 199 employees, the rate has more than doubled from 16 percent to 35 percent.
Anticoagulant medication errors are too prevalent and such a serious safety issue that the Joint Commission today is warning hospitals to pay better attention to how they administer this drug to patients.
Anticoagulants have been identified as one of the top five drug types associated with patient safety incidents in the United States, the commission says.
Among the causes for adverse events is incorrect dosages, food and drug interactions, and poor labeling that lends to confusion and error.
Says the commission:
Anticoagulant medication errors are such a serious patient safety issue that The Joint Commission addresses these types of errors in the 2008 National Patient Safety Goals, with full implementation of the requirements expected by January 1, 2009, for hospitals, outpatient clinics, home care and long term care organizations across the United States.
Cancer treatments are advancing steadily, but the supply of cancer doctors isn’t, USA Today reports.
The United States could face a shortage of as many as 4,080 oncologists by 2020, according to a report from the American Society for Clinical Oncology.
Factors contributing to the impending shortfall include the aging of the U.S. population (cancer is more prevalent among older adults), retiring oncologists, and — shockingly — a growing number of female oncologists. Apparently, studies show female cancer doctors see fewer patients than their male counterparts.
Some of the reasons fewer medical students are choosing to specialize in primary care — a subset of internal medicine — has to do with lifestyle, says a report in the Sept. 10 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
They want better hours and recompense for the amount of time and work it requires to treat the large portion of elderly and medically complex patients this specialty sees.
A study to find out students’ impressions and concerns found they were concerned about patient complexity, the practice environment and lifestyle, compared with other specialties, officials said.
“Current students recognize the increasing demands on internists, particularly primary care physicians, to accomplish large numbers of preventive and therapeutic interventions during short visits with chronically ill patients while also managing increasing administrative expectations,” the authors wrote. “Career interest in general (internal medicine) is particularly low, reflecting the challenges in the primary care practice environment…”