Word: doctors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...will probably cost more than $100 in a couple of months thanks to rising mass-transit fares). After I added up a handful of things I knew I'd have to spend money on in the coming days - a birthday card for my niece, a co-pay for a doctor's visit - I simply didn't have the money...
...only the cure were that easy. Any doctor will tell you the advantages of having lots of patient data on computers: it helps us avoid redundant tests, gather huge amounts of information for research, screen automatically for drug interactions - and spare others from having to decipher our illegible handwriting. I would be happy if every patient could give me a digital file of everything about him; it could really save time on first visits. But we must keep in mind that there will be a cost for computerizing patient records that could prove greater than the billions that would...
...being pushed hardest by those who would profit financially from it - not just technology companies but also large hospitals and medical practices hoping to improve billing and control internal costs. With a digital chart, every test, diagnosis and treatment a doctor orders is instantly passed along to the billing side: Why give away that Ace bandage for free? This could make the billing bureaucracy more efficient. But communication the other way, from billing to medical, would take place too. And this is more insidious. In a digital system, doctors can't simply write whatever they want: they generally must select...
When, for instance, does a urinary-tract infection become a pyelonephritis (an infection involving the kidneys and ureters)? There's no clear-cut answer. A computer might remind the doctor that the hospital stands to make many thousands more if he simply clicks on pyelonephritis, the more serious condition. Or consider that nearly every patient who has a big hip or knee operation will run a fever for a while afterward. No one really knows why. But if a computer picks up the temperature elevation, it could prompt doctors to record a "fever of unknown origin" - a diagnosis that often...
...outlook for a patient depends in part on acting fast: call 911 or drive the victim to the hospital; do not wait to reach your own doctor. The rest turns on the type of injury. Richardson died of an epidural hematoma, an accumulation of blood between the skull and dura, the tough tissue covering the brain. A subdural hematoma is blood between the dura and brain. Both injuries have a mortality rate of about 50%. Intracerebral bleeding, which occurs within the brain, is even more serious. "Patients get redlined to surgery in 15 to 30 minutes" if they have...