It was the first time the young woman had come to the health center in a suburb just north of Chicago. When the 26-year-old walked into the exam room back in 2008, there was no paper chart or electronic health record (EHR) accompanying her, no background information, nothing to indicate anything but a routine annual […]
The dating site Match.com wants to help singles “find the kind of relationship they’re looking for” by providing “the tools they need to help take the lottery out of love.” The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would like to do the same for the relationship between patients and doctors through the “bi-directional availability […]
It was the first time the young woman had come to the health center in a suburb just north of Chicago. When the 26-year-old walked into the exam room back in 2008, there was no paper chart or electronic health record (EHR) accompanying her, no background information, nothing to indicate anything but a routine annual […]
When my father reached his mid-80s, an accelerating accumulation of physical and mental functioning issues persuaded him to switch to a primary care physician in a concierge medical practice. Although the doctor’s pedigree proclaimed his competence, he mostly excelled as the medical equivalent of a hotel concierge who can magically procure hard-to-get restaurant reservations at […]
Editor’s note: In this encore post, Michael Millenson writes candidly about the influence of personal feelings about race, ethnicity and gender on communication. In medicine, disparities and miscommunication impact patient engagement, as shown in a recent study reported in The New York Times. Millenson is often ahead of the curve on important issues in healthcare. We appreciate […]
An Irish software expert who’d been helping companies sell on eBay walks into a room with a Slovenian inventor who’d built a world-class company in the “accelerator beam diagnostics market.” (Don’t ask.) What they share is not just foreign birth, but “immigration” to health care from other fields. Both have come to the MedCity Invest conference […]
There may be no better demonstration of the political weakness of the patient rights movement than Medicare’s recent cancellation of a major initiative on shared decision-making. Let’s briefly examine the evidence: 1) The program was cancelled; 2) Although six clinical conditions were to be part of the effort, its demise attracted only brief mention in […]
“Patient-centered care” was a term coined in the 1980s as a professional response to increasingly vocal patients’ demands for genuine empowerment. Three decades later, patient-centeredness is still necessary, but powerful economic, technological and social forces are bringing about new relationships in healthcare that patient-centeredness fails to adequately encompass. In a recent issue of the BMJ, […]
You (or a loved one) has cancer, but the latest round of chemotherapy has unfortunately had only a modest impact. While you’re acutely aware of the “wretchedness of life that becomes worn to the nub by [chemotherapy’s] adverse effects,” you’re also a fighter. How do you decide whether to continue with chemo? The answer to […]
Your employer sends out an email saying they want to make sure you’re getting enough sleep and physical activity, are eating well and feeling creative and, finally, have a sense of “mindfulness.” So they’re providing a free app designed to facilitate finding your “anchoring purpose in life.” Sound like a nice perk? Now add in […]