Health care is on everyone’s mind. Here’s what presidential candidates say about healthcare: the 2020 edition. We are two weeks into the 2020 presidential primary season. On the Democratic side, muddled results in Iowa and very close results in New Hampshire have sprung some surprises. Currently at the top of the Democratic field are Pete… Read More: What presidential candidates say about healthcare: 2020 edition »
This month, The Medical Care Blog is hosting a series of posts about the importance of school health. Following up on our 2016 series on the childhood roots of inequity (read the first in the series here), we are dedicating our Thursdays this month to posts that reflect on the health challenges that confront schools.… Read More: Introducing a Special Series on School Health »
I have written a lot about primary care. I’ve covered its role in reducing ED visits, discussed the benefits of one of its most unique facets (coordination of care), and described the challenges of younger adults moving away from traditional models of primary care. It is hard to overstate just how important this field of medicine… Read More: Identifying Team-Based Primary Care is a Major Challenge »
We announced last week that The Medical Care Blog has reached its 5-year milestone. As part of the editorial team, I’m excited to pause briefly and reflect on some great blog posts about healthcare that I think deserve to have been more widely read. Contributions from our authors have helped us reach more than 80,000… Read More: At 5 Years: Great Blog Posts That (Almost) Nobody Read »
Health and health care disparities are frustratingly persistent. This is widely known, in great part, because of the landmark report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care that then spurred the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to track and report on disparities for 250 measures since the early 2000s. The… Read More: Can Technology Help Reduce Health Disparities? »
For months, I’ve been keenly interested in trying to explore where the field of primary care research stands. It’s daunting to pull your head up from your own research, take stock of what your colleagues (both known and unknown) are doing and try to assess where the field is advancing. Doing this every now and… Read More: Staying Current in Primary Care Research: An Attempt to Take… »
“A book lying idle on the shelf is wasted ammunition.” – Henry Miller, The Books in My Life (1952) The Medical Care Blog is home to many strong opinions. In the last year, contributors have written provocatively about the political determinants of health, highlighted the per-mile cost of President Trump’s wall in numbers of children who… Read More: Health Care Revolt–Reflections on Democracy and Medicine »
It’s a new season. The federal government re-opened this week after a record-breaking shut-down. Democrats gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, feeling newly emboldened after the dispute about a border wall. A gaggle of 2020 presidential hopefuls has revealed themselves in recent weeks, lining up to be, arguably, the most liberal class of… Read More: What’s Happening with Medicare for All? »
A few weeks ago, a headline in the Chicago Tribune grabbed my attention: “Millennials are trading primary care doctors for faster, cheaper alternatives.” This headline fits the rather unfortunate stereotype of millennials as impatient, job-hopping, financially-struggling, digital natives. But if this is true, then millennials are bound to “swipe left” to health care delivered in a… Read More: Swiping left and the evolution of primary care »
In the new US consumer marketplace, doing good for society is powerful. Choices that people are making about how their food is grown, how companies test household products and reduce their impact on the environment, and how companies make their profits are driving new business models. Farmers are changing their pest and weed-control methods, manufacturers are… Read More: Medical Care for Social Good: A Proposal for P-Corp Certification »
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) had a roller-coaster of a year. It began with threats of almost certain repeal, followed by effort after unsuccessful effort to dismantle it. Then in the last days of 2017, there was the successful repeal of the individual mandate penalty. This was brazen politics, suspenseful and often agonizing. It… Read More: Three Reasons Why the Pro-ACA Resistance Should Take Heart »
Medicine, alongside achievements in sanitation and public health, remains one of the major achievements of modern society. The reduction (or eradication) of many infectious diseases from the developed world, breakthroughs in anesthesiology and surgery, and advances in the care of chronic diseases (including HIV) are just a few of the multitudes of achievements. But these… Read More: Preventing Health Care that Almost Nobody Needs »
Emergency departments (EDs) nationwide are busy places. In some locales they are overcrowded. In places like Los Angeles and other dense, urban areas with high poverty, they are over-capacity to such an extent that they can grind to a halt for all but the highest priority cases. In years past, it was not unheard of for… Read More: Trying to Reduce Unnecessary Emergency Visits? First, Strengthen Our Primary… »
With the mania of the presidential election in full tilt and the election just days away, it’s hard to have a rational public discussion about health care. Supporters of the two presidential candidates have drawn a deep and divisive line (or rather a tectonic fissure) in the sand about health care reform. This is due, in great part, to the bombastic, and ultimately… Read More: The Person-Centered Wellness Home: Reflections on a Conversation with Dr.… »
Last month, I left readers with a bit of cliffhanger: How do we actually improve care coordination? Last time, I suggested there were some great ideas, and now it’s time to delve into three promising strategies: 1) individualize and personalize the electronic medical record (EMR); 2. fix the hospital discharge process; and 3) make it a part of normal practice to measure care coordination. Read on for more about each of these tools…
Decades of thoughtful research into how we design health care systems has shown that primary care is essential. We know enough to confidently say that systems responsible for the overall health of patients (like health insurance plans or the Veterans Administration) that choose to skimp on primary care do so at their own peril. But in a time… Read More: Is Care Coordination the Magic Bullet in Primary Care? »
Nearly halfway through the primaries, the Democratic primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders continues. And perhaps nothing sets these candidates further apart in the progressiveness of their agenda than their approaches to health care. In this post, let’s take a look at the vastly different approaches to health care proposed by candidates Clinton and Sanders, with a particular focus on primary care.
The presidential primaries are in full swing and health care is an issue for both parties. The candidates have left themselves plenty of wiggle room, but there is enough information in the public domain to make some predictions about what the different approaches (and they are different) would mean for the health care system. This… Read More: How Primary Care Might Fare Under The Plans of the… »
According to data out this month from the Kaiser Family Foundation, there are 2 male doctors for every 1 female in practice in the US. This translates to about 300,000 fewer women than men in practice today. This gender difference is a disparity that many in health care may think has resolved, but in fact… Read More: The intersection of physician gender and quality of care »