I’m reminded of the stupidity of HIPAA today, as I walked into a nurses’ station where all the medical charts are, dressed in a tie and slacks (no white coat or name badge) and no one asked me a thing.
Dressed appropriately, you could do this in any hospital in the United States and no one would question a thing.
HIPAA does not protect anyone’s privacy, it just makes a paperwork hassle for you and your doctors.
Nice mnemonic for the phases of puberty / sexual development in girls:
Boobs, pubes, grow and flow. (In medical lingo that’s thelarche, adrenarche, growth spurt, and menarche.)
This is what happens. Maria gives the lowdown. It’s really not that scary.
A new theory about the purpose of the appendix: keeper of good gut flora in times of endemic cholera and GI infections . Cool idea.
I love Best of Craigslist . Some recent goodies:
Happy Friday.
October 5th, 2007A psychologist in New Mexico has found variation in strippers’ incomes based on their menstrual cycle : lower average incomes while menstruating, and higher average incomes while ovulating. Women on birth control pills had no variation in their incomes.
This of course led my OB-Gyn resident to suggest an IUD–they’ll earn more money but won’t get pregnant!
From this story : Update, the poster’s initial HIV test is negative. (Of course he will need to get follow-up testing.)
My former classmate, and now doctor,
Sarah Langley
was featured on last night’s TLC show, Diagnosis X
. Congrats, Sarah! Sadly, she’ll soon be mainly dealing with the unconscious patient, as she’s going into Anesthesia.
KevinMD (love to love his blog, love to hate his health policy!) has never really explained himself as to why he agrees with John Stossel that HSAs will make any type of dent in our health care costs, and Shadowfax takes them both to task for it .
The acutely ill do not make health care decisions and are not responsive to costs.
I repeat.
The acutely ill do not make health care decisions and are not responsive to costs.
Just like Shadowfax says–the guy possibly having a heart attack, or the incredibly sick patient with pneumonia who’s going to the ICU is not in any position (or state of mind) to determine if he should get the generic or the brand name antibiotic; if he should have a foley catheter placed; if he should have heart surgery or just stenting.
And one other point to add to Shadowfax: The Most Important Health Care Graph:
Us fairly healthy folk cost next to nothing for the health care system. Deciding whether we need a chest xray or not is like taking a grain of sand from the beach.
Great photoset on Flickr showing people, their height, weight, and BMI . I was surprised at how high some of the BMIs were from the photos–I must be underestimating on my patients. [thanks KevinMD !]