I often wonder about abstract things like “who am I?”, “what is my purpose on this planet? Am I just a manifestation of the innate desire of a biological species to propagate itself?”…just random thoughts like that!
And driven by these thoughts, I sometimes come across gems like this following video:
“The Known Universe”.
Video by American Museum of Natural History, hosted on youtube.com
“Why Don’t More Doctors Discuss Vaccines With Their Patients?” That is the question being asked on one of my favorite reads, the Wall Street Journal’s health blog. The author, Ms. Laura Landro, goes on to point out:
…high level of…failure by many physicians to discuss vaccines with their patients, let alone administer the ones recommended by the CDC…
For doctors, it often comes down to costs….
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. A medical institution much admired by medical professionals and touted as a model of high quality, high efficiency healthcare by no less than the President. Justifiably so, I suppose.
Recently however, Mayo decided to drop Medicaid patients from two nearby states – Nebraska and Montana, citing “low government reimbursement rates”. Government reimbursement rates are admittedly found to be low by many institutions and physician practices, not just Mayo. One wonders what happens to these patients and the hospitals that will be providing care to these patients now that Mayo is no longer available to them. Are they somehow going to be reimbursed at a higher rate than Mayo? Highly unlikely, one would think.
The proposed healthcare reforms and the resultant debates are the rage nowadays. Proponents and opponents are getting in each others’ face in ways not perhaps imagined by the administration. The head butting is so intense at times that to a casual bystander, it might appear that people have forgotten why they were arguing in the first place. No one is ready to give an inch as they stand nose to nose, screaming and sending spittle flying, the viewers’ eyes riveted to their jugulars which appear dangerously close to burst point.
In this milieu, hospitals and doctors’ offices continue to go about their business as usual. As a matter of principle, we tend to keep our views to ourselves, as surely a majority of doctors do. Sometimes a patient would attempt to get us sucked into the current national argument but they don’t get very far, running into our carefully crafted stone wall of non-committal answers. But there are other times, when one encounters a situation that tends to precipitate musings. I found myself in such a situation on a busy office day recently. A situation which can be frustrating and is probably played out almost every day in physicians’ office all over the country.
While roaming the hallways of the hospital recently, I came across one of my favorite patients. Mr. Patient is tall, somewhat stooped over, and a very pleasant man in his early 80s. On hospital visits, he is always accompanied by his wife of several decades and today was no exception. At the time I saw them, they were deeply engaged in the great intellectual exercise of locating a hospital department, an elderly couple standing befuddled in front of a gaggle of signs pointing every which way. And as always, they were deeply engrossed in a dialogue. There was a lot of head-shaking and a few words floated to my ears as I approached them “…no, no, that way is the Xray…”. As he turned around, incomprehension, followed a moment or two later by a big smile of recognition, made an appearance and his hand extended for a handshake.
As we shook hands however, I rapidly became deaf to their words. I could not hear much of anything they were saying, and only mechanically uttered some social niceties. It was the handshake! Or, the lack thereof.
