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Is there a doctor in the house?

25 Apr 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday's gospel Jesus promises to his followers that he will "give them eternal life." In the meantime medical doctors do what they can to keep our earthly lives as healthy as possible. But with the ranks of the newly insured expanding as a result of the new healthcare law, experts warn that the U.S. will soon face a severe shortage of doctors. At current graduation and training rates the nation could face a shortfall of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. That shortage is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000. The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians, and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient. A shortage could lead to more limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients. The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007, largely because of the lower pay primary-care doctors receive relative to specialists. Proponents of the new healthcare law say it does attempt to address the physician shortage. The law offers sweeteners to encourage more people to enter medical professions and a 10-percent Medicare pay boost for primary-care doctors. But medical colleges and hospitals warn that these efforts will hit a big bottleneck: A shortage of medical resident positions. The residency is the minimum three-year period when medical school graduates train in hospitals and clinics. While doctors trained in other countries could theoretically help the primary-care shortage, they hit the same obstacle with resident slots because they must still complete a U.S. residency in order to get a license to practice medicine independently in the U.S. "It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there," said Atul Grover, the AAMC's chief advocacy officer. Source: An article by Susanne Sataline and Shirley S. Wang for the Wall Street Journal

united states doctors shortage association of american medical colleges primary care physicians medical residency atul grover
Unethical medical experiments that should have been scrubbed

06 Mar 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"Let me never be put to shame,” the psalmist implores of the Lord this Sunday. A shameful chapter of the nation’s history of medical research came to light this week when a review of decades-old medical journals and press clippings revealed a number of instances where U.S. government doctors thought it was permissible to experiment on prisoners, the disabled, and the sick. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital, according to an Associated Press review of old medical journal reports and press clippings that found more than 40 such experiments. Much of this horrific history is 40-80 years old but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The conference was triggered by the government's apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago. U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States that often involved making healthy people sick. Ethicists say many violated the concept of "first do no harm," a fundamental medical principle that stretches back centuries. "When you give somebody a disease--even by the standards of their time--you really cross the key ethical norm of the profession," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. Some of these studies, mostly from the 1940s to the '60s, apparently were never covered by the news media. Others were reported at the time, but the focus was on the promise of new cures while glossing over how test subjects were treated. At the time, attitudes about medical research were differed from today's. Infectious diseases killed many more people, and doctors worked urgently to discover and test cures. Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who were not seen as having full rights in society, such as prisoners, mental patients, and minorities. Though people in the studies were usually described as volunteers, historians and ethicists have questioned how well these people understood what was to be done to them and why or whether they were coerced. Source: An article by Mike Stobbe for the Associated Press

doctors medical experiments medical ethics federal government
What’s up, doc? New disclosures will help patients know

22 Jan 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Large numbers of doctors receive payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies every year--sometimes into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars--in exchange for providing advice and giving lectures. For those who wish to keep such payments from the public, though, “time is running out,” as Saint Paul warned the church at Corinth. Tough new financial disclosure standards being issued under the new federal health care law will mean that patients wondering if their physicians have their interests or that of the drug industry at heart in prescribing a certain medication or medical device will no longer have to echo the psalmist’s plea to the Lord: “Make known to me” your ways. Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices, analysts said. Consumer advocates and members of Congress believe patients will benefit from the new standards because the required disclosures will increase the likelihood that physicians will make decisions in the best interests of patients, without regard to the doctors’ financial interests. Allan J. Coukell, a pharmacist and consumer advocate at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said: “Patients want to know they are getting treatment based on medical evidence, not a lunch or a financial relationship. They want to know if their doctor has a financial relationship with a pharmaceutical company, but they are often uncomfortable asking the doctor directly.” Source: An article by Robert Pear for the New York Times

pharmaceutical companies health care reform doctors medical device companies medical care
Which doctors will weigh in with obese patients?

05 Feb 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Jesus healed many people during his public ministry, and this Sunday’s gospel is a prime example. Even though a third of Americans classified as obese by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention need medical care, receiving the proper diagnosis and treatment for their condition may depend on what kind of shape their doctor is in. Physicians with a normal body-mass index (BMI) or weight-to-height ratios are more likely to discuss weight loss with patients than overweight doctors, said researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Physicians were about nine times more likely to diagnose a patient as obese if they thought the patient's BMI was equal to or higher than their own. Researchers surveyed about 500 primary-care doctors during the study. They also found physicians of normal weight had more confidence in giving diet and exercise counseling and were more likely to feel patients would trust their advice. Obesity costs nearly $150 billion every year because of health problems that severely overweight people can develop such as heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure. Source: An article by Newsroom Solutions via OzarksFirst.com

obesity centers for disease control and prevention doctors physicians
Homily stories

15 Feb 2009 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

“I just want my $1,500 dollars,” the man complained to the agent answering the compliance hotline. “It’s reimbursement for my gas and mileage. The clinics I service are refusing to pay even though it’s in my contract, and now they’re calling into question my job performance. It just doesn’t seem fair that I can’t get my measly 1,500 bucks when the doctors collect their checks, and they don’t even show up at the clinics.” “Excuse me, what did you just say?” the agent asked. “I want my $1,500?” “No, after that–about doctors collecting pay and not showing up.” Thus, another ghost-payrolling scandal was uncovered. The doctors were fired for accepting $50,000 salaries to head clinics they never visited, and the unwitting whistle- blower got his $1,500. For most whistle-blowers it’s not that easy. They are the lepers in corporate America. Once they are identified as snitches, they are abused, ridiculed, and ignored. People will say they want to route out cronyism and incompetence, but when someone takes measures to do so, everyone backs away. Why? Sheer fear. The sad thing for those so willing to live outside the truth is that they always seem to end up worse off than if they had taken the risk to set things right. Truth is meant to be told—even Jesus couldn’t stop the leper he cured from spreading the good news.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

ghost-payrolling doctors whistle-blower good news

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