Stuff this week that caught my eye: Does medical tourism harm the natives? Are all those CT scans destroying more than our budgets? Are nocturnalists at risk for more than decubs? Will Medicare need to cut hospital payments to fuel P4P? Answers: yes, yes, probably, and duh.Yesterday, NPR’s All Things Considered described the dark side of medical ...

Sorry, but today is the day for a tiny bit of Shameless Commerce – a quick plug for my new book, Understanding Patient Safety. I wouldn’t normally do this – I’m as brazenly promotional as anybody, mind you, but it does seem a bit cheesy – but then I saw Robert Reich promote his new book on his blog. I really like Robert Reich, Clinton I’s Labor ...

Primary care is tanking. Job dissatisfaction is high, burnout is rampant, residents are voting with their feet in droves, and most primary care confabs have become sky-is-falling angst-a-thons. Since many people identify me as “the guy who invented hospitalists” (to which my stock reply is “just like Al Gore invented the Internet”), I have had ...

The pharmaceutical industry’s influence in clinical care is increasingly being viewed under a high-powered microscope, and the result is tightening restrictions on what pharma can do with/for/to doctors. Having lived through the era of sun-baked golf and beach “conferences” (with the invited physicians paid handsomely as “consultants”), this extra ...