18Mar10 Inertia

I’m working in the hospital this month, managing a team that consists of a resident, an intern, and a sub-intern (a 4th year medical student on a job audition).

I do these in-hospital rotations two to three times per year.  I usually get pretty anxious beforehand, since the vastly different “rounding” schedule throws my normal patterns into disarray.  Also, the patients are much sicker. These folks are in the hospital, after all.

I always wind up enjoying my hospital rotations.  Mostly because helping very sick people get better is emotionally satisfying. Also, I find that working with the residents, interns, and students is rejuvenating and keeps me on my toes intellectually. I learn a lot. Invariably, I see and experience things that I’ve never seen before.

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14Mar10 Medical Social Networking [UPDATED]

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging to bring you this medical “fascinoma” in progress.

My friend JZ is currently hospitalized in New England.

He has a fever of unknown origin (FUO).

I am calling on all House, M.D fans, real M.D’s, and other sleuths/puzzlemasters to help solve this medical mystery.

You can get the details here (his girlfriend, living-in at the hospital with him, is live-blogging his hospitalization):

http://thezupdate.tumblr.com/

Ever the open source Internet-er, JZ will send you his medical data from just prior to and including his hospitalization to help you figure out what’s ailing him.

Eternal kudos, gratitude, and likely Internet fame to anyone who can come up with the right diagnosis.

Here’s your chance to show that you could have/should have gone t0 medical school! (Or are smarter than anyone who did!)

Thanks in advance for your help!

Dr. John (a.k.a. GlassHospital)

UPDATE: (March 23, 2010): JZ is out of the hospital, doing fine at home, even back at work. Still having nightly fevers, though. Most causes of sustained intermittent fevers–infections, malignancies, and autoimmune conditions–have been ruled out. The “crowd-sourcing” (i.e. putting it all out there on the Web) pulled up a couple of articles that may have ‘solved’ the case.  Further consult and treatment in the offing; there may be more updates here.

-GlassHospital

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11Mar10 Down the Rabbit Hole

A local business publication recently reported some happy financial news for GlassHospital.

However, if read carefully, the article contains this apparent paradox:

  1. ER traffic is down.
  2. Hospital admissions are down.
  3. Revenue (and profit!) is up!

How can this be?

I mean, if this were a real business, wouldn’t less traffic and fewer ‘units sold’ equal less revenue and lower profits?

Not in Health Care Wonderland.

Welcome to HealthEcon 101.  Since I’m no economist (though I live near a famous Chicago School), I’ll do my best to keep it simple:

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8Mar10 Peace In

So, I haven’t used this blog to shill products. Me, my writing, my ideas–sure.

Here’s an idea that’s so good I can’t resist passing it on:

Peace Care.

Remember the Peace Corps?  Started by JFK and now in its 50th year, thousands of Americans have volunteered for stints of two to three years in 139 different countries.

Arguably, there has been no greater dissemination of American know-how and values to the world than from our Peace Corps volunteers.  In an era of rampant anti-Americanism in the Muslim world, Peace Care is an idea that makes sense no matter where you find yourself on the political spectrum.

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4Mar10 Push or Pull?

Chances are if you’ve never been admitted to a hospital, you know someone that has.  If that admission was unplanned, you likely waited a long time in the ER before you or your friend/loved one was transported up to the hospital floor.

If hotels ran like hospitals, they’d run themselves out of business.  Imagine the desk clerk, instead of giving you your room key (swipe card?), telling you, “I’m sure your room will be ready in the next 2-4 hours, or at change of shift, Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham…”

What is it about hospitals and all this waiting?

For one thing, hotels have the tremendous advantage of their customers planning their departure dates.  All the hotel has to do is enforce a “checkout time,” after which a guest is threatened with paying for another day’s stay–voila!–let the march of checker-outers begin!

Hospitals wish they could do the same thing, but there are major differences.  The main difference is that you and I aren’t paying directly for the hospital bed–insurance is.  So there’s no personal incentive to get out quickly.

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