As far as my chemo nurse Olga* is concerned, I can do nothing right. She scolded me for sending an e-mail when she thought I should have called, and vice versa. She scolded me for going home before my next appointment was scheduled. She scolded me for asking to speak to her personally instead of whichever nurse was available. She scolded me for calling my oncologist directly. She scolded me for asking whether my clinical information and questions are shared between my oncologist and the staff of the chemo suite. I could go on … “Funny,” I think to myself. “If she had told me the ... Read More
Dicker With Your Doc? Not So Fast…
January 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
"How to Haggle With Your Doctor” was the title of a recent Business section column in The New York Times. This is one of many similar directives to the public (as seen here, here, here and here) urging us to lower the high price of our health care by going mano a mano with our physicians about the price of tests they recommend and the drugs they prescribe. Such articles provide simple, common-sense recommendations about how to respond to the urgency many of us feel — insured or uninsured — to reduce our health care expenses. With unemployment at 9.4 percent and more than 50 million ... Read More
More Can Also Be Less in Medical Effectiveness
December 10, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
When the public turns its attention to medical effectiveness research, as Miller-McCune.com did earlier this fall, ("For Dying Cancer Patients, Geography is Destiny") a discussion often follows about how this research might restrict access to new medical innovations. But this focus obscures the vital role that effectiveness research will play in evaluating current medical and surgical care. I am now slogging through chemotherapy for stomach cancer, probably the result of high doses of radiation for Hodgkin lymphoma in the early 1970s, which was the standard treatment until long-term side ... Read More