The House has passed a $250,000 cap on non-punitive awards…for the third time. Let’s see if the Senate will take action this time around.
A story can be found on CNN.com.
…world.
I start on Monday with a clinical skills/ethics class and then gross. I read through the first part of my syllabi for this ethics course and have become very enticed by ethics, which I have certainly not studied prior.
Consider the following quotes from the syllabi and the notes I’ve written in the margin.
I’ll post Monday after my first day of class.
I had my white coat ceremony on Sunday and my first day of orientation today. Unfortunately, I’m heading out to meet more of my classmates. More posts on my moving white coat ceremony pending.
The MCAT will be taken entirely on a computer.
Seems like a good idea which will improve test security and integrity, as well as speed up the test day and the turn around time for students and medical schools to get the test scores.
Fortune asks and answers whether a new ‘crisis of confidence’ is different than America’s fear of a growing Japanese economy in the 1980s.
I think a decline in quality of life, wealth, and loss of American political influence abroad is inevitable before my retirement age if America can’t change it’s economic relationship with the developing world.
I’ve been woefully away from my computer. I have no news topics to write about.
I will share with the world however that I met and went out with about 30 of my future classmates last night. Amazing time. I love some of these guys already…they all seem great.
I’ll be back over the weekend to discuss Judge John Roberts, Jr. (hooray for no filibuster!), electronic health records as Kevin, M.D. has here, and on how a brain dead woman’s fetus could possibly survive.
I’ll post before the big day — my White Coat Ceremony — on Sunday.
Here’s a blip in Internal Medicine on tort reform success in Texas. It’s a fluff piece, but at least provides some quotes on the necessity of tort reform.
H/T to Kevin, M.D.
I got my orientation schedule today, online, even though I’m in Seattle.
It’s an all day thing Monday - Wendesday, however after that I’m a little bit concerned. I want to be sociable and continue to meet my new classmates, but there’s little reason for me to be on campus Thursday or Friday for very long. A single “optional workshop” relates to me seeing as I have no kids, am not married, am not gay, etc.
As well, since I already live near my medical school, I’ve taken the time to do things like get my ID badge and parking permit which the orientation schedule actually have booked out.
In any case, I can’t believe how quickly it is coming up.
8 Days & I’ve taken a couple days off work to experience at least a little bit of summer vacation. I’ll post before my white coat ceremony however.
An Observation From Wandering The Halls of My School: There are cute girls in medical school. And you know they’re smart.
I was going to ignore this, but it’s appeared on too many news sites. The CJD, a law advocacy group with Erin Brokovich on it’s Board of Directors and a quote from Michael Moore on their website (the stuff of credibility), has released a study “showing” that malpractice premiums have increased over the past several years even as payouts have declined.
As Kevin, M.D. has said, Point of Law “rips this study a new one.”
I don’t know how anyone can say an industry in which the single largest supplier simply stops supplying is in good shape. If Microsoft stopped making an operating system or General Motors stopped making personal automobiles, people would notice. In 2001 St. Paul didn’t sell or spin off it’s medical malpractice division, it simply decided it wasn’t going to write any new policies or renew their current policies when they expired. It pulled out of the medical malpractice insurance business with barely a peep.
This insurance company was the largest medical malpractice underwriter in the nation and derived a considerable portion of it’s gross from the business. And yet, underwriting malpractice claims was so unprofitable, it simply stopped doing it. If insurance companies are gutting doctors where are the new companies in this highly profitable business? Has any trial lawyer even taken ‘Introduction to Economics’?
Circumcision may lower the risk of HIV infection while having heterosexual sex with infected women by 70%. Wow.
Health Care Renewal has taken the time to bash Hermann Memorial, the main teaching hospital for the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, for trying “to increase [their] exposure to paying customers.”
I’m tired and my response seems unfocused. I suffer from that sometimes, however, I’ve quoted my comment on HCR’s site below:
You were incredibly hard on Hermann in your post. Academic community teaching hospitals are in horrific financial shape.
It really is an issue that needs to be in the mind of physicians, even those not intimately involved in academia. Teaching hospitals account for less than 20% of all U.S. hospitals and yet are burdened well over half of non-payment patients. To further complicate the issue, they perform the highest risk lowest profit procedures because no one else will do so.
Consider, speciality hospitals. For the sake of a hypothetical we’ll go with heart hospitals. These non-teaching, for profit centers do plenty of high profit CABGs, and despite the comparative ease of the procedure, the fact they have so much experience with them means people choose them over the non-profit academic options.
What the for profit centers don’t take is complicated low profit procedures, which often go hand in hand for three reasons — reimbusement doesn’t rise quickly enough, poor out come expenses (longer hospital stays, lawsuits, etc.) are associated with complicated procedures, and those complicated procedures are more likely to be associated with low income, even indigent, individuals. So the for profit centers take all the healthy paying patients but probably don’t see a whole lot of complicated congenital heart surgeries.
This trend can be broadened to all specialties. Sadly comparatively simple high profit procedures are the only thing allowing the academic health center to break even in the first place.
I applaud Hermann’s candor in trying to improve their financial situation by bringing in healthy, paying customers. In the end, only a stable financial situation can guarantee quality healthcare for those who cannot pay.
