Fixing health care

Fixing health care – focus on payment

February 25, 2008

Choose a lawyer to develop your will.  You can find differing quality and experience, and your bill will reflect that experience.  Go to an experienced lawyer, and you pay more, and it well may be worth it. Choose an accountant for your business.  You pay more for a more experienced accountant.  Usually you benefit from [...]

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Fixing health care – National Center for Policy Analysis

February 24, 2008

This op-ed has some important thoughts – Markets and Medicare – Free the Doctors. Doctors participating in Medicare must practice medicine under an outmoded, wasteful payment system. Typically, they receive no financial reward for talking to patients by telephone, communicating by e-mail, teaching patients how to manage their own care, or helping them be better [...]

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Fixing health care – clinical years

February 22, 2008

The clinical years (3 and 4) of medical school are generally excellent.  Our students learn a  great deal, and are well prepared to become house officers.  Any suggestions that I make are minor tweaks to a good system. We should invest more in making education the focus of all clinical rotations.   Unfortunately, we still [...]

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Fixing health care – M2

February 20, 2008

Now that I have decompressed from ward attending, and am recovering from this killer cold, I will return to fixing health care.  I last posted my ideas on the first year of medical school.  Today I address the second year. The philosophy behind the second year is sound.  Unfortunately the delivery does not fit the [...]

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Fixing health care – making the basic science years basic – the 1st year

January 31, 2008

Perhaps I should have written this essay before I wrote the piece on the premed curriculum.  I hope that these comments will clarify some of my thoughts on the premed curriculum. As an internist, I always stress diagnosing a problem prior to treating it.  As I talk with 3rd year students and reflect on my [...]

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Final comment on premed curriculum

January 29, 2008

Several comments have stimulated my thinking.  I reject the idea that the discipline needed to do well in organic is a good preparation for the first two years of medical school, because as you will soon see, I would change those two years dramatically. As I said in my last post on this subject, I [...]

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More on the premed curriculum

January 27, 2008

First I must explicate why I have started my health care series on this topic.  I truly believe that people make a difference.  We have many wonderful medical students, but we also are missing many great future physicians.  In 2008, we are seeing a significant increase in medical student slots, through expanding existing schools and [...]

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Fixing health care – encouraging students to enter medicine

January 25, 2008

As readers know, I have spent my entire career working with medical students. Most students are wonderful human beings who really do want to help patients. I am not as concerned with the students we attract as with the students who we do not attract. We (the academic medical community) have placed several huge barriers [...]

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Fixing health care – some data

January 22, 2008

Over the next week or three, I plan to address health care in the United States.  I have not researched the issue; I have lived the issue.  My comments come from the heart and my version of common sense.  Since I am a physician, I will first present the data that I consider the most [...]

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