Parkland ER: 24 hours in 5 minutes.

ABC News

Blogborygmi: If Political Pundits Covered an Emergency Department Shift

Heh.  Somebody’s following politics too much.

Here’s one:

FOXNews.com – Moron Arrested After Driving Truck Into House – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

I wrote a blog entry on this topic yesterday, then deleted it, as it wasn’t very nice. Kevin, MD’s Dr. Pho has covered 75% of what I wanted to say on his blog today (nicely), here; read his blog entry then come back here for the rest of what I wanted to say:

Kevin, M.D. – Medical Weblog: Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck’s hospital horror story is getting some attention. Apparently, he had a surgical procedure with marked post-op pain. As physicians tried to control his pain with increasing doses of narcotics, he suffered adverse reactions as a result.

This is one of those amazing occurrences in medicine that makes all of us in Emergency Medicine alternately furious and incredulous, the “Just go to the ER” from a physician who knows the patient much better than the EM doc will, knows what outcome they want, what the patient will need, but cannot be bothered with the 10 minutes of administrative time it’d take for the direct admit to happen. This is what Mr. Beck should have had in the first place, and then a lot of his problems / complaints wouldn’t have happened. He didn’t need the ED, he needed his doctors to take care of their patient.

Mr. Beck was operated on that day in the same facility he was sent back to for re-admission, after having clearly been identified by the anesthesiologist on the case as having significant problems with pain control. He probably shouldn’t have been sent home (disclaimer: all this is from reading one side of the story, but the story as told isn’t particularly flattering to anyone) and definitely shouldn’t have been sent to the ED, he should have been directly admitted and taken care of by the doctors whose complication this was.

This is a cautionary tale for everyone: when your doctor says ‘just go to the ER’ ask about the alternatives. Maybe it’ll shame your doctor into caring for you.

Health Blog : Health Blog Q&A: Our Doc in New Hampshire!

Kevin, MD interviewed by the WSJ!

A dangerous place, this old world at edwinleap.com

Exactly right.

Movin’ Meat: Security, please!

Well, that’s at least original.

Or. at least they’d like for them to be:

In Socialized Medicine, Everyone Is A DoctorPosted 1/3/2008

Health Reform: The British have found a way to shorten those long, annoying waits for care and lower the rising costs of their universal access system. They’ll let patients take care of themselves.

The London Telegraph reported Tuesday that the British government has a “plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget.” But it won’t come without enormous pain.

“Instead of going to a hospital or consulting a doctor, patients will be encouraged to carry out ‘self-care’ as the Department of Health tries to meet Treasury targets to curb spending,” the Telegraph explained.

So when is a universal health care system not actually universal? When Britain’s 60-year-old National Health Service can no longer support the weight of its clamoring clientele….

The NHS, though, is hoping to cut down on more than frivolous visits. It’s looking for patients with “arthritis, asthma and even heart failure” to treat themselves, the Telegraph said.

I am a tremendous advocate of people taking care of themselves, and taking control of their own lives and destinies.  I wonder, though, if these are the target populations that are overutilizing the system, or if this isn’t a relatively subtle way of rationing care a little more for those with chronic conditions, the ones that modern medicine can keep alive (in the most basic meaning of the term) for longer and longer times.  For instance patients with CHF used to die relatively quickly (18 months comes to mind), but now with modern medications and AICD’s these patients can live for years.

Color me skeptical.

The Happy Hospitalist: It’s Feeding Time For Entitled America

The true problem of healthcare spending problems, and amok budgets, explained.

via Kevin, MD, who’s back in a big way (33 posts today, and counting).

Medpundit

Year’s End, Blog’s End: I’ve been making my annual year end inventory – deciding what to keep and what to toss. It’s become obvious in the past several months that this blog is one of the things that it’s time to toss. This will be the last post for Medpundit. Truly.Wishing you all the best in 2008 and the years beyond.

She retired from blogging once before and then returned, but this time I think she’s gone for good.  Her posting frequency has decreased, and frankly you could tell from her posts she didn’t enjoy blogging much anymore.

Which is no crime: blogging is ‘free ice cream’, and if it’s a little smaller one day or stops altogether, the entertainment was free.  Medpundit has provided plenty of entertainment over the years, and I though I’d made it as a blogger when I was mentioned by Medpundit way back when.

So, Thank You Dr. Smythe for the wonderful blogging, and we all hope you’ll at least comment now and again.

other things amanzi: grand rounds

grand rounds vol 4 number 15, welcome to south africa. and a happy new year to all!!

International Rounds!