Asani offers thoughts on religious illiteracy

I'm moving off health care for this post.  Sorry to those who object, but sometimes other topics (beyond soccer!) raise issues that I like to explore with you. This one is particularly appropriate as many of us enter into a special weekend, comprising both Yom Kippur and Eid-al-Adha.  Read on if you'd like.If you're like me, a non-Muslim living in a world in which...

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45 days buys you very little

While I appreciate the efforts of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to improve the quality of care in the Military Health System, his order directing "all health care facilities identified as outliers in categories of access, quality and safety to provide action plans for improvement within 45 days" is ill conceived.Sure, they'll come up with plans.  After all, they have...

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There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip

"How could it happen?" is the question everyone's asking.No, not the guy who walked into the White House past the Secret Service.The nurse who asked the question.  CNN reports:The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola on American soil went to the emergency room last week, but was released from the hospital even though he told staff he had traveled from Liberia.Hospital officials have acknowledged that the patient's travel history wasn't...

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Walid offers a summary

Continuing our series on the CMS Open Payments database, I offer this chart prepared by Walid Gellad, and posted on Twitter at @walidgellad, summarizing the payments made from Intuitive Surgical to doctors and hospitals for five months in 2103.  Gellad describes himself as "Primary care physician. Health services research. Co-direct Pitt Center for Pharmaceutical Policy...

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Money and trust

In my post below, I offer some information about payments made nationally by Intuitive Surgery to hospitals and doctors to support the extended use of the daVinci surgical robot.  Here, I take a look at some local examples.  As I searched through the Massachusetts listings, two names popped out as repeated recipients of cash or in-kind payments and services in amounts...

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Walking around money

It's been a long time since I wrote about the extremely close relationship between the University of Illinois Chicago, its surgical faculty, and Intuitive Surgical, the manufacturer of the daVinci robot.  I am drawn to do so again by the publication yesterday by CMS of the Open Payments database, showing payments from manufacturers to doctors and hospitals.  The...

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And now, robotic hernia surgery

First it was prostate removals, then it was hysterectomies, then it was gall bladder removals, and now (tah dah!), Intutive Surgical offers robotic hernia surgery.  Again, another procedure that is already offered at low cost and with excellent results.Please watch over the coming days as people start to correlate the names of surgeons who have endorsed these "advances"...

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