More cybernetic miracles: 14,000 patients failed to receive follow-up outpatient appointments

14,000 is a lot of patients to miss followup appointments. I do not think this feat could have been accomplished via paper:Morecambe Bay missed 14,000 outpatientsE-Health Insider.com7 February 2012Lyn WhitfieldUniversity Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust is working through a backlog of 14,000 patients who failed to receive follow-up outpatient appointments because of administrative and IT problems.And problems with disappearing ink...

Perhaps Hospitals Don't Care Much That EHRs Can Be Dangerous, Because EHRs Lets them Attract 'Good Paying Customers' And Exclude the Old and Poor

This comes as no surprise to me. I believe it may help explain hospital's cavalier attitudes towards the risks of today's commercial health IT.It's all about money. We already knew that (for example, see my Feb. 2011 post "Does EHR-Incited Upcoding (Also Known as 'Fraud') Need Investigation by CMS, And Could it Explain HIT Irrational Exuberance?"), but the following news adds to the pecuniary motivations:Kaiser Health NewsCritics say hospitals...

Visceral Fat & Hepatic Fat -- Not one and the same

It seems that any time the discussion of fatty livers developing on ketogenic diets comes around, a spate of confusing discussions tend to ensue.  One of the confusing issues is that ketogenic reducing diets are effective at reducing hepatic fat levels.  However, these studies usually start with a fatty liver and with weight loss comes hepatic fat loss.  If there's a study out there...

Rendering Unto Caesar - What the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute vs Thompson Says About the Loss of the Academic Medical Mission

A case, reported by the New York Times as involving an intellectual property dispute, should create a lot of cognitive dissonance about the state of the academic medical mission.Litigation Involving the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and Dr Craig B ThompsonHere is how the Times outlined the story:The president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is in a billion-dollar dispute with his former workplace, a cancer institute...

for a long time i have been dying to paint my interior doors a deep chocolate brown.  it's one of those things that just needs to "happen" while my husband's away at work (men don't get the importance of a good door color).  i need to buy the paint and just do one door a day.....so here's the thing....once i start, do i do all of my doors or do you think some can be left white??  this...