Thursday, May 17, 2012

Atul Gawande addresses ACO formation

The following link is to a lengthy presentation by surgeon and author Atul Gawande which is well worth watching. You may want to skip over the first seven minutes or so which includes the introduction of Dr. Gwande to the audience at Cleveland Clinic.

One hour and one minute into the presentation he responds to a question from the audience regarding the future of healthcare delivery in the United States and says that, in his opinion, the prospect of who is going to lead the way forward is being battled now among three kinds of players. They are the insurers, the physician groups and the hospitals. He believes that it is the physician groups that are most likely to lead in making the changes necessary to address our nation's healthcare needs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSWQtOjsiXo

Begin at the one hour mark. Atul Gawande addresses the question of who will lead the way forward and survive in the new policy and market realities.

This post was edited on August 29, 2012.

Transforming sickness care to health care

Rebecca Onie at TEDMED 2012 made the case that college and university students can become organized to make a very significant difference helping link patients with community resources. She concluded saying, "I believe that we all have a vision for health care in this country. I believe that at the end of the day when we measure our health care it will not be by the diseases cured but by the diseases prevented. It will not be by the excellence of our technologies or the sophistication of our specialists but by how rarely we needed them. And most of all, I believe that when we measure health care it will not be by what the system was but by what we chose it to be."

http://www.tedmed.com/videos-info?name=Rebecca_Onie_at_TEDMED_2012&q=updated&year=all

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Publication of avian flu virus research?

CNN reported today that a science journal is poised to publish a study that some experts believe could give a recipe to bioterrorists. This takes the responsibility of peer reviewers to a whole new level.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/12/us/journal-avian-flu/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

I don't think such research results should be published. An argument can be made that humanity faces a threat in an "arms race" between human ingenuity and viral adaptations that may cause pandemics. But our existing method of sharing most scientific knowledge through publication does not limit the scope of knowledge distribution. The usual defense of publishing such information is that no bioterrorist is irrational enough to unleash a deadly virus that could destroy the very people whose interests motivate the terrorist. To trust the fate of mankind upon a belief in the sanity and rationality of every potential bioterrorist in the world who may have the skills and resources to design a deadly virus is to trust a very thin thread. Who, if anyone, will be legally responsible if the information published is used by bioterrorists to unleash a pandemic, assuming enough people survive to consider possible litigation?