Word: patient
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...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...
...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 triggers a bigger payment...
...less medicine. EMR can greatly increase insurance-company denials of the treatments doctors want. Might this eliminate unnecessary testing? Sure. But who determines what is necessary? When a white-blood-cell count isn't high enough to "justify" hospitalization for IV antibiotics, the physician whose judgment says "this patient is sick and belongs in the hospital" is told his services, as well as the hospitalization, will not be paid for. So he has two choices: wait for the patient to get sick enough to justify his treatment plan or join the game - and lie about how sick the patient...
...investigators began by sending questionnaires to roughly 4,500 general hospitals around the country, asking about their use of 32 different features of health information technology - including electronic patient histories, doctors' notes, lab and X-ray results, prescriptions, drug alerts and nursing orders. "We sent out the survey to the hospital CEOs," says health-policy expert Catherine DesRoches of Massachusetts General Hospital, who participated in the study, "and about 63% responded." (Read "The Move to Digital Medical Records Begins in Tampa...
...Economic Forum in Davos in January, Manuel warned that billion-dollar bailouts were a distraction from a bigger, supranational task: the creation of truly global regulation to oversee global capitalism. Or as he recently put it to Johannesburg weekly the Financial Mail: "If you were a doctor and your patient had major cardiovascular and lung problems, prescribing an aspirin ... might make him feel better, but would it solve the problem?" At the G-20, the developing world will look to Manuel to speak for them, as he often does. The humbled leaders of rich nations are likely to listen. "There...