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Legal duty to nonpatients: Driving accidents
Question: Driver D strikes a pedestrian after losing control of his vehicle from insulin-induced hypoglycemia. Both Driver D and pedestrian were seriously injured. Driver D was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and his physician had started him on insulin but did…
Who’s increasing health care costs? Not us!
Determining who is responsible for the increase in health care cost in the United States has seemingly limitless possibilities. There are enough culprits to go around, but a recent analysis points a finger at hospital-based care (Health Aff. 2019 Feb;38[2]:184-9).…
Medical ethics and economics
The balance between medical research and the pharmaceutical world has always been unsettling. The recent spate of articles in the press reporting the large payments by industry to a number of highly paid medical staff of the Memorial Sloan Kettering…
Physician value thyself!
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines value as “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something” and “relative worth, utility, or importance.” We usually assess our professional worth by how we are treated at work.…
Law & Medicine: Which doctors get sued?
Question: Doctors are more prone to lawsuits if they: A. Have been sued before. B. Spend fewer dollars per hospitalized patient. C. Show poor communication skills. D. A and C only. E. A, B, and C. Answer: E. Two very…
Analysis finds 28.8% prevalence of depression in residents
The estimated prevalence of depression or depressive symptoms was 28.8% among residents and interns worldwide in a meta-analysis of 54 studies of the issue, according to a report published online December 8 in JAMA. The depression rate ranged from 20.9%…
Medicare at 50: Physicians brace for transition to value-based payment
As Medicare celebrates its 50th anniversary, federal officials are beginning one of the most significant shifts in the program’s history – paying physicians based on quality and efficiency rather than for the volume of services they provide. The shift to…
Reduced resident duty hours haven’t changed patient outcomes
Patient mortality and morbidity outcomes have not changed since the most recent round of reforms to medical residents’ duty hours in 2011, according to two of the first nationwide studies to assess these “improvements,” which both were published online Dec.…