Cures for Our Ailing Health-Care System

Cures for an Ailing System

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Some of these "quality report cards" provide data on preventive services, such as the percentage of age-eligible women receiving mammograms or Pap smears. Others focus directly on life-and-death matters, including mortality rates after serious illness or high-risk surgeries. Performance can vary enormously. In the several states now reporting risk-adjusted mortality rates following coronary-artery bypass surgery, for example, top-performing surgeons often have mortality rates half those of the lowest performers.

With such striking differences, one might expect quality report cards to play a key role in medical decision-making. Yet patients rarely use them, and many doctors question their reliability, especially when data pertain to individual physicians. Doctors also worry that calling public attention to inadequacies will impede professional efforts to improve care. Nonetheless, quality report cards work: repeatedly we see that when poor quality of care is made public, providers intensify efforts to improve it.

So how do we take the best advantage of this medical Zagat's? Most important, we stay the course. Yes, work must continue to improve fairness and accuracy, but shedding sunlight on medical practice is unquestionably healthy medicine for patients.
—Arnold M. Epstein, M.D. Chair of the Department of Health Care Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health and professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital

Wire American Medicine
Polls show that most Americans think their doctors routinely use computers to care for them. After all, this is supposed to be the most technologically advanced medical-care system in the world. But when it comes to patients' records, the great majority of U.S. doctors still rely on technology that predates the printing press: scrawled, often illegible notes that have an uncanny tendency to go missing just when they're needed most.

Experts believe that if hospitals and doctors used electronic health records (EHRs)—systems that store and manage patients' medical information—they could vastly improve the quality of care and reduce costs. For example, such records would routinely warn doctors against giving medicines to patients who are allergic. In the typical paper-based record, it can be hard to find test results—leading to unnecessary repeat tests, and costs. President Bush is so convinced of the value of EHRs that he wants all doctors to adopt them by 2014.

But progress has been slow. The first reason is money. To wire our entire health-care system would cost an estimated $160 billion, and many small physician practices and hospitals are balking. They also fear that installing EHRs will disrupt their work and increase malpractice liability.

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The big secret is out----it takes only 12 months to train a bright high school graduate to be a family doctor. The average wage of a doctor or any worker in the healthcare industry should not be more than twenty dollars an hour. This is a fair wage for a person who should spend only 12 months in training.

The average person imagines that a doctor is some sort of wizard that has magical powers to heal, but this is far from the truth. A doctor was once a student who didn't know the difference between a kitchen knife and a medical scalpel. Expensive and unnecessary years of medical school and a ten dollar stethoscope have created the modern version of the WITCH DOCTOR or MEDICINE MAN. The only magic that these doctors possess is the trick of emptying your bank account. It is not called magic but: "street wisdom".

The whole medical industry including doctors should be tossed to the free market system and be relieved of all government supervision. This idea will cause the biggest backlash since the suggestion that the earth was round instead of flat. The idea that the stethoscope is a magic wand available to only the chosen few is so implanted in the average persons head that it will take a constant bombardment of truth to remove it. The overpaid healthcare industry will spend billions of dollars to prevent deregulation. But they will lose to the fact that healthcare can be affordable.

The outcome of a deregulated healthcare industry will be that the consumer will be king. Word of mouth is the best messenger of top performance. The bright open heart surgeon that learned the trade in twelve months will have many customers when former patients speak highly of the doctor's skill. The cream rises to the top and so will the best doctors. Those that haven't the aptitude will leave the industry when they find that their waiting rooms remain empty.

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Posted By: Mrs.Cleaver @ 04/25/2009 7:27:46 PM

Dude, go back to your attempts to legalize marijuana. You are obviously stoned!
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Posted By: melpol @ 02/08/2009 3:13:47 PM

The big secret is out----it takes only 12 months to train a bright high school graduate to be a family doctor. The average wage of a doctor or any worker in the healthcare industry should not be more than twenty dollars an hour. This is a fair wage for a person who should spend only 12 months in training.

The average person imagines that a doctor is some sort of wizard that has magical powers to heal, but this is far from the truth. A doctor was once a student who didn't know the difference between a kitchen knife and a medical scalpel. Expensive and unnecessary years of medical school and a ten dollar stethoscope have created the modern version of the WITCH DOCTOR or MEDICINE MAN. The only magic that these doctors possess is the trick of emptying your bank account. It is not called magic but: "street wisdom".

The whole medical industry including doctors should be tossed to the free market system and be relieved of all government supervision. This idea will cause the biggest backlash since the suggestion that the earth was round instead of flat. The idea that the stethoscope is a magic wand available to only the chosen few is so implanted in the average persons head that it will take a constant bombardment of truth to remove it. The overpaid healthcare industry will spend billions of dollars to prevent deregulation. But they will lose to the fact that healthcare can be affordable.

The outcome of a deregulated healthcare industry will be that the consumer will be king. Word of mouth is the best messenger of top performance. The bright open heart surgeon that learned the trade in twelve months will have many customers when former patients speak highly of the doctor's skill. The cream rises to the top and so will the best doctors. Those that haven't the aptitude will leave the industry when they find that their waiting rooms remain empty.
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Posted By: Bmoster @ 01/08/2009 11:48:27 AM

Health care system as a whole need a complete expanse and need to start with the rual hospital and clinics. The hospital I worked as a Laboratory Techinian and as a CNA had substandard equipment and pay. Most equipment and beds were older than I am. Also with the low pay scales, most workers with experinece were either fired or quit because of back work condition, poor leadership and lack of money. I could write a book on the mistakes and the frustration of the poor care and lack of funding for the thousands of rual hospitals.