I find the Medical Information Technology revolution fascinating. It is moving too fast for some, and not fast enough for others. This year, during our annual trip to London to visit our daughter, I attended the timely “Tenth World Congress on Health and Medical Informatics.” Information Technology (or IT) is becoming so important that many […]

A LESSON FROM TEACHERS: In a remarkable twist, our Governor is handing out $350 million in bonuses to teachers at 4,800 public schools for raising their students’ Stanford 9 test scores. The teachers say this $591 bonus is nothing short of a bribe, suggesting that they have been holding out against their students. Hundreds of […]

Thomas Mueller, MD, an otolaryngologist in Everett, WA, is tired of gloom-and-doom messages and thinks it is time for physicians to take the lead. While problems in medicine are legion, the solution is simple but not easy. “As rapidly as possible, as many physicians as possible need to end all third-party relationships,” Dr Mueller writes. Patients should […]

Sidney Goldstein, MD, emeritus head of cardiovascular medicine at Henry Ford Hospital, in an article in Internal Medicine News, remembers the pundits who predicted that MBA medicine was a phase and that America would focus on healthcare deficiencies, not ambulatory patients with “through-put” efficiencies. How wrong they were. The tidal wave of changes in the last […]

Noteworthy articles from Humboldt, Del Norte, and San Joaquin Counties. The Bulletin of the Humboldt-Del Norte County Medical Society has been publishing a dialogue on an article: “Medical Marijuana: An Oxymoron,” by Denver Nelson, MD. Tate Minckler, MD, an editorial board member of The Bulletin, has expounded further on this proposal for legalization of marijuana which he […]

The World Congress on Lung Health had physicians from about 60 countries represented. These are opportunities for me to get an overview of medicine as it is practiced throughout the world. A physician at the Congress from the United Kingdom stated that he is very unhappy with his medical practice in the National Health Service […]