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Category Archives: Fixing health care

Fixing health care - Time


“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
Our favorite retired doc has a great post today - Patients value “thoroughness” in their docs.
This post reinforces a point that I make repeatedly.  Patients want our time and are willing to pay for that time.
What bothers me [...]

Fixing health care - focus on payment


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 the [...]

Fixing health care - National Center for Policy Analysis


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 consumers in [...]

Fixing health care - clinical years


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 have [...]

Fixing health care - M2


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 philosophy [...]

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


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 own [...]

Final comment on premed curriculum


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 do [...]

More on the premed curriculum


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 [...]

Fixing health care - encouraging students to enter medicine


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 [...]

Fixing health care - some data


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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