Tundra Medicine Dreams: Moving. Ugh.

…By October 1st Jody and I will be in Anchorage, hopefully picking up my new (to me) car, and then going to see the orthopedic surgeon about hopefully replacing my hip…

A prolific and excellent medblogger has a shift in her life.  Hows about a comment there (not here) wishing her good luck?

The DSL is perfectly happy to stay connected at 928 down and 328 up.  These are not numbers that make me happy.

Therefore, the wireless internet connection returns Monday.  Hooray!

More when I can see what I’m doing.

Addicted to Medblogs: Dr. August is . . . Kevin, MD

Another in the excellent series.

Movin’ Meat: Contracting with your hospitals

A very nice backgrounder into ED group contracting with hospitals.  He didn’t address due process in his post, though, and I’m hoping to have him blog a bit about that.

DB’s Medical Rants » On medical blogging codes

What he said.

An update.

My DSL woes continue, though the AT&T people are really trying to figure it out.  One fellow in particular has made it his challenge to fix it, which is great, except as it’s an intermittent problem nobody knows what to fix.

Through a series of fiddles we’ve discovered that if my speed is limited to about 540 down it’ll stay connected, which is nice, but is less than half what worked 3 weeks ago.  We finally thought to ask today and the next door neighbors are having the same problems, too, so now maybe we can get them to look outside the house (where the one phone plugged into a jack now has 2 dsl filters on it).

I am researching other alternatives, but really hope we can find the problem and get my very cheap DSL fixed and not have to return to the really terrific but expensive wireless internet.

In other news, we’re gearing up for the arrival of an EMR in our ED, complete with CPOE in the ED right from the start; it’s described as being like starting a new job: you know what to do but you have to learn how it’s done here.

Back soon.

Kevin, MD hits one out of the park:

Doctors’ pay cuts save little in health costs - Opinion - USATODAY.com

By Kevin Pho

“Why should I care if doctors get a pay cut?” my patient recently asked me.

Therein lies the delicate dilemma physicians face today. While the common perception is that the medical profession is well-compensated, there are serious implications in targeting physician pay to control medical spending.

To say I concur would be too mild.

Today I read this snippet, via Newsday.com:

NEW YORK - Two teens went to an emergency room complaining of pain, but police say they really wanted pills, needles and medical supplies from the Staten Island hospital.
…
Police say the pair found a sealed box in an emergency room cabinet, opened it and took medicine and supplies. A witness told a hospital security guard, who called police.

Which reminded me of a recent blog post by one of the very best blog writers, Dr. Edwin Leap:

edwinleap.com
…
The average person, the normal citizen, the otherwise functional patient has no idea of the remarkable degree of dysfunction and deception we see in the modern emergency department. Furthermore, they have no idea of the incredible boldness, the unflinching willingness to lie, misrepresent and manipulate to get what they want; and get it all for no charge.

There’s a reason EM types are a little jaded.

Dumbest legislative response to a medical malpractice misadventure, maybe ever:

Celebrity Cosmetic Surgery: California Senate Approves “Donda West Law”

Yes, an H&P would have changed the outcome.  Dumb.

Is my DSL connection.

This is the PingPlotter visual (red = no connection)

You can see the problem (that’s about 48 hours there in the picture).  My connection time is spent doing things I have to get done.

We’ve had the DSL techs out twice.  The first one pronounced us to have ‘too much line noise’, disconnected some things, and that didn’t fix it.  Tech 2 cut the speeds in half and replaced the modem, which didn’t help, either.

We noticed a few days ago that phone calls would just drop in mid-word, and a call to the ‘voice’ people resulted in a different test, which apparently says there’s a problem with the wires outside the house, and in typical AT&T fashion someone would be out in the next 72 hours.  No idea when, just in the next 3 days.

My guess is an intermittent short or a wire breakage that moves in the wind, so it acts normally sometimes but not others (like in medicine, intermittent things can be very hard to diagnose).

Hopefully, this’ll get fixed soon.  In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves.

» new virus threatens humanity Emergency Department
Forget H5N1. Forget SARS. Forget the flesh-eating zombie mutants.
There are far more contagious viruses out there, just waiting to go pandemic. Its only a matter of time.

Go, watch the video at Impacted Nurse.

These things will probably start in Australia (let’s hope it never gets that girl in Ipanema).

Can Infections Be Preve… - Blogs - Revolution Health

Dr. Val has a good post predicting some unintended consequences of the medicare ‘never’ events.

There are always unintended consequences.

All,

my connection to the internet continues to be mostly off, and while troubleshooting continues, I won’t be posting.  (You’re welcome).

I’ll be back when the connection stays up more than a minute at a time.

kung fu grippe

“ Blogging is like masturbating into a mirror while you videotape yourself so you can watch it later while you masturbate”.

Lewis Black

No mirrors were involved in the making of this post.

Medical Humanities Blog: Grand Rounds, Vol 4, # 47
We here at MH Blog have the honor of hosting Grand Rounds this week. No theme was provided, so let’s dive in and see what the best of the med-blogosphere has to offer.

Wins a Gold.