Answers To Diseases

Patients still trust their doctors, despite what you may read in the newspapers and blogs.
Bob Doherty points to a recent survey, showing broad public support for comparative effectiveness research, indicating that voters “trust their doctors and consistently support changes to help their doctors do their jobs.”
Mr. Doherty interprets the findings to mean that organizations like [...]

Match Day in March often marks the climax of the years of training a medical student endures.
This year, we apparently have more focus from the national media on the issue, thanks to the proliferation of health blogs that every newspaper seems to have.
Pauline Chen writes about her experience with the rite (complete with a [...]

Medicare is complicated and sometimes very confusing! What do all the different parts mean, and who handles them? This overview might help.
Medicare Part A is managed by the federal government. It helps cover hospital care, nursing facility care, hospice care, and some home health care.

Medical students graduate, on average, with $140,000 in debt, with many having loans in excess of $200,000.
The majority who enter school wishing to practice primary care often change their minds when greeted with this fiscal reality. Combined with the fact that primary care role models are overburdened in a practice environment so toxic towards generalist [...]

Prostate cancer screening is about to get a whole lot cloudier.
Published this morning in the NEJM, the results of the study by the National Cancer Institute showed that, for men who were screened with both a PSA and digital rectal exam, there was no difference when compared to men who received “usual care.”

Health care reform is the headline-maker these days, and I give my take in a couple of recent articles.
First, Congressional Quarterly wonders if there are enough primary care doctors for every patient newly insured under a universal coverage plan (a familiar take, I must say). Anyways, here’s my contribution to the piece: