488 karma · joined October 28, 2010
https://peermedicine.com
Contact welcomed at mike@peermedicine.com
I don't think anyone finds it that surprising really. But healthcare is expensive and centralising in-patient care is the only practical and affordable system that we have come up with so far! Key things are to maximise hygiene and minimise length of stay :)
An object is considered to be alive if it consumes energy to create or maintain its own order (in opposition to the general effect of the second law of thermodynamics in the wider system in which it finds itself).
Although this doesn't exclude crystals..! :/
I stand by the point that Excel is an extremely powerful tool. It is very easy as a developer to dismiss that but for the "normal" people in the world the productivity gains it affords (with a much smaller learning curve cf. programming) are huge.
The original posts point which you quoted is that the US health system is Fd and everyone knows it. The analysis presented here supports that. The US spends a lot more per capita on healthcare with worse outcomes and less people having access to healthcare. I’m very glad your move has has worked out for you.
(UK Medical Student)
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/20...
Just to add some colour:
Quality: U.S. fares best on provision and receipt of preventive and patient-centered care. While there has been some improvement in recent years, lower scores on safe and coordinated care pull the overall U.S. quality score down
Access: Not surprisingly—given the absence of universal coverage—people in the U.S. go without needed health care because of cost
Efficiency: On indicators of efficiency, the U.S. ranks last among the 11 countries
Equity: The U.S. ranks a clear last on measures of equity.
Healthy lives: The U.S. ranks last overall with poor scores on all three indicators
As far as I'm aware melanoma is most definitely related to sun exposure and there is no consensus opinion on vitamin-D and cancer prevention, with the most evidence being for it being protective against certain bowel cancers..
Edit: Here's a source for my view: http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/summerhealth/documents/concensus_... [3rd and 4th bullet points for example]
> As for not over-treating, that is a physician led decision - just because there is an anomaly on the scan does not mean that it will be removed or even necessarily treated at all.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I am saying that having cheaper, better scans with computer aided analysis is likely to be beneficial. I am not saying that every anomaly detected requires treatment. Treatment decisions are influenced by imaging but are not enforced by them.
This guy had MRI scans which don't rely on ionising radiation and have no known adverse effects.
>everyone has all sorts of little cancerous growths that are entirely benign
When discussing tumours, cancerous and benign mean different things. You cannot have a benign cancerous growth.
I think the main reason people aren't scanned routinely is due to the enormous cost of the scanning and the data analysis that currently relies on physicians for interpretation. My personal view is that with ever decreasing costs of MRI and improvements in computer vision and diagnostic algorithms, this could become a viable process in the future. As for not over-treating, that is a physician led decision - just because there is an anomaly on the scan does not mean that it will be removed or even necessarily treated at all.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/
E.g. Tuberculosis