SAURABH JHA, MD

Many allege that the FIRST trial, which randomized surgical residencies to strict versus flexible adherence to duty hour restrictions, was unethical because patients weren’t consented for the trial and, as this was an experiment, in the true sense of the word, consent was mandatory. The objection is best summarized by an epizeuxis in a Tweet from Alice Dreger, a writer, medical historian, and a courageous and tireless defender of intellectual freedom.

@RogueRad @LVSelbs @ethanjweiss @Skepticscalpel Consent to experimentation. Consent. Consent. Am I not being clear?

— Alice Dreger, Ph.D. (@AliceDreger) November 20, 2015

It’s important understanding what the FIRST (Flexibility In duty hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees) trial did and didn’t show. It showed neither that working 120 hours a week has better outcomes than working 80 hours a week, nor the opposite. Neither did the trial, despite being a non-inferiority trial, show that working 100 hours was as safe as working 60 hours a week. The trial showed that violating duty hour restrictions didn’t worsen outcomes. The trial was neither designed nor powered to specify the degree to which the violation of duty hours was safe. This key point can be missed. To be fair, neither the trialists, nor the editorials about the trial, claimed so.

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By CHELSEA POLANIECKI

The moment you are diagnosed with cancer, you become a survivor. You now live with a daunting illness. Your everyday monotonous activities turn into new challenges, flooding your thoughts with countless questions and new struggles. In the 2006 National Survey of U.S. Households Affected by Cancer, 15% of respondents said they had the experience of leaving a doctor’s office without answers to important questions about their illness. And, even when patients do have the relevant information to cope with their illness, a lack of logistical and material resources, such as transportation, medical equipment, and supplies, can often prevent them from ever actually using the suggested support. GuideWell is launching the GuideWell Cancer Challenge to crowdsource ideas about concierge services to help the millions living with cancer understand and access the services they need.

GuideWell is calling on everyone, from developers creating solutions to patients who can share their own insights, to come together and solve this issue. We need you to join the movement and participate in the challenge. When you visit the GuideWell Cancer Challenge website you can submit your ideas, provide insights that can spark someone else’s creativity or comment on others’ ideas with your feedback and suggestions. You can even participate by simply voting for the ideas you like the best. This challenge is your chance to get involved in Greater than C>ncer: The Immersion Journey, an initiative powered by the American Cancer Society with the goal of gaining a better understanding of these problems and potential solutions. The GuideWell Steering Committee will evaluate all ideas and insights, and award prizes totaling $12,000. In addition to cash prizes, the best ideas will also be shared within the GuideWell ecosystem through an online and printed publication.

The deadline for submitting all ideas and insights is April 28, 2017. If you have an idea, go ahead and SUBMIT IT! Or, simply browse submissions and VOTE for your favorite. If you want to learn more about the challenge, or have questions about the process REGISTER for the Q&A WEBINAR to be held on March 30, 2017 at 3:30 PM ET.

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BRIAN JOONDEPH, MD

Brexit was a British version of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” a famous line from the film “Network.” Brits were fed up with intrusive and nonsensical regulations from the European Union, including whether eggs could be sold by the dozen — really important stuff affecting the lives and well-being of our neighbors across the pond.

“Frexit” may be the next iteration, as one of the leading French presidential candidates, Marine Le Pen, promises voters a referendum to leave the E.U. Donald Trump’s election to the presidency is the American version, in which voters chose to leave behind the political and media Establishment and favored a new direction.

Now, in medicine, a similar movement is called “DRexit,” as described by Dr. Niran Al-Agba, a pediatrician in Washington State, who wrote about this in a blog post — and it may be pushing physicians away from stifling bureaucracies of government-run health care. Endless rules, regulations, and mandates are turning physicians from healers into robots and transforming the medical clinic into the post office or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

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By PETER PRONOVOST, MD

The moment that an accreditation team shows up unannounced can spike the pulse of even the most seasoned hospital executive. The next several days will amount to one big exam for the safety and quality of care, as surveyors meet with executives, managers and care teams, and watch first-hand as care is delivered. Make the wrong move or give a wrong answer, have them see rust on a ceiling sprinkler, and your hospital may get dinged. Get dinged too many times or have findings of serious patient risks, and your accreditation (and the federal funds attached to that) may be in jeopardy.

This is a useful and essential exercise. It makes sure that hospitals are doing what they’re supposed to. For example, do they have an infection prevention and control plan? Do they conduct fire drills? Do they inspect, test and maintain medical equipment? Do doctors sign their orders and notes?

Regulators have been innovating how they evaluate hospitals to make their reviews more meaningful and impactful for patient safety. Yet, if we truly want to strive for the best possible care, end preventable patient harm and reduce needless costs, meeting regulations alone isn’t nearly enough. Regulations may help identify the “bad apples” and ensure compliance with minimum requirements. Yet these regulations alone have not been enough to transform a health care system that still harms patients too often, improves too slowly, wastes too much and innovates too little. How do we help hospitals to excel?

