The doctor made him wait – he sued

I saw this story on TV. I had thought about writing about it, but got busy doing other things. Fortunately RangelMD has two good posts – Don’t like your doctor? Then sue! and More on suing the “late” doctor

I have little to add to these excellent posts. But you know me, I have to rant just a bit!!

I do understand the patient’s problem When I was seeing outpatients, I would personally apologize to those in the waiting room when I was running late. I hated keeping patients waiting.

On the other hand, sometimes you do fall behind. Patients arrive sicker than the office can handle. They require semi-intensive care.

Or early patients come late, thus the later patients have a longer wait. Or you try to squeeze in a few patients as a favor – next thing you know your schedule has gone to hell.

The physician could have probably avoided this suit by simply acknowledging the inconvenience (although I have never had a patient apologize for missing an appointment or arriving late). Regardless, I am shocked that the patient won the suit. If we see further such suits we will have to greatly change how we schedule patients. Rangel comments on these and more issues. If you have not already clicked on the links – get outa here – get over to RangelMD!!!

Derek Lowe on drug development

DIY Drug Development?

Well, there’s nothing there that 30 whole hours of free consulting can’t fix, I’m sure. And all the universities have to do, it seems, is raise the money for the really expensive stuff. Quite a deal. I wish these folks the best, but I can’t help but think that they’re going to be climbing a steep learning curve with ropes and pitons. DB’s hopeful comment is “If this works, the straw man argument about investing in research may move towards moot.” Well, as someone who’s been getting beaten up for years by said straw man, let me add some comments of my own: If you know some chemistry, some biochemistry, some molecular biology or medicine, then the business of drug development looks pretty hard. Then when you try it out, you find that it’s a lot harder than it looks.

Well you cannot really blame me for hoping. I do believe some companies work very hard at research. One can ask about what kinds of research, how much, and what change would one project if reimportation works. This question (and any answer) has too many hypotheticals to allow good decision making.

So I do understand the difficulty of drug development. However, I am not certain if our current economic situation is sustainable. Moving towards a free market (as the Cato authors suggest) may or may not change research investment.

ACOG joins the bandwagon

I have blogged about this issue back in May. ACOG has joined the American Cancer Society by endorsing less frequent PAP smears for some women. Fewer Women to Need Annual Cervical Testing

-Women should undergo annual Pap tests up to age 30.

-Those 30 and older have two options. They can start getting checked every two to three years after having three consecutive, normal Pap tests. Or they undergo a combination of a Pap exam and testing for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes most cervical cancer. Passing both those tests means they need rechecking no more than every three years.

These new recommendations make sense. The data support the change.