Stories

Description:  It feels like every passing day brings with it more news of an aggressive campaign to reign in the cost of Medicare hospice spending.  For instance, federal government investigations of hospices that enroll patients who live longer than 6 months have resulted in the death of one of the most important organizations in our

Description:  Tuesday December 1, 2009:  Medicare recently started publicly reporting hospital readmission rates as a measure of quality, and there are proposals to financially penalize hospitals with high rates of readmission. A recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine makes a compelling case that an unintended consequence of such a proposal could be to

Description:  What is the purpose of Advance Care Planning? I have been taught to view the goal as helping patients define what they would want done if they became seriously ill. But there is an important article by Rebecca Sudore and Terri Fried that convinces me I should think about this very differently. Sudore and

Description:  One out of every four of us will die while residing in a nursing home. For most of us, that stay in a nursing home will be brief, although this may depend upon social and demographic variables like our gender, net worth, and marital status. These are the conclusions of an important new study

Description:  I want to draw people's attention to a fantastic new piece in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande titled, "Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can't save your life?"  The stories told are raw and emotional, and offer glimpses into the struggles of patients with life-threatening illnesses, family caregivers, nurses, and physicians. 

Description:  The Opposite of Love Posted: 17 May 2010 The Emergency Department phoned my office right before lunch. I was on call for our general IM group, so when I was done with my morning schedule I walked across the street to the hospital. Greg, my partner's 38 year old patient, was a woodworker admitted