Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud
06/10 2010

The July Effect

Don’t check into a hospital in July. That’s according to a recent study by California researchers, who studied over 62 million death certificates from 1979 to 2006. They found a 10 percent increase in deaths linked to medication errors in counties with teaching hospitals, but not in other counties. This has long been referred to [...] Learn More →
Posted in Out Loud, Wellness
06/10 2010

‘A Scent’ Into Virtue

Researchers have demonstrated that people are more likely to promote social reciprocity and be charitable when they are in a clean scented room. They compared the behavior of subjects in a room spritzed with lemon-scented Windex and a room with no scent added. Some 22 percent of the subjects in the “clean” room were willing [...] Learn More →
Posted in Out Loud, Wellness
06/10 2010

What’s Up With Happiness?

In this period of worldwide political and economic turmoil, one of the hottest topics out there is happiness. Hardly a day goes by when someone isn’t releasing a book, publishing a study, blogging or lecturing on this most elusive of subjects: what happiness is, what it isn’t, why we want it, how to get it, [...] Learn More →
Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud
06/10 2010

Pavlov’s Dog

At a recent panel presentation on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) before medical students at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine campus in Phoenix, the moderator asked the students how many of them intended to open their own practice or work in a small group practice upon graduation and residency. One [...] Learn More →
Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud
06/10 2010

The Collision

If Proposition 100 had failed, the Arizona legislature had a contingency plan to cut nearly $900 million from the budget. They may get an opportunity to resurrect it if the state doesn’t get $400 million out of a total of $24 billion earmarked for a six-month extension of a temporary higher rate of federal Medicaid [...] Learn More →
Posted in News, Out Loud
06/10 2010

The Climb

Picture yourself stuck in a hole that’s ten feet deep. A person appears at the top of the hole and offers a six-foot high ladder. What good is it? When it comes to Arizona’s deep revenue hole, Proposition 100 is that shorter ladder. But its approval tells us that we all can act together to [...] Learn More →
 
Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud
05/12 2010

Fear and Health

Are like oil and water. They don’t mix. A fearful community is not a healthy community. A healthy individual is not a fearful individual. Our mission is to foster healthy people and communities in Arizona, so it saddens us when we hear first-hand stories of people who are afraid to visit a doctor for a [...] Learn More →
Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud, SLHI feed
05/12 2010

Is Money All There Is?

We are treated to yet another analysis of how much physicians make, and the income gap between primary care and other specialties, in a recent issue of Health Affairs. Researchers calculated that cardiologists earn a career average of more than $5 million, compared with $2.5 million for PCPs, $1.7 million for business school graduates, and [...] Learn More →
 
Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud, SLHI feed
05/12 2010

The Foundation of Rational Health Reform

Is personalized health care. In a compelling presentation, Dr. Ralph Snyderman at Duke University lays out the case for moving from the current “find it, fix it” model of care to a “predict it, personalize it” model – a journey from understanding disease in the 20th century to understanding health, disease and complexity in the [...] Learn More →
Posted in Healthcare reform, Out Loud
05/12 2010

Dr. Contrarian’s Glossary of Health Care Terms

Health care is so complex that even smart people don’t fully understand it. We asked Dr. Contrarian, purveyor of all things wild and wacky, to provide a glossary of common health care terms even the not-so-smart can understand. Health care reform. A campaign by special interest groups to add at least $1 trillion in new [...] Learn More →