Why is Congress so afraid of the public option? Why are politicians getting so worked up about a system that every other Western country already has, and which works so well in all of them? Why do they not want to extend Medicare, a widely supported and valuable system that even the most ardent republicans are now praising? Why are they afraid of a competitive system that will force insurance companies to be more honest and keep their premiums reasonable? Why do they want to seemingly continue with our current broken expensive inefficient health system?
Is the public option really that scary?
Of course not.
So let's look at this question? What are the reasons?
Doubtless some politicians have strong philosophical views that preclude them supporting the public option - that is fair enough, and at least they can tell their constituents without any health insurance in perfect honesty that they would like them to remain in the same uninsured state for the foreseeable future.
Others are clearly in the pockets of the insurance companies, and have listened to too many industry lobbyists giving positive presentations containing inaccurate data. They have taken contributions from the companies, and feel a sense of alignment as a consequence. They may even have some of these companies based in their states, allowing them the self-deception that they are helping retain jobs in their own states by opposing the public option.
But most of them are scared. They are scared of making decisions. They are scared of change. They are scared of losing their seats, and their power and influence. They are scared of upsetting their current position. They would prefer to retain the status quo, and are afraid of a different world.
We need to examine why this is the case. What will make them less scared. What will give them the courage to stand up and promote change, when it is so patently needed?
Members of Congress need to understand that if they can identify this fear, as fear of change, that they will be able to conquer it and move forward. Congress is well known as a slow moving place, where change happens at a glacial pace, so it is hardly surprising that our representatives are suddenly scared of the rapid pace of potential change, and are frightened.
And it is true that some of them have much to lose. They may be up for re-election and feel considerable pressure from advocacy groups and funders. But they have to make a decision. Do they stand up for themselves, and do something right? Do they make a vote to save lives? Do they try and help save the life of the many people currently dying needlessly in our wonderful land of plenty? Do they take the advice of 70% of doctors, like myself, who support the need for a public option to help keep the health system more honest?
Fear of change can be overcome. Remember that a life without change is often boring and monotonous. Think how much more fulfilled our Congressmen will feel for having done the "right thing" and voted to implement change, and a public option in healthcare. Change is essential in our lives. It opens up new vistas and opportunities. When you face change, and overcome it, you can then go on and face more changes in your life and successfully overcome them. And enjoy your life more.
Our politicians need to overcome their fear. The public option is not really a scary story. Change must be embraced. They need to do the right thing for themselves, for their constituents, and for their country. This way they will grow, and will become bigger and better people. For that is what happens when you embrace change and move on and overcome your fear.
Peter Yellowlees MD has recently published “Your Health in the Information Age – how you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together”. It is available at www.InformationAgeHealth.com and most online bookstores.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Questions for your doctor?
I had a rewarding experience last week when one of my patients asked me a range of excellent questions about their condition. I had just diagnosed them as having an anxiety disorder. This patient was clearly concerned about possible medication side effects, having had difficulties with these in the past, and wanted to know in detail about the type of psychotherapy that would be most likely to help them. I recommended that they read about the illness on the handouts that I printed out for them, and on a number of websites I suggested, before coming back to see me again to decide on a course of treatment. It was pleasing to have a good open discussion about their best therapeutic options, to not need to simply prescribe and undertake a treatment program immediately, and to be able to take the time for the patient to do their own research, and then come back and make a joint decision on the best therapy together. This is the way medicine, in non-emergency situations, should be practiced.
Unfortunately this is not the usual way that physicians practice, partly because it takes more time to communicate and arrive at a mutually agreed treatment plan, but also because most patients still do not really plan in advance what questions they should ask. This leads to doctors still having to second guess what patients want to know when they give them an opinion, and of course they therefore often omit telling patients key information of particular importance to that individual.
Most doctors like patients to ask appropriate relevant questions about their health condition. Two way information flow is a key component in any doctor-patient relationship. It is just as essential that patients ask questions of doctors about their diagnosis and treatment, as it is for doctors to ask patients questions to help them decide what tests are necessary, and what treatments are best.
Think about the last time you bought a major consumer item, such as a television, computer or an expensive piece of furniture, or even something cheaper, such as a cell phone or new clothing. What research did you do? Did you go online and compare all sorts of products? Did you go to various stores and compare prices, availability and replacement guarantees? How much time did you spend on your research before making your purchase?
