I recently jumped at the opportunity to attend the 2013 Healthcare Innovation Summit at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Subtitled IT-Enabled Disruption, it featured opening keynote speaker Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Stanford psychologist and lecturer Dr. Kelly McGonigal, and many other interesting people asking – how do we change health care? I knew little of Mr. Bertolini and nothing of Dr. McGonigal and the former made me think differently about the role of insurers in the new health care reform world and the latter reinforced my belief that the current trend in pushing the complete onus of health squarely on the individual may be too simplistic. But for me, the real reason for going was to hear three of the most fascinating people in health care. First, Dr. Abraham Verghese, Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford, who is world renowned for his belief in the sacred […] Read More »
Tag Archive for Abraham Verghese
Abraham Verghese, Vinod Khosla, Robert Pearl – The Future of Healthcare – Stanford Innovation Summit
Posted on May 3, 2013
Book Review – When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests
Posted on February 5, 2013
The premise of the book When Doctors Don’t Listen is that increasingly doctors are adhering to algorithms and protocols, known as “cookbook medicine”. In the process, doctors are not listening to patients. Instead, doctors are hearing what they want to hear, ignoring the patient’s story, which results in medical evaluations and treatments which are erroneous. The consequence can be delay in care, unnecessary tests and worry, and at times the path taken is so far astray that patients need to fend for themselves. In one anecdote, a patient flees the emergency room after being evaluated for a headache after a hangover and discovers that her treatment is on the pathway to be evaluated for a possible life-threatening (and highly improbable) subarachnoid hemorrhage which includes an invasive lumbar puncture. Too far fetched? Do these problems affect a no name hospital? No. What makes the patient stories most interesting is where they […] Read More »
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