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By DEEPA MISTRY

Register for Live Webinar To Hear Experts Discuss The Future of Health Tech

In the last week, the Republican Congress introduced the AHCA. What does this mean for the health tech industry, and how will this impact the growth rate of health technology?

Join Health 2.0’s Indu Subaiya and Matthew Holt as they tackle these questions and more with policy expert Josh Seidman from Avalere Health during the Repeal and Replace: Impact on Health Tech Webinar on March 23, 2017 at 10 AM PST.

Get the latest perspective on what the repeal/replace will mean for startups/entrepreneurs, whether companies will benefit from these changes, and if Medicaid is cut, what does it mean for hospital spending?

Space is limited so register today to secure your spot for the free webinar.

Deepa Mistry is the Operations & Marketing Manager of Health 2.0.

By ABRAAR KARAN, MD

Imagine you are a doctor running a clinic in a primarily lower-income neighborhood, where many of your patients are recent immigrants from different parts of the world. You are granted a fixed annual budget of $100,000 through your local public health department, and it is unlikely that you can obtain additional funding later in the year. Traditionally, you have used your entire budget for the past several years, which usually lasts from January until December. This allows you to care for all of the few thousand patients who come to you for treatment throughout the year.

One day in January, a frightened, thin young man appears to the clinic with a folder of medical records. He is accompanied by his aunt, who explains to you that he has recently traveled from El Salvador, where he was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer that, if untreated, will result in his death within 6 months. After further inquiry, you determine that his cancer is treatable, but will require $50,000 of your budget to save his life. What do you do?

Thinking Through the Moral Dilemma

The ethical dilemma in this case is one that physicians and public health practitioners confront often, particularly in very low-resource settings: the care of the individual versus the equitable distribution of resources to the society at large. For this case, treating this single patient means that there will not be enough money to treat all of the other patients who come to the clinic over the course of the year. In economic terms, we might say that his care is not cost-effective because for the same amount invested in supplying the clinic, we could prevent many more deaths or disability adjusted life years (DALYs) for a greater number of patients. However, allowing a patient to die of a treatable condition feels wrong on many levels.

Thinking through this further, we must look closely at our values as a country and a health system: thanks to EMTALA, we ensure that no patient will ever be allowed to die of an emergency condition while in a hospital; thus, we value saving people from imminent, preventable death.

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By JOE FLOWER

Opinions are flying. Opinionators with a plan to fix healthcare in America are suddenly as common as waiters with a script in Santa Monica. Few are worth a second glance. They fall into the “that’ll never pass” pile or the “that’ll never work” pile.

So why should we pay any attention to Christopher Ruddy’s idea? Because he’s a prominent conservative, the CEO of Newsmax, and a long-time friend and ally of Trump—and he is advocating for at least a “lite” version of universal coverage.

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By JOSEPH WOOD

Most everyone is talking about Healthcare lately and I just can’t take it anymore and had to send out a primer, because there is so much bad information being floated.  I don’t like the ACA replacement because the idea is still based on the premise that you can give-away insurance as an entitlement program.  The problem is that you can’t “give-away” insurance, it’s an oxymoron, if there is no skin in the game for the insured they’ll never care.

I’m an insurance guy and Trump voter.  I only point this because I want you to know that my healthcare recommendation is heartfelt and I offer it with no real bias other than offering my experience and expertise on the matter.  My idea is just an independent thought and many Republicans, Libertarians and Democrats would hate it, but I think Trump (the Independent) would love it.  And I feel it’s the only way for Trump to try and “solve” the healthcare problems in the U.S. and keep his commitment that “all” would be covered.

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By KIP SULLIVAN

Imagine that a drug company released a “study” that claimed to find that if all 75 million Americans with high blood pressure took the drug company’s hypertension drug the nation’s annual medical expenditures would drop by $20 billion. Imagine as well that the “study” failed to take into account the $40 billion cost to patients and insurers of buying all those hypertension drugs. Such a study would be roundly criticized for failing to take into account an essential component of cost – the cost of the intervention that led to lower medical expenditures.

But studies like the hypothetical drug company study appear constantly in the health policy literature. Almost all peer-reviewed papers that examine managed-care interventions – HMOs, ACOs, “medical homes,” “value-based purchasing,” etc – fail to report the cost of the intervention. Instead, they measure only medical costs or medical utilization rates. If they find that costs or utilization rates fell, the vast majority of studies imply or come right out and claim that “costs“ went down. This unethical practice is so widespread and so chronic I propose we give it a name. I propose we call it the “free lunch syndrome.”

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