Healthcare Savvy

The 2012 ballot measure #2 “Death with Dignity” lost by a vote of 51% to 49%. The barrage of ads on TV opposing the initiative was huge, so that may have been one factor.

Frontline had a special on assisted […]

Martha, Nice list. I hope some people will pay attention.

Parenthetically, *my* employer has not asked me if I want to control my health care costs. I suppose co-pays are included to promote our economical […]

The American Dental Hygienists Association responded to the aforementioned PBS report and offered a solution to the shortage of dentists, which is to utilize a class of dental care providers equivalent in level to […]

Care for the dying person is a difficult subject. Toward the end of life, both my parents had expressed verbally and in writing that they wanted no medical measures taken that would lengthen their time of final […]

Any suggestions on the best sites for provider reviews? This question applies to providers in the broad sense including doctors, hospitals, etc.

I recently visited a doctor who provided me with an […]

@dennis Here is a replacement web link with an itemized list of requirements for an Annual Wellness Visit. http://www.acponline.org/running_practice/practice_management/payment_coding/wellness_q2.htm Mentioned in the previous link was that ‘end of life’ counseling had been in a previous version of requirements but was then removed. A search term…[Read more]

I was still confused about Medicare Wellness visit after reading the information from Oregon. However, online I found the following description that seems quite clearly stated, although I do not vouch for the accuracy: http://www.physicianspractice.com/pearls/content/article/1462168/1776818 Outside of Medicare, at least one health care insurance…[Read more]

My comments on the discussion may be missing important points. However, if changes are deemed necessary, my first thought would be to go with reimbursement to the healthcare team per patient contact so as to encourage interaction between the patient and the team. The team would also directly pay for costly services and receive partial [...]

This is a message back to Carey about other weird parallels. My independent observation suggests that lawyers were similarly slow to adopt email communication, until email became very commonly used for regular communication. Now emails from lawyers (e.g., with attached drafts of wills, etc.) seems more frequent. As we know, one typically finds…[Read more]

This post is further comment on the message from Kristen Goodell about modes of communication. Unfortunately or not, one of the medical goals is to protect the healthcare business enterprise. The desire for protection can lead to an abundance (overabundance?) of caution. A misspoken verbal statement by a clinician could be less serious in a [...]