Parents Often Choose ER for Routine Kids’ Care

From US News and World Report:
Parents who take their kids to the emergency room for non-urgent care aren’t doing it to abuse the system.
Instead, they’re doing so because they have concerns and questions about the care and attention they receive at primary care physicians’ offices.
So finds a new study published in the journal Academic Pediatrics. [...]

Healthcare Workers and Flu Shots

From the Washington Post:
Simple logic would make you think that health-care workers, most of whom have more education in health and medical issues than other people, would be more likely to be vaccinated. But since 1997 the vaccination rate among health-care workers nationwide has remained around the same depressing 40 percent. That is more than [...]

5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System

An editorial in the Washington Post:
1. America has the best health care in the world.
Let’s bury this one once and for all. The United States is No. 1 in only one sense: the amount we shell out for health care. We have the most expensive system in the world per capita, but we lag behind [...]

Is the recession affecting ED volume?

From Kevin MD:
Mixed reaction from two emergency bloggers.
WhiteCoat sees a decline, and notes that in border like Arizona, Hispanics that normally visit the emergency department have left town.
I’m seeing more of what Shadowfax observes. More people are losing their jobs, and subsequently their health insurance, leading to a higher number of uninsured visiting the ED. [...]

Too Much Information

From the NY Times “Doctor and Patient” Series:
Over the last four years, there have been several studies on the effects of physician self-disclosure on patient satisfaction. It turns out that patients don’t always want to know about their doctors’ personal experiences. And doctors don’t always do a great job when they do choose to share [...]

First Aid Software on a Phone

From Medgadget:

The Medical Phone Ltd out of Edinburgh, UK is working on a mobile device that will provide step-by-step instructions during emergency medical situations, and can quickly call 911, your doctor, as well as a nearby hospital. iCEphone™ (iCE for in Case of Emergency), though a simple and smart idea, might as well be a [...]

AHA survey finds hospitals struggling

From Modern Healthcare:
The data are in, and they are not pretty: Hospitals are reporting negative profit margins for the third quarter of 2008, reversing a trend of healthy profitability from this time last year.
A “rapid response” survey released by the American Hospital Association concluded that hospitals posted negative profit margins of 1.6% in the quarter [...]

Handoffs: Why hospitalists and ED doctors “drop the baton”

From Today’s Hospitalist:
“No sign-out was given on the patient. When nursing staff called me to evaluate, patient was tachypneic and tachycardic. Patient was transferred to CCU with acute coronary syndrome. ED stated that this was an error secondary to being very busy with crowding in ED.”
Sound familiar? Given all the communication problems between ED physicians [...]

More on Disaffected Docs

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
Doctors sure seem unhappy these days. Just take a look at the downbeat results from a survey out from the Physicians’ Foundation.
Here are some of the bracing findings from 11,950 primary care docs and specialists who responded to the survey:
94% said the time they’ve devote to non-clinical paperwork in [...]

Half of primary care doctors want to quit

From the Kevin MD:
Today comes a study that reveals that 49 percent of primary care doctors surveyed would consider leaving medicine, with many saying “they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there’s too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.”
Furthermore, medical students are not [...]