What about when you last went to see your accountant or your lawyer? Did you think through what issues might come up beforehand and plan some possible questions? Did you think of several potential scenarios that might occur, and try and work out what your response would be to those?
Now compare this with the last time you went to see your doctor. Did you check out various different hospitals if you needed surgery? Did you read up on a variety of possible medications if you needed drug therapy? Did you confirm your diagnosis by reading about your disorder and all possible treatment modalities? Did your doctor tell you what he or she thought was wrong, and then offer information to help you make a decision on what to do next?
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has been running an excellent public campaign called "Questions are the Answers". This campaign encourages patients to create their own list of questions whenever they visit the doctor, or need to have any sort of medical procedure. The campaign consists of both print and internet resources, as well as television advertisements. The Agency has created all sorts of lists of questions which I would encourage any patient to use, and has sorted them by a number of differing situations and encounters that commonly occur in the health field. Examples of some of the core questions are "What is this test for?", "How many times have you done this?", "Are there any alternatives to surgery?" and "How do you spell the name of that drug?" These may all sound like very simple questions but it is astonishing how often patients, when confronted with a potentially life changing or serious diagnosis, have very few questions at the time of the doctor's consultation. Of course people often think of questions afterwards, and will then hopefully read up on their condition and arrange another appointment to ask their doctor about these issues, but not all do, leading to people receiving all sorts of medications and surgeries for reasons that they simply do not understand.
So do help your doctor, and plan your questions as much in advance as much as you can. Most doctors will be appreciative of your questions, and will be happy to answer them so that your treatment can progress with your full understanding.
Peter Yellowlees MD has recently published “Your Health in the Information Age – how you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together”. It is available at www.InformationAgeHealth.com and most online bookstores.
Unfortunately this is not the usual way that physicians practice, partly because it takes more time to communicate and arrive at a mutually agreed treatment plan, but also because most patients still do not really plan in advance what questions they should ask. This leads to doctors still having to second guess what patients want to know when they give them an opinion, and of course they therefore often omit telling patients key information of particular importance to that individual.
Most doctors like patients to ask appropriate relevant questions about their health condition. Two way information flow is a key component in any doctor-patient relationship. It is just as essential that patients ask questions of doctors about their diagnosis and treatment, as it is for doctors to ask patients questions to help them decide what tests are necessary, and what treatments are best.
Think about the last time you bought a major consumer item, such as a television, computer or an expensive piece of furniture, or even something cheaper, such as a cell phone or new clothing. What research did you do? Did you go online and compare all sorts of products? Did you go to various stores and compare prices, availability and replacement guarantees? How much time did you spend on your research before making your purchase?
What about when you last went to see your accountant or your lawyer? Did you think through what issues might come up beforehand and plan some possible questions? Did you think of several potential scenarios that might occur, and try and work out what your response would be to those?
Now compare this with the last time you went to see your doctor. Did you check out various different hospitals if you needed surgery? Did you read up on a variety of possible medications if you needed drug therapy? Did you confirm your diagnosis by reading about your disorder and all possible treatment modalities? Did your doctor tell you what he or she thought was wrong, and then offer information to help you make a decision on what to do next?
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has been running an excellent public campaign called "Questions are the Answers". This campaign encourages patients to create their own list of questions whenever they visit the doctor, or need to have any sort of medical procedure. The campaign consists of both print and internet resources, as well as television advertisements. The Agency has created all sorts of lists of questions which I would encourage any patient to use, and has sorted them by a number of differing situations and encounters that commonly occur in the health field. Examples of some of the core questions are "What is this test for?", "How many times have you done this?", "Are there any alternatives to surgery?" and "How do you spell the name of that drug?" These may all sound like very simple questions but it is astonishing how often patients, when confronted with a potentially life changing or serious diagnosis, have very few questions at the time of the doctor's consultation. Of course people often think of questions afterwards, and will then hopefully read up on their condition and arrange another appointment to ask their doctor about these issues, but not all do, leading to people receiving all sorts of medications and surgeries for reasons that they simply do not understand.
So do help your doctor, and plan your questions as much in advance as much as you can. Most doctors will be appreciative of your questions, and will be happy to answer them so that your treatment can progress with your full understanding.
