Endocrinology

I became a blogger 4 months ago, a gig that I find fascinating and refreshing. A place for me to vent, pontificate, and generally hold forth with a jaundiced view of my profession and the industrial Goliaths that support it.

We spoke with Dr. Kent Willyard about his experience using Epocrates since it was introduced to healthcare professionals.

Sen. Joe Lieberman is officially working to block health care reform in the Congress; he especially desires de-postponing any kind of "health care reform" until the economy has recovered.

Participants in a clinical trial attended weekly sessions to learn about the potential benefits of low-glycemic-index foods. After nine weeks, they had adopted a lower glycemic-index diet and recorded lower weight, smaller waists, and improved blood sugar levels.

The University of Michigan Health System issued guidelines for the clinical care of adults with coronary artery disease in March 2009.

I watched a student reading her text from a hand-held device not too long ago in class, and wondered how she could read print that it fit such a small screen. Soon I'll find out for myself I've just been informed by a family member that a Nook is coming my way after the holidays.

Parental concerns and the willingness to adopt mobile-phone-based technology are likely tied to the unmet need of parents, including provider access, limited available information and support, and the complex management of children with diabetes.

Diabetics may have more difficulty accessing nutritious foods than those without the health condition, leading to unhealthy lifestyle choices, say Canadian researchers.

An additional cup of coffee consumed in a day was associated with a 7 percent reduction in the excess risk of diabetes according to the findings of meta analysis of studies examining coffee and tea consumption and diabetes risk.

In addition to promulgating standards of care regarding glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, which were discussed in part 1 of this series, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has also outlined blood pressure goals. This report will review these blood pressure goals and discuss important components of the physical examination for diabetic patients, including eye and renal evaluations.

Researchers at UT Southwestern and 14 other centers worldwide found that injections of the drug used to treat autoimmune disorders slowed beta cell destruction in the pancreas of those newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for at least a year.

I overhead two women chatting about symptoms the other day while they were surfing WebMD on their respective iPhones for diagnoses - their discussion was as public and non-chalant as if they were shopping. I mused over this for a minute, unsure if I should be disturbed or not, and then found myself wondering which URLs really are the "go-to" sites for health information. An answer was only a click away via Google search at eBizMBA.com.

Way back in January, Phil Baumann, RN, provided an empathic answer to the question/concern that was on everyone's mind then: "Yeah Twitter seems great and all, but can you use it for anything useful in healthcare?" We followed up with him to see how 2009 went.

A gene that has been previously linked to Type 2 diabetes in adults may also increase a child's risk for being overweight, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have found.

HITECH says covered entities must be able to monitor and record every time that patient data is accessed, enabling the entity to comply with the new notification requirements should unauthorized access occur. Will the new rules end up restricting the efficient exchange of data that is crucial to providing high-quality healthcare?

As EHRs are widely adopted and the quantity of information about a patient expands dramatically, does provider liability increase even if the quality of care is vastly improved?

Large organizations with mobile workers, such as hospitals, face diminished productivity when communication is inefficient and its employees are unable to locate their coworkers in a timely manner.

Bravo. The government finally has its healthcare IT priorities straight. Unfortunately, it won't be able to achieve them.

For those interested in health information technology, there is now an excellent, new, powerful website about this topic called the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. In their most recent report, "Can Cleveland Clinic Be a Model for Digital Medicine?" they discuss how this hospital system has failed to recoup their $100 million investment to date.

Education focuses on a range of topics including disease process, nutritional management, and psychological adjustments to preventing diabetic complications, detecting changes, monitoring levels and participating in physical activities.

Individuals with mild to moderate coronary heart disease, treated with intensive medical therapy alone, were no more likely to die from a heart problem after five years than those who also had an angioplasty procedure.

Insulin resistance may affect long-term cardiovascular outcomes in type 1 diabetes and results indicate that insulin resistance is directly related to decreased heart and vessel function and appears to impair capacity to exercise.

Glucose intolerance during pregnancy predicts an increased likelihood of postpartum metabolic syndrome. In turn, cardiovascular risk factors at three months postpartum indicates that risk factors may be longstanding and contribute to long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.

Some pundits have written that health insurance mandates are well beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. Others have picked up on these arguments and applied them to the EHR-implementation incentives under the HITECH Act as well. The bottom line is that these arguments fail, for four reasons.

There has been much discussion about the HITECH Act and the effects it will have on healthcare in this country. The health IT industry and the federal government claim that EHR use will lead to a decrease in costs and an overall improvement in patient care. Skeptics like me disagree with these claims and feel that the push to adopt complex EHRs will be a bad deal for physicians.

Lately, I've been thinking about how fast everything moves these days. This is true in technology, medicine, business, and other important areas of our lives. Keeping up with changes in healthcare is a real challenge; just reading monthly print medical journals won't cut it anymore in the digital age. Now, practically every day I find myself looking something up on Wikipedia.

According to results from the National Institutes of Health Bypass Angioplasty Revascularization Investigation in Type 2 Diabetes (BARI 2D) study, many patients with diabetes and heart disease may achieve better results with drug therapy instead of angioplasty.

New research indicates that the number of Americans living with diabetes will top 44 million by 2034, more than three times the number predicted in a 1991 study.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the approaching fire storm over the patient-centered medical home model reminds me of the destructive powers seen before in HMOs.