General Patients
MS Misdiagnosis is Too Common, Puts Patients in Unnecessary Peril from Therapies, Study Reveals
By Ana Pena, MS News. Nearly 18% of new multiple sclerosis (MS) patients referred to two speciality clinics in Los Angeles, California, have been misdiagnosed with the disease, according to a recent study. Most of… Read More
Patients Ghosted By Doctor’s Employment Contract
Did Your Doctor ‘Ghost’ You? An Employment Contract May Be To Blame By Michelle Andrews, for KHN. When Don Cue developed a bladder infection last fall, he called his longtime urologist’s office for a urine… Read More
Beware of Worthless Procedures and Epidural Steroids for Your Back Pain
By CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN, for CONDITIONS. An excerpt from Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery. Near my office, there’s a breakfast-and-lunch joint where strangers sit down at shared tables. When Joseph,… Read More
“Step Therapy” Drug Requirement by Insurers Causing Some Patients to Get Sicker
Source: Charles B. Inlander Publication: Bottom Line Health. A controversial health insurance program is growing by leaps and bounds throughout the country. With “step therapy,” your insurer requires your doctor to prescribe the cheapest effective prescription… Read More
Secret Doctor Referral System Dangerous and Costly for Patients
More primary-care doctors work directly for hospitals, and they are being pushed to keep lucrative referrals in-house. By Matt Stanley, Anna Wilde Mathews and Melanie Evans, For the Wall Street Journal. Phoebe Putney Health System… Read More
Ignored As An Election Issue, Deaths From Medical Errors Have Researchers Alarmed
By Leah Binder, Contributor Forbes. We learned Tuesday (Editor: the 2018 midterm election) that health care is a big concern for voters, with exit polling from CNN, NBC and other major outlets showing 40 percent of Americans picked… Read More
Doctors Tell All—and It’s Bad
By MEGHAN O’ROURKE – The New Yorker. For someone in her 30s, I’ve spent a lot of time in doctors’ offices and hospitals, shivering on exam tables in my open-to-the-front gown, recording my medical history on multiple forms,… Read More
Patient Profiling and the Harm It Can Cause
By Pamela Wible, MD. Ever felt misjudged by a doctor? Or treated unfairly by a clinic or hospital? You may be a victim of patient profiling. Patient profiling is the practice of regarding particular patients as… Read More
As Surgery Centers Boom, Patients Are Paying With Their Lives
By Christina Jewett and Mark Alesia, USA Today Network. The surgery went fine. Her doctors left for the day. Four hours later, Paulina Tam started gasping for air. Internal bleeding was cutting off her windpipe,… Read More