Overestimating the effect of medical errors can be detrimental
An issue with inflated numbers like 251,000 and 440,000 is that they are repeated by naïve...
Read More
Skeptical Scalpel
Decisions made in Orlando: Is there any law more misunderstood than HIPAA?
On the morning of the tragic mass shooting in Orlando, a tweet by CNN stated, “The White House...
Read More
Mystery solved: Keep your white coats. And your sleeves.
My research staff recently came across a paper that directly addressed this problem. As they say...
Read More
Patient Dies 90 Min After Live Broadcast Surgery
“In addition to his tumor, the patient had hepatitis and cirrhosis. Was he a good candidate?...
Read More
The Opioid Epidemic: What Was the Joint Commission’s Role?
Last month the Joint Commission issued a statement written by its Executive VP for Healthcare...
Read More
Should Doctors Wear White Coats? The Debate Continues
An infectious disease fellow at the Harvard Medical School is convinced that white coats are...
Read More
Caribbean invasion: Medical school turf wars
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on an interesting situation occurring in New York...
Read More
Lipo Blunders, Yet a 4-Star Doc Rating
Here’s another reason to take online physician ratings with several grains of salt Below is...
Read More
A New View Debates Antibiotics for Appendicitis
Here’s what Jane E. Brody, New York Times Personal Health columnist, had to say about surgeons who...
Read More
EMR notes: Copy and paste, done in haste, what a waste
An epidemic is sweeping the country, and no one is doing anything about it. No it’s not Zika...
Read More
Florida teen impersonates a doctor…again
February’s Internet sensation, at least where I hang out, was Malachi Love-Robinson, the...
Read More
Doctor Operates on the Wrong Child
A newborn in Tennessee had an operation to correct a “tongue tie.” Except for the...
Read More
FIRST Trial: Patients Not Harmed When Surgical Residents Work Flexible Hours
Patients had no greater risk of death or serious morbidity when cared for by surgical residents...
Read MoreIs Burnout Talk Causing More Burnout?
Almost every day for the last few years, someone is writing about physician burnout or depression. The problems begin in medical school. A recent paper featured drawings that medical students had done depicting faculty as...
Read More
Surgeon Convicted of Manslaughter Wins Right to Appeal
Last month, a three-judge panel granted English surgeon David Sellu the right to appeal his...
Read More
Why Hospital Rankings are Bogus
The Leapfrog Group has announced its annual list of America’s top hospitals for quality and safety...
Read MoreThe Ultimate Resident Evaluation
It comes as no shock to me, and probably many other current and former program directors, that a recent study showed faculty overall performance evaluations of residents do not correlate with their scores on the yearly American...
Read More
Mass. General Hospital on the Hot Seat
October was not a good month for Massachusetts General Hospital. A group of MGH anesthesiologists...
Read MoreBaffling Deficiency of New ICD-10 Codes
Many years in the creation and tens of thousands more codes than ICD-9, yet the new ICD-10 list may be inadequate. An actor was hospitalized after his foot became caught an elevator raising the stage during a performance of the...
Read More
Two Ways to Deal with ED "Frequent Flyers"
A hospital in Maryland has come up with a novel solution for patients who are “frequent...
Read More