Being mid-week, I had planned to tell you about the recent news concerning the role of fitness as a predictor of real outcomes. Important as this is, it will have to wait. I’ve got something much better. Though it isn’t about exercise; it is about health and happiness and soothing inflammation. Writing this year’s best […]
Category: Health Care Reform
I hope my patients are satisfied. This is everything. Improving the lives of people is why doctors do what they do. How much we help our patients is the metric. It’s the peg we hang our self-esteem on. So yes, of course, patient satisfaction is really important. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea […]
I’ve written two new posts at the end of this week. The first is on the state of heart rhythm medicine, or as we call it, electrophysiology. The editor of the TheHeart.org asked me to look at a recent series of state-of-the-art review papers published in the British journal, the Lancet. The last time the […]
Millions of Americans believe in the practice. Government reformers believe in it. Doctors too. Heck, even I, an accused therapeutic nihilist, tracked down a poor soul who agreed to be my primary care doctor. Call it old-fashioned, but I wanted my own doc, and I wanted yearly “checkups.†No procedure—not even AF ablation–is as good […]
Hi all, I wrote two posts this week for the Courier-Journal’s online health portal, In the Prime. The first was titled, Can an insurance company improve our health? In this post I use the tragic story of a patient who stopped taking an important medicine because of a high copay. Two recent medical studies have […]
Let’s start with a disclaimer: I am not complaining; I’m just stating the facts. Honest fact: The morale of doctors in the real world is low–and sinking lower. I know what you are thinking. “Come on Mandrola, you are nuts if you expect us to feel sympathy for doctors–of all professions.” Well…you can think that […]
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Thirty Dollars…Really?
I am riled up—almost to the point of being inflamed. I hate it when doctors get dragged through the mud. It’s a matter of pride. Doctors are my team. The latest kerfuffle centers on how much we should charge for return patient visits. The difference here is between moderate and moderately high visits–or about 30$. […]
May I tiptoe onto a ledge for a moment? Some (just-back-from-Europe) thoughts on health care policy, perhaps? One of the many differences between the European Society of Cardiology Congress and a typical American cardiology meeting was the scarcity of healthcare policy sessions at ESC. That’s hard to explain; perhaps European countries are settled on their […]
On the surface, both WSJ articles painted a gloomy and depressing picture of US healthcare, now and beyond. That wasn’t my take. I felt a rush of optimism. Let me explain. In, ObamaCare’s Lost Tribe: Doctors, deputy WSJ editor Daniel Henninger wrote about the (forgotten) plight of doctors in the Affordable Care Act. He critiqued […]
With the permission of the editors at theHeart.org, a version of this post also appears on Trials and Fibrillations. I wasn’t going to write on this matter, but I changed my mind. You know the news: the US Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. As a doctor in the mix, it seems appropriate to […]
…I’d be like swim coach Mr. Todd Schmitz. As chronicled in the WSJ: At some point in the past, Mr. Todd Schmitz was a regular guy who coached kids’ swimming. Not any more. Coach Schmitz has been thrust into the media limelight by virtue of his prime student, Olympic hopeful, Missy The Missile Franklin. But […]