The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment
The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2012-12-20

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 0309262011

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In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

What Do the Doctors Say?
What Do the Doctors Say?

Author: Janet Farrell Leontiou Ph.D.

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2010-07-16

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1450225810

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The medical world creates its own culture. This culture, however, would not continue if it were not for our participation. As consumers of health care, the way in which we talk, too, maintains the medical culture as it is. This culture frequently dismisses the wisdom of parents and talks them out of their own sense. We, as parents, co-create a culture that continually diminishes us. This collaboration has disastrous consequences for our children. How many times have you heard about a parent having a particular insight into his/her child only to be dissuaded from the truth by the doctor? What Do the Doctors Say? provides stories from the authors own experience as a mother. As a scholar of communication, she has identified twelve language patterns that are used to create medical culture. The book is written particularly for parents of children with disabilities but may be a useful tool for all consumers of health care.

The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats
The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats

Author: Prevention Magazine Editors

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 1997-08-04

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 9780553577815

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In this practical and entertaining guide, the top veterinarians and animal experts in the country offer more than 1,000 effective tips for treating common pet problems, such as: allergies, bad breath, ear mites, fleas, itchy skin, paw problems, teething pain, weepy eyes, and wounds. But, much more than a guide to the physical and emotional problems of pets, The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats also provides solutions to some of the toughest behavior problems, letting pet owners know when it is necessary to visit the vet--and what they can do until they get there. Since the health needs of dogs and cats are often entirely different, there are also specific tips for both cats and dogs, along with more than 75 easy-to-follow illustrations. Having this ultimate do-it-yourself pet-care book is like having a veterinarian on call 24 hours a day.

How We Do Harm
How We Do Harm

Author: Otis Webb Brawley, MD

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2012-01-31

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1429941502

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How We Do Harm exposes the underbelly of healthcare today—the overtreatment of the rich, the under treatment of the poor, the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians' provide, insurance companies that don't demand the best (or even the least expensive) care, and pharmaceutical companies concerned with selling drugs, regardless of whether they improve health or do harm. Dr. Otis Brawley is the chief medical and scientific officer of The American Cancer Society, an oncologist with a dazzling clinical, research, and policy career. How We Do Harm pulls back the curtain on how medicine is really practiced in America. Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance will pay); a public primed to swallow the latest pill, no matter the cost; and rising healthcare costs for unnecessary—and often unproven—treatments that we all pay for. Brawley calls for rational healthcare, healthcare drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs. Brawley's personal history – from a childhood in the gang-ridden streets of black Detroit, to the green hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, the largest public hospital in the U.S., to the boardrooms of The American Cancer Society—results in a passionate view of medicine and the politics of illness in America - and a deep understanding of healthcare today. How We Do Harm is his well-reasoned manifesto for change.

Mind Over Medicine
Mind Over Medicine

Author: Lissa Rankin, M.D.

Publisher: Hay House, Inc

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1401940005

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We’ve been led to believe that when we get sick, it’s our genetics. Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health. For years, Lissa Rankin, M.D., believed the same. But when her own health started to suffer, and she turned to Western medical treatments, she found that they not only failed to help; they made her worse. So she decided to take matters into her own hands. Through her research, Dr. Rankin discovered that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something crucial: a recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. In an attempt to better understand this phenomenon, she explored peer-reviewed medical literature and found evidence that the medical establishment had been proving that the body can heal itself for over 50 years. Using extraordinary cases of spontaneous healing, Dr. Rankin shows how thoughts, feelings, and beliefs can alter the body’s physiology. She lays out the scientific data proving that loneliness, pessimism, depression, fear, and anxiety damage the body, while intimate relationships, gratitude, meditation, sex, and authentic self-expression flip on the body’s self-healing processes. In the final section of the book, you’ll be introduced to a radical new wellness model based on Dr. Rankin’s scientific findings. Her unique six-step program will help you uncover where things might be out of whack in your life—spiritually, creatively, environmentally, nutritionally, and in your professional and personal relationships—so that you can create a customized treatment plan aimed at bolstering these health-promoting pieces of your life. You’ll learn how to listen to your body’s "whispers" before they turn to life-threatening "screams" that can be prevented with proper self-care, and you’ll learn how to trust your inner guidance when making decisions about your health and your life. By the time you finish Mind Over Medicine, you’ll have made your own Diagnosis, written your own Prescription, and created a clear action plan designed to help you make your body ripe for miracles.

