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If you haven’t heard this phrase yet, you most likely will. This is an area that has a big focus on energy and time in healthcare today.  Honestly, it probably should have always been and not that we didn’t but not with the intensity of what we should have been.  So, what is medication reconciliation?

“Distress is Bad.  Eustress is Good.” Timothy Ferriss Distress refers to harmful stimuli that make you weaker, less confident, and less able.  Eu-, Greek prefix for “healthy”.  We all have stress in our lives.  The degree of stress you are under, the type of stress, the duration of the stress and how you are coping with the stress will determine if you are physically affected.  Any stress that becomes overwhelming, whether one considers it good stress or bad stress can cause harm if going on too long.

Did you know that you about as likely to have a bad outcome in the healthcare system as you are to lose your luggage at the airport?

In the field of systems analysis, British psychologist James Reason examined industrial accidents in multiple industries and concluded that catastrophic safety failures are almost never caused by isolated errors committed by individuals but more as a result of multiple, smaller errors due to system flaws.  He then developed the “Swiss cheese model”.

Reposted from print in Utah Medical Association Bulletin Feb-Mar 2011

If it isn’t commerce, the Feds Can’t Regulate by Karen Radley, MD

I would like to address a few issues in response to Dr. Richard Keller’s letter published in the Salt Lake Tribune December 18, 2010.

Dr. Keller’s article opined that health care is a ‘right’, reasoning that health care is as basic a human need as is food and shelter.  I would argue that many people around the world manage to live every day without health care as we know it.  However, they would be hard put to stay alive without food or, depending on the circumstances, perhaps even shelter.  If healthcare were a basic human need, this would not be the case.

Reposted from an article printed in Utah Medical Association Bulletin Aug-Sep 2010. Although the dates and cost of a pack of cigarettes of changed, the principles are still the same and more pertinent today as we are seeing this in motion. Is Private Practice Dying? By Karen Radley, MD

I am frequently asked by patients in my office to order test to “screen” for a certain disorder, condition or cancer.  Unfortunately, often what are good intentions isn’t going to get you the information you are looking for but will be a significant expense.  This is when I try to educate people on what a “screening test” really is and what is an appropriate screening test, what ones do work and how we use them.

In the next few years, I would love to see the patients and providers stop saying that patients are coming in for their annual physical health exam.  You see, this is usually interpreted by each party as meaning something different.