health department

These days, legislative efforts to change US health care, especially to "reform and replace" the Affordable Care Act [ACA or "Obamacare"] seem to inspire displays of jaw dropping ignorance by political and sometimes business leaders on behalf of "reforming" health care.  We last posted examples on July 7, 2017.  Now there is a new game afoot to reform and replace, and it is generating new - not

On Health Care Renewal we discus the dark side of health care, particularly of the leadership and governance of health care, that has enabled health care dysfunction.  Our discussions are based on publicly available information, often produced by dogged health care journalism. Uur work has become more difficult as journalism is challenged by economic circumstances.  Yet now there are worse

An article just published online(1), and reported so far in only one major media outlet (the Guardian, based in the UK) showed how hookworm, now considered a disease of poor, third world countries, has returned to the American south.  This in a country which spends more per capita on health care than any other supposedly developed country. Background - the Supposed Eradication of Hookworm A

A tale from the trenches. In recent years, as a result of the 2010 IT-related injury and 2011 death of my mother, I have engaged myself as an independent EHR forensic expert regarding evidentiary and patient harm issues in medical malpractice litigation.  Interestingly and disappointingly, I still often find that hospital attitudes towards health IT safety and information transparency have

There seems to be another fox ready to guard the already flustered educational, including medical educational hen house. Dr Julian Schmoke to Lead Student Aid Enforcement Unit According to Politico on August 30, 2017, the new head of enforcement for the Department of Education will be one Dr Julian Schmoke Jr, The Trump administration has tapped a former for-profit college official to lead

Stealthy, deceptive systematic marketing, lobbying, and policy advocacy campaigns on behalf of big health care organizations, often pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, have long been a subject of Health Care Renewal.  A relatively recently revealed example was the stealth marketing campaign used by GlaxoSmithKline to sell its antidepressant Paxil.  This campaign included

Leaders of big health care organizations have long made excuses for rampant conflicts of interest in health care.  Usually, their rationales included something about the need to collaborate with industry to spark innovation.  However, some leaders may have been directly benefiting from such conflicts (e.g., academic leaders on the payrolls of drug, device and biotechnology firms, even on the