When We Do Harm
When We Do Harm

Author: Danielle Ofri, MD

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2020-03-23

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0807037885

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Medical mistakes are more pervasive than we think. How can we improve outcomes? An acclaimed MD’s rich stories and research explore patient safety. Patients enter the medical system with faith that they will receive the best care possible, so when things go wrong, it’s a profound and painful breach. Medical science has made enormous strides in decreasing mortality and suffering, but there’s no doubt that treatment can also cause harm, a significant portion of which is preventable. In When We Do Harm, practicing physician and acclaimed author Danielle Ofri places the issues of medical error and patient safety front and center in our national healthcare conversation. Drawing on current research, professional experience, and extensive interviews with nurses, physicians, administrators, researchers, patients, and families, Dr. Ofri explores the diagnostic, systemic, and cognitive causes of medical error. She advocates for strategic use of concrete safety interventions such as checklists and improvements to the electronic medical record, but focuses on the full-scale cultural and cognitive shifts required to make a meaningful dent in medical error. Woven throughout the book are the powerfully human stories that Dr. Ofri is renowned for. The errors she dissects range from the hardly noticeable missteps to the harrowing medical cataclysms. While our healthcare system is—and always will be—imperfect, Dr. Ofri argues that it is possible to minimize preventable harms, and that this should be the galvanizing issue of current medical discourse.

Over My Head
Over My Head

Author: Claudia L. Osborn

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

Published: 2000-03

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780740705984

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Hit by a car while bicycling Osborn, an internist at a Detroit hospital, suffered injuries. Recounts the struggles and frustrations of a gradually learning strategies to compensate for the lack of certain brain functions. An exceptionally well-written and engaging account. PW review.

How Doctors Think
How Doctors Think

Author: Jerome Groopman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2008-03-12

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0547348630

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On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.

What Doctors Feel
What Doctors Feel

Author: Danielle Ofri, MD

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0807073334

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“A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician” that explores the doctor-patient relationship, the flaws in our health care system, and how doctors’ emotions impact medical care (Boston Globe) While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But understanding doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice can make all the difference on giving and getting the best medical care. Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. Ofri also reveals that doctors cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness.

This Is Your Do-Over
This Is Your Do-Over

Author: Michael F. Roizen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-02-24

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1501103350

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From the bestselling coauthor of the YOU series, the ultimate guide to reversing damage, optimizing health, and living a life filled with energy and happiness. “If you want to have a better brain and body…This is your manual for transformation” (Daniel G. Amen, MD, New York Times bestselling author). No matter what kind of lifestyle you lead, no matter what your bad habits, whether you’re a smoker, a couch potato, or a marshmallow addict, it’s never too late to start living a healthy life. You do not have to be destined to a certain health outcome because your parents were on the same path, or because you think you’ve already done the damage. And you can even change the function of your genes through your lifestyle choices. Bestselling author and renowned chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic gives readers the tools they need to change their habits and get a new start. Dr. Roizen addresses all the areas that contribute to total-body wellness—including nutrition, exercise, sex, stress, sleep, and the brain. He shares his seven simple secrets—grounded in cutting-edge scientific research and culled from experience coaching thousands—to healthy living and provides concrete strategies that anyone can implement, regardless of age or health. “If you ever wanted a second chance at redoing your life, reimagining the areas that don’t work—body, mind, relationships, and more—This Is Your Do-Over is your guide” (Mark Hyman, MD, #1 New York Times bestselling author).