Category: Medical & Healthcare What the Heck is a Hospitalist? TASA ID: 3333 Hospitalists are the third most heavily recruited specialty in the country, right after family practice doctors and general surgeons. Hospitalists are doctors who take care of patients entirely or almost entirely as inpatients. They have no office practice (though a few are beginning to work in follow-up clinics for patients they cared for in the hospital), so they and their partners are available 24-7 for newly admitted patients and problems with patients already in the hospital. Read more
Category: Medical & Healthcare Safe Discharge from the Pediatric Emergency Department TASA ID: 1028 The future condition of pediatric patients discharged from the emergency department can never be guaranteed even when the diagnosis has been clearly defined. As a result, we are dependent on our clinical judgment of the patients' stability, as well as the understanding and capability of the parents in safely discharging pediatric patients. Up to 75% of patients/parents do not understand the instructions given at the time of emergency department discharge and not surprisingly almost all malpractice complaints arising from the emergency department have incomplete discharge instructions as a component.1 Read more
Category: Medical & Healthcare Medical Device Registration and Clearance is NOT the same as Approval TASA ID: 4338 Since 1976, the FDA has classified devices as low (1), medium (2) and high (3) risk.This article goes into detail about what medical device manufacturers are required to do to sell their products in the USA. I’ve been working on a case as an expert witness for a very experienced attorney. Our discussions made me realize that many of us are unaware of the details that separate a device tested in humans before being put on the market, from the vast majority of devices that are tested in the laboratory only and then sold. Read more
Category: Medical & Healthcare Hospitalists throughout the Years: Growth of a Specialty...and Its Problems TASA ID: 3333 In the early 1990s, Americans started seeing a new type of doctor who spent all of his or her work hours in the hospital and never went to an office. Pediatricians, family practitioners and internists were the first to divide themselves into those doing outpatient care and "hospitalists." The original incentive for the change was simple efficiency: hospital rounds take primary care doctors away from more-lucrative office visits, and a doctor who spends all day at the hospital knows the way around and can serve patients faster. Doctors who got tired of driving from office to hospital and back were happy to have their sickest patients seen by somebody else; doctors fresh out of training, on the other hand, generally know little about managing an office but are very comfortable in the hospital environment. Read more
Category: Medical & Healthcare Lessons from a Doctor's Recent Trial Testimony TASA ID: 3656 Recently, I testified as a plaintiff internal medicine expert in a trial located in California, against a primary care doctor. This was a missed breast cancer diagnosis case, where the jury awarded a $1.9 million verdict. The jury was hung against the radiology group, despite the fact that they sent her the wrong letter in which she was congratulated on a normal mammogram, when in fact it showed suspicious breast calcifications. Read more
