Physician | Journalist
The world seemed to rejoice when dark chocolate was pronounced a “healthy” food. Finally, after decades of every edible pleasure being slapped with a “DO NOT EAT” sign, we have something that’s delicious, luxurious, has a little caffeine and might prevent heart attacks.
Strokes are devastating. It is important to evaluate how much you trust your chiropractor and if that’s really the treatment you want before making that appointment.
Dr. Eric Topol wants patients to own their own health data.
The tech-loving cardiologist-turned-genomics professor from the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, CA has been popping up a lot lately, in op-eds and at health technology conferences.
In his keynote address to the fifth annual Stanford Medicine X conference (or “MedX”), his message remained clear: technology can and should radically change how medicine is practiced, and medical records shall be sequestered no more.
Image via ConsumerReports.comThe sheer volume and variety of dietary supplement products now available to our patients is enough to boggle even the most well-informed mind.
They vary very widely in their price points, their quality of manufacture, and the uses for which they’re promoted. A quick walk through the supplement section at any large health food store will corroborate that fact.
Image via CityMetric.comLow-income individuals are also often less equipped to adapt to climate stressors. Urban communities of color often have reduced access to alternate housing, food, water, cooling, or transportation in the event of a weather emergency.
At the recent national meeting of the American College of Physicians (ACP), I dropped in on a session about medical volunteering. I thought I might hear about an interesting opportunity to volunteer in Africa, or South America perhaps. Instead, the first presentation was about volunteering at a free clinic-in America. The physician in charge spoke of an impressive roster of staff-physicians, nurses, medical assistants, who, amazingly, all worked for free to support no-cost healthcare.
Free clinics are wonderful and an important part of the fledgling healthcare infrastructure in economically struggling areas, but should not be necessary in a wealthy country. Americans deserve better.
Many doctors have a difficult time with marijuana as medication, and consider doctors who prescribe it as second-class citizens. These doctors fear that they will enable recreational drug use, that patients will abuse medical cards to get drugs for friends and that patients will lie to them to get a card.
It’s come to this: healthcare entities have so successfully bamboozled American consumers with their wacky bills and lack of pricing transparency, compounded with robbing middle-class Paul to pay uninsured Peter, that a chirpy contest for entrepreneurs-yes, a call for people to start an entire business to decode medical bills-is the best chance the American people have.
Medicine seeps into television shows of all kinds: Hospital dramas, crime procedurals and even supernatural series rely on the dramatic device of illness or injury to create suspense.
But the real-life doctors who advise Hollywood on medical matters prefer that you don’t bring expectations for fictional care into real-world emergency rooms.
One big reason doctors and hospitals have adopted EHRs is money. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorized Medicare to pay sizable annual payouts – up to $18,000 in the first year – to doctors who start using EHR systems.
Dr. Rishi Manchanda, who worked at a South Los Angeles clinic while in a government student loan repayment program, had just finished speaking about his career. A worried-looking medical student in the audience stepped up to the microphone during the Q&A.
“Other than these loan repayment programs, what can be done about the financial burden for primary care doctors?” she asked, referring to programs that pay down some of doctors’ medical school loans in exchange for practicing in underserved areas.
Stem cell researchers may have taken the first steps toward conducting stem cell research without having to take the controversial step of destroying human embryos. If the results can be replicated in human cells, the development could one day silence the arguments of those opposed to embryonic stem cell research on the basis that it violates the sanctity of human life.
Read More: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Technology/story?id=3250281
Monya De, MD MPH 