Peter Yellowlees MD has recently published “Your Health in the Information Age – how you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together”. It is available at www.InformationAgeHealth.com and most online bookstores.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Jobs in health informatics are becoming plentiful
The way most doctors and health care professionals do their jobs has hardly changed over the past thirty to forty years. Contrast this with the enormous changes in, say, transport, manufacturing and telecommunications!
But hang on to your stethoscopes! Despite the fact that some doctors still have their heads buried firmly in the sand, the winds of change are blowing and most doctors are now using electronic communication technologies, if not enthusiastically, then at least regularly. The combination of technological change, the demands of business and the rise of consumerism are causing radical changes in the way healthcare is practiced around the world. Health Informatics experts are poised to revolutionize health practices by implementing the enormous changes needed in the health system, that have already occurred in other industries. These professionals typically have backgrounds in either healthcare, such as nurses and doctors, or information technology, and then receive cross-training so as to be able to work across both areas in the newly emerging electronic health systems of today and tomorrow.
The changes in healthcare will be the 21st century’s equivalent of the public health initiatives of sanitation and nutrition which revolutionized health care in the twentieth century. Integration of online technologies will see doctors and patients working together on electronic health records with patients having much more say in their treatments. The development of widely available broadband networks and video mail will bring electronic health into everyone’s home. Patients and doctors will work collaboratively on the internet as parters with the agreed mutual objective of health improvement.
Look at how fast the average adolescent can send messages on their phone – gone are the days when a telephone was just an audio device. The way we interact with communication systems is radically changing the way we behave and think in ways that are impossible to predict. And the computer literate children of today - the millenials and succeeding generations - will drive these changes. How many doctors want to interact with patients using instant messaging? Not many today, but the doctors of the millennial generation will probably think nothing of this approach. And these sorts of systems will be developed by experts who have been trained in health informatics, and who understand how to apply information technologies of all sorts to change and improve the way that we deliver patient care.
Knowledge has never been as important - and as accessible - as it is today.
Technology, and in particular, Internet technology, is transforming the academic medical landscape. A large number of institutions are moving to digital-only radiography and full electronic medical records. I no longer write any notes on paper – all my clinical work is electronically recorded. Residents now come to rounds armed with a vast array of reference information stored in hand-held personal digital assistants. The iPod is now a platform for lectures presented either as "podcasts" and “videocasts” and is also used as a mobile x-ray image viewer. Continuing medical education is increasingly available through the Internet. The digital revolution has greatly altered how academic health systems pursue education, research, and clinical care, and this is spreading through the rest of the health system.
The provision of clinical care is changing rapidly as health informatics technologies become increasingly used and accepted, with a move away from episodic care to concentrating on continuity of care, especially for patients with chronic disease who will create the greatest disease burden in the future. Care is gradually moving away from a focus on the service provider to that of the informed patient and from an individual approach to treatment to a team approach. Increasingly, less focus is placed on treating the illness and more is placed on wellness promotion and illness prevention: the model of the”Information Age care” first described by Dr Tom Ferguson MD. To move to this future of information age healthcare, the availability and use of information must be strengthened to facilitate changes in health service delivery, and a much greater focus must be placed on developing and refining the information technology infrastructure, and on training experts in health informatics who can create and develop the electronic clinical environments needed by both patients and doctors.
This is all occurring at a time of difficulty in our economy, but America is known for its capacity to thrive on challenges, and to rapidly change its industrial practices in the face of adversity. The health system needs large numbers of experts in health informatics, and training programs are being rapidly expanded. The University of California Davis Health Informatics graduate program, for instance, has doubled the number of Masters Health Informatics students in one year, and has enrolled 76 new students in a fully online Health Informatics certificate program within the last three months. The Obama Administration is putting billions of dollars into health informatics implementation and training with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and increasing numbers of jobs in health informatics are already appearing. The jobs website, CareerBuilder has just marked health informatics as it's number one emerging industry job opportunity, and is highlighting a number of jobs in areas as diverse as telemedicine, nursing information officers, clinical information technology liaisons, programmers, analysts, data integration experts and health service managers.
So, as healthcare continues to change and become more electronically enabled, watch out for this whole new generation of professionals trained in Health Informatics, and how they will facilitate the changes in healthcare, and eventually contribute to improving the health of all of us.
