palliative care
oracknows | March 8, 2016Medical research is a scientific enterprise, but, like most areas of science, nonscientific considerations have a great deal of influence over what sorts of research are funded. This is true regardless of who is funding the research. When it's the government, obviously it's impossible to avoid some degree of politics. (Indeed, politics is largely responsible for why the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, or NCCIH, even exists and has been studying quackademic medicine for over 20 years.) The same, however, is true when it comes to foundation funding. Some foundations…
lborkowski | December 27, 2011While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on April 27, 2011.
By Liz Borkowski
Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following proposal:
If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age, then we'd immediately make a dent in some way on…
lborkowski | April 27, 2011Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following proposal:
If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age, then we'd immediately make a dent in some way on future healthcare costs.
He goes on to note that this would be entirely voluntary, and suggests "an easily reached website that makes such a legal…
lborkowski | March 29, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling of NPR: Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon
Susan Milius in Science News: Backup Bees
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: The Radium Girls (Part II, Part III)
Frank N. Von Hippel on the New York Times Opinion Page: It Could Happen Here ("Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of 'regulatory capture' -- in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it.")
Michelle Andrews for Kaiser Health News: Demand Grows for Palliative Care
lborkowski | March 14, 2011With nearly one-third of US healthcare spending going to hospital care, it's natural that people would be looking for ways to trim spending on hospital services. A new study just published in the journal Health Affairs reports that seriously ill hospital patients receiving consultations from palliative care teams can incur lower costs. For this study's population - Medicaid patients facing serious or life-threatening illnesses admitted to four New York State hospitals - the authors found that patients who received palliative care consultations incurred costs that averaged $6,900 less than…