Zulfiqar Rana, MD, MPH

Poll: Choose the name!

Site Staff — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:45:28 +0000

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Which Is Better: Vitamin D2 or D3?

Site Staff — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:55:22 +0000

A nice article on medscape in case you are confused.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/746941

Tagged: vitamin D

PatientKeeper on ACO draft

Site Staff — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 03:12:23 +0000

PatientKeeper CEO Paul Brient comments on the ACO draft regulations and discusses the interaction between ACO activities and Meaningful Use requirements for health information technology…

http://www.patientkeeper.com/news_events/newsitem.html?id=415

Hospitals to patients: Go away and don’t come back soon

Site Staff — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:34:54 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has a good summary of the situation in Don’t Come Back, Hospitals Say. Among the programs featured:

An animated “virtual discharge advocate” named Louise who helps explain home care to departing patients
Transition coaches who call patients 2 or 3 days after discharge
Project RED (for Re-Engineered Discharge), which provides individualized instruction starting well before the patient leaves the hospital

Early results suggest these approaches can reduce readmissions by 20 to 30 percent, which is a shockingly high figure considering how basic such steps are…

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthBusinessBlog/~3/OY7mg_8jepE/

The Weekend Effect

Site Staff — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:31:55 +0000

These physicians, who treat patients outside the emergency room, are seeking to reverse the “weekend effect,” or higher rates of death and complications.

http://feeds.kaiserhealthnews.org/~r/khn/~3/IH_NyyyY59M/nocturnist.aspx

Soaring Health Costs Pinned On Medical Devices

Site Staff — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:30:12 +0000

The latest devices – from heart valves and defibrillators to artificial knees and hips – are usually significantly more expensive than older devices, and the intense marketing surrounding the introduction of new devices has become a major driver of rising health care costs.

http://feeds.kaiserhealthnews.org/~r/khn/~3/bengTWZgcL8/medical-device-costs-fiscal-times.aspx

Study: Many Employers Will Cut Back On Health Plans

Site Staff — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:29:14 +0000

A report by McKinsey & Co. concluded that at least 30 percent of employers will stop offering health insurance in 2014. The projection is based on a survey of more than 1,300 businesses of various sizes and industries.

http://feeds.kaiserhealthnews.org/~r/khn/~3/ELLNvDgpO-g/mckinsey-employer-study.aspx

AP MOBILE: Study: Link of virus chronic fatigue false alarm

Site Staff — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:02:06 +0000

The cause still remains elusive!

From AP:

Study: Link of virus chronic fatigue false alarm

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Restriction?

Site Staff — Sat, 14 May 2011 00:06:34 +0000

What tools does a university administration have at its disposal to shut up critics on its own faculty? The University of Minnesota wants to know.

The university’s administration is exploring this question because its own Carl Elliott won’t shut up about the Markingson case. Elliott, a professor in the Center for Bioethics, just keeps talking about what went wrong at his medical school in a 2003 industry-sponsored drug trial in which research subject Dan Markingson killed himself. Since publication of a muckraking article on the subject in Mother Jones, Elliott has criticized the FDA’s response to the case and led a group of faculty in asking the University Trustees to look into the case.

Like many others who continue to follow this story, Elliott is drawn to this case by issues of justice both local and global. Locally, he seeks accountability for what happened to Dan Markingson and to his mother, who tried repeatedly before Dan’s gruesome suicide to convince involved clinicians that study participation went against Dan’s best interests…

http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=5340&blogid=140

Should We Treat Depression with drugs or psychological interventions?

Site Staff — Sat, 14 May 2011 00:03:43 +0000

We reply to the Ioannidis’s paper “Effectiveness of antidepressants; an evidence based myth constructed from a thousand controlled trials.” We disagree that antidepressants have no greater efficacy than placebo. We present the efficacy from hundreds of trials in terms of the percentage of patients with a substantial clinical response (a 50% improvement or more symptomatic reduction). This meta-analysis finds that 42-70% of depressed patients improve with drug and 21%-39% improve with placebo. The response benefit of antidepressant treatment is 33%-11% greater than placebo. Ioannidis argues that it would be vanishingly smaller because systematic biasing in these clinical trials would reduce the drug-placebo difference to zero. Ioannidis’ argument that antidepressants have no benefit is eroded by his failures of logic because he does not present any evidence that there are a large number of studies where placebo is substantially more effective than drug. (To reduce to zero, one would also have to show that some of the unpublished studies find placebo better than drug and have substantial systematic or methodological bias). We also present the empirical evidence showing that these methodological concerns generally have the opposite effect of what Ioannidis argues, supporting our contention that the measured efficacy of antidepressants likely underestimates true efficacy.Our most important criticism is Ioannidis’ basic underlying argument that if the existing evidence is imperfect and methods can be criticized, that this proves that there proves is antidepressant are not efficacious. He presents no credible evidence that antidepressants have zero effect size.We find no empirical or ethical reason why psychiatrists should not try to help depressed patients with drugs and/or with psychotherapeutic/ behavioral treatments given evidence of efficacy even though our treatment knowledge has limitations. The immense suffering of patients with major depression leads to ethical, moral, professional and legal obligations to treat patients with the best available tools at our disposal, while diligently and actively monitoring for adverse effects and actively revising treatment components as necessary.

http://www.peh-med.com/content/6/1/8