A recent economic analysis concluded that patients with metastatic cancer value their treatments significantly more than regulators recognize, with many expensive new therapies looking like veritable bargains to most patients…(Read the rest and view comments at Critical Decisions)
The right to die has played a critical role in the development of the doctor/patient relationship. It was families clamoring for the right to allow their loved ones to die who forced the world to recognize that physicians’ medical decisions aren’t just medical decisions, but involve enormous value judgments. In 1975, Karen Ann Quinlan’s loving…
Not long ago, I spoke with a freelance journalist, Charlotte Huff, who put together a really nice article in Cancer Today, describing how cancer patients can get more engaged in their care. I thought I would share a bit of that piece with you today: Gloria Full wasn’t surprised that the recommended chemotherapy regimen was aggressive….
Thanks to the popularity of medical television shows, most people have witnessed hundreds of fictional cardiac arrests in their lifetime. In most of these scenes, the patient loses consciousness, and the medical team rushes to the bedside: “He’s in V-fib.” “Get me the paddles.” The team performs urgent chest compressions for a few seconds. Then…
Here is a write-up of a talk I recently gave at the NIH. The topic is a good one, about doctors and decision making and all that crap. But the real importance of linking you to the story is to find out if you hate my sport coat as much as my wife does. It…
In my most recent post, I describe several psychologic and economic phenomena impeding our ability to rein in the cost of end-of-life care. In brief, people with nothing to lose, who don’t trust doctors recommending they receive hospice care, and who face few economic consequences for receiving expensive care – they aren’t likely to put the…
Attention all you design and #nudge fans. Here is a graphic from ProPublica that attempts to help people choose a physician. Do you think it works? What would you do to improve it?