By Michael Young The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projects that by 2025 the United States will face a shortage of 130,600 physicians, representing a near 18-fold increase from the deficit of 7,400 physicians in 2008. The widening gap between physician supply and demand has grown out of a complex interplay of legal, political,…
By Cansu Canca In July, the Lancet covered Turkey’s development and implementation of universal health coverage extensively in an article and in supplementary comments. The main article, written by those who are directly involved in the development of the health systems reform (including the former Health Minister), presents a success story. Within Turkey, however, the success of…
By Michael J. Young A prospective cohort study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine adds to a growing body of research illuminating the neurocognitive sequelae of critical illness requiring intensive care. Researchers reported that “one out of four patients [treated in the ICU] had cognitive impairment 12 months after critical illness that…
By Nicholson Price For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, there’s a great ongoing online forum over at the joint Harvard Business Review and New England Journal of Medicine Insight Center on Leading Health Care Innovation. It’s online at HBR here, and will feature an ongoing series of posts about innovation in high-value…
By Michael Young As healthcare institutions work to meet the triple aim of reducing healthcare costs while improving quality of care and population-wide health, efforts to expand the role of patient involvement in clinical decision making have gained appreciable momentum. Interest in increasing patient participation in clinical decision making and goal setting is premised in…
By Matt Baum The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is unusual as a patient-safety intervention in that it has been widely promoted as universally effective, i.e. effective both in high-income and resource-limited settings; checklists are now used in approximately 1800 hospitals worldwide. In a paper recently published in the journal, BMJ Open, Aveling and colleagues report the…
By Michelle Meyer Update: In other SUPPORT news today, a second group of bioethicists has written to the NEJM in, ahem, support of OHRP’s original criticisms of the SUPPORT trial. Readers may recall that another group of prominent bioethicists had previously published a letter in the NEJM in support of SUPPORT. OHRP today announced details…
By I. Glenn Cohen The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has just posted online (ahead of print) a new article by Ben Harvey and I entitled “The Looming Threat of Liability for Accountable Care Organizations and What to Do About It.” We discuss the Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) that that the Affordable Care…
By Mary Ann Chirba and Alice A. Noble On May 22. 2013, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee unanimously approved S.959, “The Pharmaceutical Compounding Quality and Accountability Act,” and S.957, “The Drug Supply and Security Act,” (now incorporated into S. 959 as an amendment). Congressional efforts to enact comprehensive legislation to improve…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch Given my recent piece in the New England Journal on discrimination against patients, particularly obese patients in the context of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I found this NY Times story particularly interesting: Disability and Discrimination at the Doctor’s Office. The Times story focuses on patients who are disabled in more traditional…
