The end of urgent care?

A recent trend where urgent care centers are being converted to free-standing emergency rooms has hit the Midwest. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that “Froedtert Health proposing to convert its urgent care clinic in New Berlin to a free-standing emergency department.” Why would they do that?  Conventional wisdom holds that EDs are money losers. Although this is…

Why isn’t there more consumer med tech?

Robert Pearl’s MedX keynote address gives some reasons. Many New Technologies Don’t Address The Real Problem.  Tech entrepreneurs often take a backward approach to invention. They start by discovering a nifty technology. Later, they figure out how people can use it…Alan Cooper, considered by many to be the father of modern user experience design (UXD),…

Does International Development Work?

In a well thought out piece in the New Republic, Michael Hobbes argues the answer isn’t ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but the expectations for aid programs to completely reinvigorate an economy or improve health care dramatically are often overestimated.  Consider the case of a program that distributes food to individuals who are malnurished. In Udaipur, India, a…

Medicaid Expansion States

Which states have decided to receive additional federal funds to expand the share of people they cover under Medicaid?  The Kaiser Family Foundation has the answer. Alabama Not Moving Forward at this Time Alaska  Not Moving Forward at this Time Arizona Implementing the Medicaid Expansion  Arkansas Implementing the Medicaid Expansion California  Implementing the Medicaid Expansion Colorado Implementing the Medicaid Expansion…

Psych Boarding in the ER

The president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, Michael Gerardi, was recently interviewed about his plans for the organization.  One of his key initiatives will be to stop the practice of housing psychiatric patients in the ER. According to Dr. Gerardi: It is inhumane that a lot of patients, especially adolescent patients, sometimes live in an…