Peter Yellowlees MD has recently published “Your Health in the Information Age – how you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together”. It is available at www.InformationAgeHealth.com and most online bookstores.
But hang on to your stethoscopes! Despite the fact that some doctors still have their heads buried firmly in the sand, the winds of change are blowing and most doctors are now using electronic communication technologies, if not enthusiastically, then at least regularly. The combination of technological change, the demands of business and the rise of consumerism are causing radical changes in the way healthcare is practiced around the world. Health Informatics experts are poised to revolutionize health practices by implementing the enormous changes needed in the health system, that have already occurred in other industries. These professionals typically have backgrounds in either healthcare, such as nurses and doctors, or information technology, and then receive cross-training so as to be able to work across both areas in the newly emerging electronic health systems of today and tomorrow.
The changes in healthcare will be the 21st century’s equivalent of the public health initiatives of sanitation and nutrition which revolutionized health care in the twentieth century. Integration of online technologies will see doctors and patients working together on electronic health records with patients having much more say in their treatments. The development of widely available broadband networks and video mail will bring electronic health into everyone’s home. Patients and doctors will work collaboratively on the internet as parters with the agreed mutual objective of health improvement.
Look at how fast the average adolescent can send messages on their phone – gone are the days when a telephone was just an audio device. The way we interact with communication systems is radically changing the way we behave and think in ways that are impossible to predict. And the computer literate children of today - the millenials and succeeding generations - will drive these changes. How many doctors want to interact with patients using instant messaging? Not many today, but the doctors of the millennial generation will probably think nothing of this approach. And these sorts of systems will be developed by experts who have been trained in health informatics, and who understand how to apply information technologies of all sorts to change and improve the way that we deliver patient care.
Knowledge has never been as important - and as accessible - as it is today.
Technology, and in particular, Internet technology, is transforming the academic medical landscape. A large number of institutions are moving to digital-only radiography and full electronic medical records. I no longer write any notes on paper – all my clinical work is electronically recorded. Residents now come to rounds armed with a vast array of reference information stored in hand-held personal digital assistants. The iPod is now a platform for lectures presented either as "podcasts" and “videocasts” and is also used as a mobile x-ray image viewer. Continuing medical education is increasingly available through the Internet. The digital revolution has greatly altered how academic health systems pursue education, research, and clinical care, and this is spreading through the rest of the health system.
The provision of clinical care is changing rapidly as health informatics technologies become increasingly used and accepted, with a move away from episodic care to concentrating on continuity of care, especially for patients with chronic disease who will create the greatest disease burden in the future. Care is gradually moving away from a focus on the service provider to that of the informed patient and from an individual approach to treatment to a team approach. Increasingly, less focus is placed on treating the illness and more is placed on wellness promotion and illness prevention: the model of the”Information Age care” first described by Dr Tom Ferguson MD. To move to this future of information age healthcare, the availability and use of information must be strengthened to facilitate changes in health service delivery, and a much greater focus must be placed on developing and refining the information technology infrastructure, and on training experts in health informatics who can create and develop the electronic clinical environments needed by both patients and doctors.
This is all occurring at a time of difficulty in our economy, but America is known for its capacity to thrive on challenges, and to rapidly change its industrial practices in the face of adversity. The health system needs large numbers of experts in health informatics, and training programs are being rapidly expanded. The University of California Davis Health Informatics graduate program, for instance, has doubled the number of Masters Health Informatics students in one year, and has enrolled 76 new students in a fully online Health Informatics certificate program within the last three months. The Obama Administration is putting billions of dollars into health informatics implementation and training with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and increasing numbers of jobs in health informatics are already appearing. The jobs website, CareerBuilder has just marked health informatics as it's number one emerging industry job opportunity, and is highlighting a number of jobs in areas as diverse as telemedicine, nursing information officers, clinical information technology liaisons, programmers, analysts, data integration experts and health service managers.
So, as healthcare continues to change and become more electronically enabled, watch out for this whole new generation of professionals trained in Health Informatics, and how they will facilitate the changes in healthcare, and eventually contribute to improving the health of all of us.
Peter Yellowlees MD has recently published “Your Health in the Information Age – how you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together”. It is available at www.InformationAgeHealth.com and most online bookstores.
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