Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen
Prediction: life o
n Earth will be over somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now.
A physician faces disciplinary action for seeing patients on Skype.
Citing ObamaCare, Cleveland Clinic to cut $300M, warns of layoffs.
Guess why business is booming for part-time and contract labor?
“Prediction: life on earth will be over somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now.”
That gives us plenty of time to get out.
Those NASA cutbacks don’t seem like such a big deal anymore.
Now, if we can keep ourselves from blowing the whole thing up…
We’ll have population problems long before that. How do we control people from destroying the planet?
Prices will do that for us.
Oh, Thomas Malthus… When will your incorrect specter stop haunting discussions?
Everyone knows the Zombies will take over long before that, let them worry about it.
“A physician faces disciplinary action for seeing patients on Skype.”
Why? This sounds like a great way to reduce costs without sacrificing much quality.
I agree with you, but this may have had something to do with it:
” A number of other factors add color to the board’s action, including that the physician was prescribing controlled substances as a result of these visits and that one of his patients died. “
A lot of people actually pay for the privilege of talking to their doctor outside the examination room.
“Citing ObamaCare, Cleveland Clinic to cut $300M, warns of layoff.”
And the beat goes on…
“Guess why business is booming for part-time and contract labor?”
Do I get three guesses?
Is this the ObamaCare section? I’d like to solve the puzzle.
If that affects the health giant Cleveland Clinic, think about what it does to smaller practices.
“Between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death.”
Sad. More choice, mobility and competition translates to more accountability and higher quality. Many of these deaths are preventable.
This just in…Most of these patients are also engaging in behaviors that are detrimental to their health, and have been for a good part of their life.
That seems too callous a response though. None of us act perfectly in regards to our health.
That is true. Nevertheless, the figure lends itself to sensationalism. Although it’s obvious that we should seek to improve quality, it should also be clear that risks have to be taken by physicians when they treat patients.
If no physician ever treated a patient, the rate of adverse events would be zero. Similarly, if nobody ever drove a car, the number of traffic fatalities would be zero.
Also, “contributing” to a patient’s death is a bit of a wriggly verb, isn’t it? Suppose a patient presents in the ER near death, and the ER physician (racing against the clock) does something that’s deemed harmful – in hindsight? Would it have been better for him to have done nothing? In come cases, perhaps – but not likely.
“Prediction: life on earth will be over somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now.”
This completely writes out human ingenuity from the equation however. Granted, surviving that long will be a challenge in itself, but if we succeed then the technology we will likely have at our disposal will probably make solving that problem child’s play.
Definitely true, that far in the future who knows what we will be able to do?