Tag: Uncategorized

Penalties are like kissing your sister

May 22, 2008

By Matthew Holt

The LA Times said it best: John Terry’s late slip-up ruins night for Chelsea’s fans. Another perfectly good football/soccer match ruined by a penalty shootout. It used to be that important finals that ended in a draw produced a replay. Penalties were only used in tournaments when there was a need to produce a winner for the next round.
Now many, if not most, big finals are ended that way and it sucks.

It particularly sucks when the team I’ve supported since I was 5 — including all the way through the very lean years in the 1970s & 80s and long before any Russian billionaire bought it — finally gets to the European Champions League Final, and then loses on penalties. Especially when the player who is the local boy and the rock of the team misses the vital one.

So donât expect much cheerieness around here today!

American Cancer gets hip on uninsurance

May 22, 2008

By Matthew Holt

The American Cancer Society is focusing all its marketing budget this year on the issue of uninsurance and is trying to get the message out in new ways to new audiences. Here’s one using rap/poet MIKE-E.

Against Obama, polls show McCain lags on health care

May 21, 2008• 4

By Robert Laszewski

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll on health care should give John McCain reason to be concerned.

The early May poll asked voters, "Regardless of whom you may support, whom do you trust more to handle health care?" The answer was Obama by 55 percent and McCain by 31 percent. And this poll was done a few days after his much publicized week-long health care tour.

McCain also did poorly on the other economic issues, although not as
badly. On gas prices, it was Obama 48 percent and McCain 28 percent. On the economy
in general, it was 48 percent to 38 percent.

McCain did better on the war on terror — 55 percent to 34 percent. The two tied over who would do the best in Iraq. It is still early and polls are notoriously unreliable this far out.
But my sense is that McCain has some big work to do on health care.

Advice to future nurses: ask questions, be proud

May 18, 2008• 9

By Kim McAllister

It’s that time of year when nursing and medical students shed their label (and protection) of student and head out to the workforce with their new licenses. Over at Emergiblog, veteran emergency room nurse Kim McAllister shared advice with new nursing graduates.

Here are her words of wisdom.

To the new nursing classes of 2008:

Your first year will be the most difficult as you acclimate to your new role as a professional nurse. Hang in there! Keep your focus on why you went into nursing to begin with.

Keep your eyes and ears open. Watch the nurses around you. You will be surrounded by role models. Take the best of what you see and incorporate it into your own practice. It may be hard to believe, but by the time the next class enters the profession YOU will be the role model they look up to.

Health wonk review

May 15, 2008

It’s up at Jason Shafrin’s Healthcare Economist.

Millenson on doc rating

May 15, 2008• 1

By THCB Staff

And in our continuing efforts to send you everywhere else on the web but here (but still seeing the same authors), up at H&HN’s Most Wired Magazine, Michael Millenson is writing about the still emerging and not-there-yet field of physician and hospital social rating sites.

Implications of McCain’s plan analyzed at Spot-On

May 15, 2008• 1

By THCB Staff

Over at Spot-On, Matthew predicts what would happen if Sen. John McCain were to win the presidential election this fall, and the Republicans took Congress, and they passed his health plan.

Matthew describes the basic tenets in McCain’s plan and their implications in (nearly) jargon-free lingo, and then concludes, "His halfway solution is worse than no change."

A business plan to make pregnancy safer

May 14, 2008• 1

By Sarah Arnquist

India successfully test launched a ballistic missile last week that could strike Beijing on a moment’s notice. Yet, 120,000 women here die annually giving birth.

How does a country with the technology to produce nuclear weapons and launch ballistic missiles also have the highest maternal mort ality rate in the world? It’s 10 times higher than China’s.

LifeSpring Hospitals Ltd. aims to make a dent in India’s abysmal maternal and infant mortality rates by providing high quality care at affordable rates to lower middle-class women. The chain of maternity and children’s hospitals officially launched last year and has the ambitious goal of operating more than 30 hospitals in three years.

(I’m volunteering at LifeSpring’s corporate office in Hyderabad for two months before heading to grad school.)

LifeSpring charges about $40 for a normal delivery and a two-night stay in its general ward. A private room costs $120. LifeSpring promises its families, who earn about $2 to $4 a day, they won’t be inundated with unexpected costs. The prices are posted on the waiting room wall.

LifeSpring isn’t a charity. This is a for-profit business that believes making money is the only way to guarantee a sustainable future.

Mind your manners

May 14, 2008

By Paul Levy

Dr. Michael Kahn, from Beth Israel Deaconess’ Department of Pyschiatry, has published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that suggests that doctors enhance their relationship with patients when they deal with patients in a polite manner. Here is a summary on the AOL web site, along with a poll on the issue.

I like this summary: Etiquette-based medicine . . . "would put professionalism and patient satisfaction at the center of the clinical encounter and bring back some of the elements of ritual that have always been an important part of the healing profession."

NEJM has published the entire article as freely available to the public here. This is a very polite thing for them to have done, and I thank them.

Paul Levy is the CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and blogs regularly at Running a Hospital.

THCB is proudly sponsored by

May 13, 2008

THCB would not be possible without the generous support of sponsors like Varolii Corporation. Actively engage patients with automated communications. Varolii can help progressively enroll and engage patients into DM&W programs. The result? Healthier patients and better operational returns. Enjoy the discussion and content on THCB? Take a minute to visit their site. Even better? Write them a quick thank you note.