Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
What is comparative effectiveness research and why does it matter? The idea, basically, is to inform medical decisions with relevant data derived from well-designed clinical trials. This sort of research will provide the foundation for evidence-based medicine (EBM).
A question central to today’s discussion – which does at least acknowledge the decline in breast cancer mortality – is the extent to which mammography is responsible for this trend, as opposed to other factors such as increased awareness about cancer, better cancer treatments and other variables.
“This caught my interest because it doesn’t diminish physicians’ autonomy,” Blumenthal said. It just enables them to make decisions for their patients in the context of additional, current information. “The end goal is not to adopt technology, but to improve care.”
Harlem Hospital Center stands just three miles or so north of my home. I know the place from the outside glancing in, as you might upon exiting from the subway station just paces from its open doors. The structure seems like one chamber of its neighborhood’s heart; within a few long blocks’ radii you’ll find rhythms generated in the Abyssinian Baptist Church; readings at the Schomburg Center and artery-clogging cuisine at the West 135th Street IHOP.
So I was saddened to hear about the missed heart studies. Or should I say unmissed? No one noticed when nearly 4,000 cardiac tests went unchecked at the Harlem center,
I can’t even begin to think of how much money this might save, besides sparing so many women from the messy business of infusions, temporary or semi-permanent IV catheters, prophylactic or sometimes urgent antibiotics, Neulasta injections, anti-nausea drugs, cardiac tests and then some occasional deaths in treatment from infection, bleeding or, later on, from late effects on the heart or not-so-rare secondary malignancies like leukemia. And hairpieces; we could see a dramatic decline in women with scarves and wigs.
…Poka-yoke, a Japanese term for rendering a repetitive process mistake-proof, is familiar to some business students and corporate executives. This concept, that simple strategies can reduce errors during very complex processes, is not the kind of thing most doctors pick up in med school. Rather, it remains foreign.
The medical word of the month is a most definite “no.”
The word is featured, explicitly and/or conceptually, in recent opinions published in two of the world’s most established media platforms – the New York Times and the New England Journal of Medicine. Their combined message relates to a point I’ve made here and elsewhere, that if doctors would or could take the time to provide full and unbiased information to their patients, people might choose less care of their own good sense and free will.
Let’s start with David Leonhardt’s April 7 column, “In Medicine, The Power of No.” In this excellent essay…
Recently in the Times’ “Patient Money” column, Lesley Alderman shared nine physicians’ views on how we might reduce our country’s health care mega-bill.
Here, I’ll review those comments, add my two cents to each, and then offer my suggestion (#10, last but not least!) regarding how I think we might reduce health medical costs in North America without compromising the quality of care doctors might provide.
The “answers” from…
“The insurance market as it works today basically slices and dices the population. It says, well you people with medical conditions, over here, and you people without them, over here…
– Jonathan Cohn, Editor of The New Republic, speaking on The Brian Lehrer Show, February 16, 2010*
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There’s a popular, partly true, sometimes useful and very dangerous notion that we can control our health. Maybe even fend off cancer.
I like the idea that we can make smart choices, eat sensible amounts of whole foods…
For those of you who’ve been asleep for the past year: the health care costs conundrum remains unsolved. Our annual medical bills run in the neighborhood of $2.4 trillion and that number’s heading up. Reform, even in its watered-down, reddened form, has stalled.
Despite so much unending review of medical expenses – attributed variously to an unfit, aging population, expensive new cancer drugs, innovative procedures, insurance companies and big Pharma – there’s been surprisingly little consideration for patients’ preferences. What’s missing is a solid discussion of the type and extent of treatments people would want if they were sufficiently informed of their medical options and circumstances.
Maybe, if doctors would ask their adult patients how much care they really want, the price of health care would go down. That’s because many patients would choose less, at least in the way of technology, than their doctors prescribe. And more care.
What I’m talking about is the opposite of rationing. It’s about choosing.
It was sometime in April, 1988. I was putting a line in an old man with end-stage kidney disease, cancer (maybe), heart failure, bacteria in his blood and no consciousness. Prince was on the radio, loud, by his bedside. If you could call it that – the uncomfortable, curtained compartment didn’t seem like a good place for resting.
The risks and costs of breast cancer screening are exaggerated and misrepresented in the recent news…. My conclusion is that rather than ditching a life-saving procedure that’s imperfect, we should make sure that all doctors and radiology facilities are up to snuff.
We need to distinguish between errors in the measurement (cancer or not) and errors in decisions that we – patients and doctors – make after upon detecting a premalignant or early-stage malignancy in a woman’s breast.
Why bother, you might ask – wouldn’t it be easier to drop the subject?
“Make it go away,” sang Sheryl Crow on her radiation sessions.
I’ll answer as might a physician and board-certified oncologist who happens to be a BC survivor in her 40s: we need establish how often false positives lead, in current practice, to additional procedures and inappropriate treatment…These numbers matter. They’re essential to the claim that the risks of breast cancer screening outweigh the benefits.
But consider – if the expert panel’s numbers are off just a bit, by as little as one or two more lives saved per 1904 women screened, the insurers could make a profit!
By my calculation, if one additional woman at a cost of, say, $1 million, is saved among the screening group, the provider might break even. And if three women in the group are saved by the procedure, the decision gets easier…
Now, imagine the technology has advanced, ever so slightly, that another four or five women are saved among the screening lot.
How could anyone, even with a profit motive, elect not to screen those 2000 women?
